Verse 18.48

Verse 18.48: “An action to which one is born, O Son of Kunti, even if it be full of defect, one ought not to give up; for, all activities (as such) are overlaid with defects, as the fire with the smoke. (936)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

Since there is involved physical labour in whatever action one has got to perform, why then be finding fault with one’s own religion, because there is involved physical labour in following it? Oh, it involves one and the same amount of fatigue to the legs whether they walk over a straight road or run along a rarely trodden path; it causes the same sort of fatigue (burden) if one carries (on one’s person) a stone or his own food-provision; why not then carry the food-provision, which would serve as the means of relieving the exertions caused by the journey? Pounding either the corn or the chaff involves the same labour; similarly cooking dog’s meat or cooking food for sacrificial purposes entails the same amount of trouble; the churning of curds or churning simple water is one and the same action; the crushing of sand or of sesame seeds in an oil-mill is similarly the same action; the bearing of smoke-nuisance is the same both in blowing wind with one’s own mouth for kindling fire for making daily sacrificial offerings (nitya-homa); or for wantonly setting the house on fire, Oh Dhananjaya. It involves the same (pecuniary) strain to support a wife or a (kept) mistress; why then incur the odium of a scandal (by supporting a mistress)? If one cannot avoid death by getting stabbed in the back by turning his back to the enemy, what greater loss could there be incurred by receiving stabs while bravely facing the enemy.

If a lady of good breed has to bear the blows of a rod even after taking shelter in a stranger’s house, what point has she gained in deserting her husband because of his beating her? In that way, if one cannot secure, without physical exertions, the successful doing of any action whatever, even one of his own liking, then why complain that only the prescribed actions are difficult to perform? What (is undesriable therein), if a being loses all (everything) in exchange for even a little quantity of nectar that makes his life immortal? Similarly, why should one spend on securing poison, and take it and die of it, bringing along with it in addition the sin of suicide? In that way, what else is there other than misery in the sin one accumulates by troubling the senses and wasting in addition his own life-time in it? Therefore, one should follow one’s own religion which removes all fatigue and helps one to secure liberation—the greatest amongst the four objects of the existence of man. Therefore, Oh Kiriti, one should follow his own Dharma (religion) and should not forget it in the way one should not, while in difficulty, (forget) the sacred formula which is perfected by repetitions (siddha-mantra). One should never abandon one’s own duty (action) in the way one should not (abandon) a barge while on a sea or a divine medicine when affected by leprosy.

God Almighty getting propitiated by worship (on the part of the seeker) in shape of the performance of one’s own duties, drives completely away the Rajas and Tamas Guna constituents (from such seeker), and leads him along the road of the Sattva Guna and makes him feel, as venom, the pleasures of this world as also those of the other (Heaven) in his longing for the attainment of Supreme Self, oh the one having a monkey as an emblem on his chariot (epithet of Arjuna). And then the seeker attains the goal—the asceticism, fully and clearly described under the term ‘perfection’ before (stanza 45, Ch. xviii). How the seeker, once he attains this plane of asceticism, behaves and what he secures thereby, is being preached now.