We sometimes analyse our actions and say, "I did and I got it." But I've said several times, "How much do you do and how much has happened in your yoga?" If you do a proper analysis, you will come to know that you have done one penny, and you have got worth hundred dollars. So, you can't take credit for all those hundred dollars as "your" action, you have done only worth one penny. Because how do you do in action? You use your hands, your legs, your body; you use your mind, your intelligence. Are they all under your control? You can be losing your hand today; you can be losing your mind today. If they are yours and you own them, then you will never lose them. But that's not the case, you are tenants, these are all what you hired. You hire all these forces. Your hands are hired, your legs are hired, your mind is hired, your prana is hired, your intelligence is hired, everything is hired. It doesn't belong to you and you are using something that is not your own and you are doing the action. How can you claim the result of it as your result? You don't have ownership on any part of yourself, on any aspect of yourself. You can go lunatic tomorrow. Why tomorrow? The next moment you can go lunatic. Right?
What is yours? Nothing is yours and you are working with all that, which is not yours, and therefore you can't take credit for the action. See, if I help you, you say "thank you." Right? And it is perfectly right, it's not only an etiquette, it's right that you thank me because I have helped you. Right? But that's not the case with your hands - do you thank your hands ever?
Sometimes, my feet only.
As you thank me, do you treat them as separate and do you thank them? You don't do that. You might feel happy, "Oh, my hands got it, my leg got it!"
That's why Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita, "karmani eva adhikarah," [ 9 ] - "you have only right for karma." Because all those things with which you do are not yours; therefore action is not yours. All those instruments with which you do, your physical, mental, volitional, pranic instruments, whatever you use, they are not you, they are not your instrument, they are hired, they are given to you, they are grace of God, they are bounty of God, they are given on lease to you. And invaluable things are given to you. Suppose I give you something on lease for one penny; I give you ten acres of land, you say "big bounty, a hundred acres of land for one paisa per year!" So it is something that you are getting on lease and therefore you don't have any claim on the fruit; because, if the things are done beautifully by your hands, the fruit should go to your hands and not to you. So that's why you don't have the right on your fruits, on the fruits of the actions. So this is not an ideology, it is reality. You think that it might be an ideology not to expect the fruit, just work and don't have aspiration for fruit. It is not an ideology, it is reality. You can't claim a right on the fruits. You have no right on the fruits of actions. That's again a big topic - karma yoga.
So, why should we do anything at all?
You don't have to do; the things will be done. Then you go with the nature as we say.
But you have to live your life; you cannot refuse it.
Where is the question of refusing, you see, experience is for bhoga, [ 10 ] purushartha. [ 11 ] It is for your good also. Where is the question of refusing, it is for your good, if you use the nature properly.
[ 9 ] Bhagavad-Gita II, 47.
[ 10 ] bhoga: enjoyment, pleasure, experience of sensual joys
[ 11 ] purusharta: four objects or aims of life: dharma (discharge of duty), artha (acquirement of wealth), kama (gratification of desires) and moksa (final emancipation).
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