Ram Dass

In a worldly sense, I was making a great income and I was a collector of possessions.
I had an apartment in Cambridge that was filled with antiques and I gave very charming dinner parties. I had a Mercedes-Benz sedan and a Triumph 500 CC motorcycle and a Cessna 172 airplane and an MG sports car and a sailboat and a bicycle

He who withdraws himself from actions but ponders on their pleasures in his heart, he is under a delusion.”
That last line really gets to the core of it: “He who withdraws himself from actions but ponders on their pleasures in his heart [emphasis added], he is under a delusion.” That’s the one where you’re busy not doing something. It’s like when you meet somebody who has “Given Up Smoking!”—and that’s totally who they are. “Who are you?” “I’m somebody who hasn’t smoked for two weeks, four hours, and thirty-two minutes.” In their thought-forms, they’re smoking at least a pack an hour!

r!
So Krishna is saying to Arjuna,You can’t avoid acting, and trying to not act when your desires are still strong just puts you “under a delusion,” it makes you phony holy. In other words, you’re not going to get out of your predicament by just sitting around.

Why you’re doing your dharma remains to be seen. At this point, Krishna is simply saying, It’s your duty—just do it.

idn’t give up easily, though. For a long time, I kept trying to make it work the way I thought a “real” spiritual trip ought to work. Like I’d say to

Arjuna is in the same predicament here. He doesn’t like the dharma that’s facing him out on the battlefield. He has his own ideas about what he’d like his path to be. But gradually, we come to realize that following our own path isn’t going to get us where we want to go; we begin to acknowledge that our dharma is our route through, and so we start to surrender into it. And that’s what Krishna is advising Arjuna to do: “Thus is the wheel of law set in motion, and that man lives indeed in vain who, in a sinful life of pleasure, helps not its revolution. But the man who has found the joy of the spirit, and in the spirit has satisfaction, that man is beyond the law of action.”

You only act to fulfill the dharma, not out of any personal motive, so no karma accrues.

We ought to take everything God puts on us evenly, not comparing and wondering which is more important or higher or best. We ought simply to follow where God leads.”

kind of a quietness inside

Let it be harmonious with its lawful manifestation, and don’t struggle against it so hard. Live your life more lightly, more impersonally; don’t get so caught, so trapped in your melodrama.