232. Auspicious Karma

Krishna mentioned ‘Om Tat Sat’ as a threefold representation of the Supreme Absolute Truth - Brahma. He explains ‘sat’ and says, “The word ‘sat’ means eternal reality and goodness. O Arjuna, it is also used to describe an auspicious action. Being established in the performance of yajna (sacrifice), tapah (penance), and daan (charity) is also described as ‘sat’. And so, any act for such purposes is named ‘sat’ (17.26-17.27). Whatever is done or practiced like yajna, daan or tapah, when done without shraddha is termed as ‘asat’. It is not for here or hereafter” (17.28).

Krishna described ‘sat’ and ‘asat’ at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita. He said ‘sat’ (reality) never ceases to be while ‘asat’ (unreal) has no existence and only a jnani can distinguish between them (2.16).

Firstly, ‘asat’ is that ‘which didn’t exist in the past and wouldn’t be there in the future’. Sensual pleasures, feelings, and physical entities, including the body, were not there before and will not endure in time. Secondly, the rope-snake analogy is used to explain that ‘asat’ derives its existence from ‘sat’, just as the snake doesn’t exist without the rope. Another example is a reflection in a mirror. When we stand before a mirror, our image appears in it. The reflection cannot exist independently of us. We are ‘sat’, the underlying reality, while the reflected image is ‘asat’, having no existence of its own.

Krishna gives another path here when he says that whatever is done or practiced like yajna, daan or tapah, when done without shraddha is termed as ‘asat’. Shraddha is the essential ingredient to perform ‘sat’ karmas. This path opens another interpretation.

Shraddha is unflinching devotion where any outcome of an action is taken as the blessings of Paramatma. In other words, it is performing karma without expecting karma-phal (fruits of action) (2.47). This is also achieved by dropping the sense of doership (kartapan) for any karma we perform. Any karma becomes auspicious when both a sense of doership and the desire for karma-phal is dropped and hence, Krishna calls it performing auspicious karmas.