When we chase the fruit, we lose joy of action
We say we want to study and to work. But do we? We study not because learning draws us, but because a degree promises a job. We seek a job not for the work it offers, but for the salary it brings. And we want the salary for comfort, status and security. At every step, we are not quite present in the step itself. We are already reaching past it, towards what it can get us next.
Gita names this tendency precisely. Krishn tells Arjun , karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana : you have a right to action alone, never to its fruits. This is not because fruits do not matter. They do. But when we act only for the fruit, we stop giving ourselves fully to the action. The hands are busy while the mind wanders into a future that has not arrived. Nishkam karm, often rendered as ‘action without desire for fruit,’ is easily misread. It does not ask us to work without any result in view. It asks us not to cling to result as the only reason for working.
Consider the chain we began with. Securing a good placement is a legitimate goal, and today we pursue it with unusual intensity. Students chase it, parents push towards it, and institutions build entire departments around it. The other side of this picture deserves attention. What happens to someone who studies only for placement, works only for a paycheck, and earns only to spend? Each stage becomes a mere stepping stone to the next, and none is lived for its own sake. By the time the money arrives, attention has already moved on to how it will be spent. Even spending becomes another chase: the next purchase, milestone, thing that promises satisfaction and stays just out of reach.
None of this argues against placements, jobs or earning well. Having clear goals and working towards them is wisdom, and no teaching asks us to abandon it. Gita asks only that we shift where our attention rests while the ‘doing’ is happening. A student who studies for the love of learning and happens to land an excellent placement has lived two good things at once: the studying and its outcome. A student who studies only for the placement has lived just one of them, and anxiously at that, always leaning towards a tomorrow that has not yet come.
Fruit matters. Nobody who has tasted a mango would say otherwise. But the tree that bears it spent years absorbing rain, soil and sun, none of it thinking of fruit. It simply grew, season after season, present to what each one asked of it. The fruit comes because the tree grew well, not because it waited for fruit.
Perhaps that is the whole of it. Grow well, and the fruit will come in its own time.
Gita names this tendency precisely. Krishn tells Arjun , karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana : you have a right to action alone, never to its fruits. This is not because fruits do not matter. They do. But when we act only for the fruit, we stop giving ourselves fully to the action. The hands are busy while the mind wanders into a future that has not arrived. Nishkam karm, often rendered as ‘action without desire for fruit,’ is easily misread. It does not ask us to work without any result in view. It asks us not to cling to result as the only reason for working.
Consider the chain we began with. Securing a good placement is a legitimate goal, and today we pursue it with unusual intensity. Students chase it, parents push towards it, and institutions build entire departments around it. The other side of this picture deserves attention. What happens to someone who studies only for placement, works only for a paycheck, and earns only to spend? Each stage becomes a mere stepping stone to the next, and none is lived for its own sake. By the time the money arrives, attention has already moved on to how it will be spent. Even spending becomes another chase: the next purchase, milestone, thing that promises satisfaction and stays just out of reach.
None of this argues against placements, jobs or earning well. Having clear goals and working towards them is wisdom, and no teaching asks us to abandon it. Gita asks only that we shift where our attention rests while the ‘doing’ is happening. A student who studies for the love of learning and happens to land an excellent placement has lived two good things at once: the studying and its outcome. A student who studies only for the placement has lived just one of them, and anxiously at that, always leaning towards a tomorrow that has not yet come.
Fruit matters. Nobody who has tasted a mango would say otherwise. But the tree that bears it spent years absorbing rain, soil and sun, none of it thinking of fruit. It simply grew, season after season, present to what each one asked of it. The fruit comes because the tree grew well, not because it waited for fruit.
Perhaps that is the whole of it. Grow well, and the fruit will come in its own time.
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