न हि कश्िचत्क्षणमपि जातु तिष्ठत्यकर्मकृत्।
कार्यते ह्यवशः कर्म सर्वः प्रकृतिजैर्गुणैः।।3.5।।
For no one ever remains even for a moment without doing work, for all are made to work under compulsion by the gunas born of Nature.
Osho’s Commentary
Life is action. To be alive is to be in motion. From the moment of birth to the moment of death, the stream of action is ceaseless. Even to breathe is an action. To think is an action. To sleep is an action. Man is condemned to be free, says Sartre, but man is also helplessly compelled to act. There is no escape. This is not a question of your choice. You are driven by the forces of Prakriti, of nature. These forces are the three gunas—sattva, rajas, and tamas—the three fundamental qualities that constitute all of existence. They are in constant interplay, a cosmic dance, and you are a part of that dance. You cannot step out of it. The one who tries to escape action is a hypocrite. He only pretends to be inactive. He may renounce his home for a monastery, but there too he will act. He will stop selling goods and start begging for alms. Is begging any less of an action? Life is a process, a constant flow. To try and stop it is to create a dam of hypocrisy, behind which the energies of life will only become stagnant and perverted. The East has tried this escape through the sannyasin, and the West is now trying another escape through the machine—let the machine do all the work, so man can be free from action. Both are illusions. The energy that is life must express itself. If it is not channeled creatively, it will become destructive. This is the whole misery of the modern West—so much leisure, so much energy, with no creative outlet. It turns into crime, into perversion, into madness. Krishna’s insight is simple: action is inevitable. The question is not what you do, but who is doing it. The question is not of doing, but of being. If you are centered in the ego, all your actions will lead to bondage. If you are centered in the divine, the same actions become liberation.