The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

The Bhagavad Gita ╯
us feel “burned out.” Clearly, as the Gita says, “Yoga is skill in
action” (2:50).
Only the person who is utterly detached and utterly dedicated,
Gandhi says, is free to enjoy life. Asked to sum up his
life “in twenty-five words or less,” he replied, “I can do it in
three!” and quoted the Isha Upanishad: “Renounce and enjoy.”
Those who are compulsively attached to the results of action
cannot really enjoy what they do; they get downcast when
things do not work out and cling more desperately when they
do. So the Gita classifies the karma of attachment as pleasant
at first, but “bitter as poison in the end” (18:38), because of the
painful bondage of conditioning.
Again, Krishna repeatedly tells Arjuna to surrender everything
to him in love. But this is not different advice, merely
different words. Krishna is asking Arjuna to act entirely for
His sake, not for any personal gain. The whole point of the
path of love is to transform motivation from “I, I, I” to “thou,
thou, thou” – that is, to surrender selfish attachments by dissolving
them in the desire to give.
Krishna puts this most beautifully in the famous verses of
Chapter 9 which begin, “Whatever you do, make it an offering
to me” (9:27). Do it, that is, not for personal reward but
out of love for the Lord, present in every creature. “Whatever
you eat, whatever worship you perform, whatever you give,
whatever you suffer”: everything is to be done and given and
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