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BRAHMANISM
hand the negative extreme of barron abstinence from every kind and phase of action is to be shunned with equal care. The first mistake is that of the normal behavior of the naïve worldly being, prone to act and cage for the results. This only leads to a continuation of the hell of the round of rebirths-our usual headlong and unhelpful participation in the unavoidable sufferings that go with being an ego. Whereas the opposite mistake is that of neurotic abstention; the mistake of the absolute as(clics-such men as the monks of the Jainas and Ajivikas_112 who indulge in the vain hope that one may rid oneself of karmic influxes simply by mortifying the flesh, stopping all mental and emotional processes, and starving to death the bodily frame. Against these the Bhagavad Gitā 118 brings a more modern, more spiritual, more psychological point of view. Act: for actually you act no matter which way you turn-but achievc detachment from the fruits! Dissolve thus the self-concern of your ego, and with that you will discover the Self! The Scll is unconcerned with either the individuality within (jiva, pur uşa) or the world without (n-jīva, prakrti).
This formula of Karma Yoga, however, is not the only means; it can be supported and supplemented by the traditional devices of Bhakti Yoga--the way of fervent devotion to some incarnation, image, name, or personification of one's cherished god. Indeed, detachment from the fruits of unavoidable activities is rendered easier through such an attitude of self-surrender to the will of the Personal God- who, in turn, is but a reflex of the very Self that dwells within the heart of every being. "Whatever thou dost do, whatever thou dost eat, whatever thou dost offer in sacrificial oblation, whatever thou dost give away [in charity),
112 Cf. supra, pp. 183-2021. Though the Jainas rejected such painful austerities as those ascribed, in the above recounted legend, to the titanic adversaries of Par vanatha, their own asceticism, as we have seen, was designed to climinate all the life-processes, and so to culminate in death. 118 As also Buddhism; cf. infra, pp. 469ff.
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