Choice over Action in Geeta 2-47 and Dr Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy

February 3, 2012

Bhagavad Geeta 2-47 is probably the most quoted shloka in the Geeta.
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन |
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ||२-४७||
karmaNyevaadhikaaraste maa phaleshhu kadaachana .
maa karmaphalaheturbhuurmaa te saN^go.astvakarmaNi .. 2-47..
Your right is to work only, but never to its fruits; let not the fruit-of-action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction.

Pujya Swami Chinmayanandaji in his commentary on the verse says: In effect, therefore, Arjuna is advised: "All that is given to you now is to act and, having known the cause of action to be a noble one, to bring into the activity all that is best in you and forget yourself in the activity. Such inspired action is sure to bear fruit, and again, it has its own reward-spiritual."

I recently borrowed a book from my nephew, Siddesh. The book is "Man's Search for Meaning" by Dr Viktor E. Frankl, a renowned psychotherapist and a survivor of several Nazi concentration camps. I see Dr Frankl's central thesis in the book as a direct validation of the above shloka, relevant especially since it is in the context of his experiences at the camp.

Dr Frankl writes:

Is that theory true which would have us believe that man is no more than a product of many conditional and environmental factors- be they of a biological, psychological or sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most important, do the prisoners' reactions to the singular world of the concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the influences of his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of such circumstances?

We can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle...We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's way.

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers that threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molder into the form of the typical inmate.

I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that these last inner freedom cannot be lost... the way they bore their sufferings was a genuine inner achievement.It is this spiritual freedom which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

As the profile in the book says, Dr Frankl was born in 1905, he received his medical degree from the University of Vienna and during World War II spent three years at Auschwitz, Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps. He reflected on his experiences in the concentration camp and wrote this book in nine days within a few months of being liberated from the camps. Dr Viktor Frankl is the founder of logotherapy, often considered as the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy.

A search on Youtube reveals several videos of Dr Viktor Frankl. I'll try and post one on these pages in the days to come.

Hari Om and Namaskaar until the next post