I’m reading my third translation of the Bhagavad Gita. I started some years ago with the Juan Mascaro version in Penguin. The language was beautiful, but probably not very accurate. Then I read Jack Hawley’s version, which is easy to understand, but certainly not poetry. Now I’m reading Swami Sivananda’s version. The language is somewhat archaic, e.g. “Whence is this perilous strait come upon thee…” but it does have a commentary with every verse, something that the others don’t have and which makes the Sivananda version at least three times as long. (So it’s taking me a while to get through).

I feel it’s a good time to be reading the Gita. Like so many people I’m in a bit of a in-between stage workwise. One job has finished, and I’m about to decide on the next phase of my life. Like Arjuna standing on the battlefield of life, I’m not feeling too confident or sure about what I should do next. However, I get some reassurance from Krishna’s advice in verse 2:47: “Thy right is to work only, but never with its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction.”

What Krishna is saying, I believe, is that in life we should do our duty or work, but we have no ownership of any success (or even failure) that results. Furthermore, he says it is wrong to avoid work. (“nor let thy attachment be to inaction.)

So I should just get on with things and concentrate on the task in hand. It’s a huge relief for me not to have to worry about whether it is successful or not. And if I don’t own the success or failure of my work, then it certainly can’t define me or be part of my personality.