Action Without Attachment
You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.
Krishna gives Arjuna the most practical sentence in all of Indian philosophy.
You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.
You have the right to action, never to its fruits. Arjuna is standing on a battlefield, paralyzed by the consequences of what he is about to do. Krishna does not relieve him of the consequences. Krishna relieves him of the responsibility for the consequences. Do the work. Do it well. Let the fruit go where it goes.
This is the same cut Epictetus made, in a different vocabulary. The Gita’s version is more generous, because it allows the work to matter while denying you the satisfaction of knowing how it will turn out. Read this on a day when you are particularly anxious about an outcome.
Where in your life are you doing the work but holding too tightly to the fruit?