Take Kavita, who has an interview tomorrow for a job she badly wants. She has prepared well. And yet tonight she cannot stop replaying it: what if they ask this, what if they prefer someone else.
Her mind is on the result and not on the preparation. The wanting has taken over the very hours she could be resting in. Can a person want something and still be free of this? The Gita says yes, and it says exactly where the line falls. Here we go through it.
The work is yours, and the result is not
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥ २.४७ ॥
You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are never entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to inaction.
The Lord tells Arjuna that he has a right to the action alone and never to its fruits. He must not make the fruit his motive and must not think that he alone causes it. And he must not be drawn to doing nothing (Gita 2.47). The last part is taken up in Can We Simply Stop Acting?.
Why is the result not ours alone? Because the Gita counts five causes behind any action: the place, the doer, the tools, the many kinds of effort and, as the fifth, fate (Gita 18.14; see Who Is the Doer?). We are one of five.
For Kavita, the preparation is hers. The panel's mood, the other candidates and the timing are not.
What belongs to you and what does not
| Mine | Not mine |
|---|---|
| Preparing | Who else applied |
| Arriving on time | The panel's mood that day |
| Answering honestly | The budget behind the post |
| Listening well | The final decision |
| Learning from it afterwards |
Put effort into the left column and leave the right column alone. Every minute spent on the right is taken from the left.
How to tell that the wish for a result has taken over
The wish for a result is a normal wish, and it takes over quietly. A few signs show that it has. We rehearse the outcome again and again in our heads. We cannot enjoy a good day until the result arrives. And we begin to measure our own worth by the verdict, as though one result could say who we are.
The Gita's remedy for the last sign is the evenness that the Lord asks for in the next section: the same mind in success and failure (Gita 2.48). A person who meets both in the same way does not stake their worth on either.
Caring is not the same as clinging
The Lord does not say, "do not want" or "do not care". He says that the claim over the result is not ours to hold. This is what is meant by nishkama karma.
सिद्ध्यसिद्ध्योः समो भूत्वा समत्वं योग उच्यते ॥ २.४८ ॥
Established in yoga, O Dhananjaya, perform your actions, abandoning attachment and remaining equal in success and failure. Such equanimity is called yoga.
The Lord asks Arjuna to do the work, give up clinging (sanga) and be the same in success and failure. That evenness is what he calls yoga (Gita 2.48). So yoga here is not a posture. It is a steadiness of mind that meets both outcomes in the same way.
Work done simply because it ought to be done, with the clinging and the fruit given up, is called pure (Gita 18.9; see Relinquishment and Renunciation of Action). Kavita can still hope. She can hold the hope loosely, as a person holds a bird in an open hand.
Before, during and after
The teaching is easiest to use when it is split into three moments. Before the event, sort what is mine from what is not, as in the table above. During the event, keep the attention on what is in front of us. In the room, that is the question being asked, and not the verdict (Gita 2.50). After the event, ask what we did well and what we would do differently, and leave the decision to the five causes (Gita 18.14). Each moment has one job. The mind that tries to do all three at once is the mind that cannot sleep.
Why this does not make us careless
Some people hear "do not cling to the result" and think it means not to try. The Lord says the opposite. Action done with wisdom is far better than action driven by the result (Gita 2.49), and yoga is skill in action (Gita 2.50).
The reason is that a mind split between the task and its outcome does the task worse. In the interview room, if Kavita's mind is on the verdict, she hears the question less well. If it is on the question, she answers better. Giving up the clinging does not lower the work. It raises it.
The same idea at home
Take a parent whose child has an exam result due on Friday. The parent has helped with revision, kept the house quiet and cooked what the child likes. Now only the result remains, and the parent checks the website every hour.
The parent has done the part that was theirs. The result belongs to the child's own effort, the paper that came, the marking and fate (Gita 18.14). What the parent can still do is be the same on Friday whichever way the result goes (Gita 2.48). The care was in the preparation and it is not wasted. The checking adds nothing to it.
A practice for the evening before
On a sheet of paper, draw two columns, "mine" and "not mine", for tomorrow's task. In the left column write three things you will do. In the right column write what you cannot control. Read the left column aloud and close the paper. Say once that the right column is not yours to carry tonight. When the mind goes to the right column, return to one line of the left. After the event, write in the left column one thing you did well, whatever the result.
Questions readers ask
Does this mean I should not have goals?
No. A goal gives the work its direction. What the Gita takes away is the claim on the result and the fever around it (Gita 2.47, Gita 2.48). The Lord asks for action free from expectation and from mental fever (Gita 3.30; see Offering All Actions).
Is it wrong to feel disappointed when I fail?
The feeling is not the fault. Being thrown down by it is. The aim is that the same mind meets both success and failure (Gita 2.48), and this steadiness grows with practice.
Will I work less hard if I do not want the result?
The verse asks for the opposite, which is skill in action (Gita 2.50). Work done for a result often stops when the result looks out of reach. Work done because it ought to be done goes on (Gita 18.9).
What if the result really matters, for example my family's livelihood?
Then the work matters even more, and it is done fully. The weight is carried by the work and not by dread. The Gita says that peace follows the giving up of clinging to the fruit (Gita 5.12).
Going deeper
For the five verses in order, see the detailed reading. For the finer points, the traditions and the objections, see the deeper reading. This is the second stop on The Path of Karma Yoga.