Happy Janmashtami!

It has been more than 3000 years now that Lord Krishna was born. What is the reason that even today, we celebrate His birthday with so much of enthusiasm and happiness, and worship Him with all the reverence and adoration in our heart? It is because Lord Krishna has given to the world a very wonderful thing namely “Nishkam Karma”, which is the essence of the holy Bhagavad Gita. What is Nishkam Karma? Nishkam Karma means to do everything but without expecting anything in return. Say, you receive some income from your farm, and some from the printing press too that you have started. So you estimate an income of twenty to twenty five thousand a year from both these sources put together. However, actually an income of only five thousand happens this year. What happens then? You will immediately feel you’ve made a loss of twenty thousand, isn’t it? And if you had not kept any expectations at all, would you feel the pinch then? No! Lord Krishna has therefore advocated 'Nishkam Karma Yog' as the ideal path to ultimate liberation. Perform your duties selflessly, without any kind of selfish motive or desire for particular fruits or specific results of the action done by you. However, Param Pujya Dadabhagwan clarifies, “When a person does nishkama karma with the belief of ‘I am Chandubhai (please insert your own name here)’ there is binding of new (punya / merit) karma. Doing such karma makes the worldly life smooth.” But until there is binding of new karma, how can one attain ultimate liberation? Dadashri solves the puzzle as he further explains, “Nishkam Karma cannot be done without first knowing ‘Who am I’. To believe, ‘I am doing Nishkam Karma’ in itself is bondage. As long as there is a doer of nishkam karma, there is bondage.” One’s bhaav (inner intention) in this lifetime creates new karma. And as long as we have it in our bhaav (intent) that ‘I am the doer’, good or bad karmas continue to bind. Only when we attain Self-Realization, we realize that, “I am Pure Soul and my nature is only to see and know”. With this, our belief that, ‘I am indeed the doer of Nishkam karma’ also drops. And as a result our anger, pride, deceit, greed, desires, attachment, hatred get onto the declining curve. So come, on this auspicious occasion of Janmashtami, let us all gift Lord Krishna on His birthday our determination to make Self-Realization the ultimate goal of our life so that we can do Nishkam Karma, as Lord Krishna has propagated, in its true spirit!