Gita Chapter Three

Chapter Three deals with various types of actions or duties and how performance of such actions and duties become appropriate under different conditions. While the usual interpretation is that the Chapter seeks to classify actions and duties as good or bad or useful and useless, the spirit of Lord’s advise is to emphasize that actions and duties would be performed by individuals under the varying influence of the varying combination of the three Gunas/ properties inherent in different individuals. He therefore advises Arjuna to get over the dilemma of what is good or bad action but do whatever he is driven to do by the Gunas and the circumstances faced without any attachment to the consequences of any action. Actions are appropriate given the situational background and the inherited natural properties of a person. One need not worry about the future outcome of the present actions, eliminate the operation of lust through the intellect, the mind and the senses.
Verses 3.1-3.2 Arjuna wants to know why he should fight if knowledge is better than fruit-yielding action?
Verses 3.3 – 3.9 Krishna replies: There are two categories of self-realized persons: one category tends to understand God by empirical and philosophical pursuits while the other and try to know God by devotional work. No one can achieve freedom from responding to external environment by merely abstaining from work or merely through renunciation. All are forced to act helplessly according to the impulses implicit in the inherited composition of the three Gunas of material nature. No one can refrain from action even for a single moment.
One may restrains the senses and organs of action but unable to detach the mind from thinking sense objects. Such a person can pretend to be a Yogi but actually far from being on the path to Knowledge. Superior person is the one person with the senses under control of the mind and engaged in action full of devotion, without desire and attachment to to ego or consequences of action.
Action as duty is better than inaction. A man cannot even maintain his physical body without action.
Work done as a sacrifice for Visnu has to be performed, otherwise work binds one to this material world. Therefore, O son of Kunti, perform your prescribed duties for His satisfaction, and in that way you will always remain unattached and free from bondage.
Verses 3.10 - 3.15 The general law of happiness in the creation is based on mutual sacrifice because it is through sacrifice the system sustains the creatures. Each draws sustenance from the system and has to contribute to the sustenance of the system. One lives / enjoys by consuming / using things in the Nature. This involves sacrifice of other things in nature. Similarly, the one who enjoys something from the Nature for one’s sustenance in turn may need to be sacrificed for the sustenance of another being. Each person who draws from the natural pool would automatically be required to contribute to the natural process. Those who think of living on the sacrifice of others without himself/herself sacrificing for the sustenance of life of others are conceptually thieves. Those who eat food after offering the same for sacrifice remind themselves of this general law of sustenance: those who prepare food merely for personal sense enjoyment and do not wish to reciprocate fail to harmonize their living with the general law of sustenance of creation.
All living bodies subsist on food grains produced due to the operation of natural forces. The natural forces work on the principle of sacrifice through transformation. And such transformation is the result of actions performed by various living and non-living forces in accordance with the properties imparted (duties assigned) to them. This is the reason why all actions prescribed in the Vedas are oriented to sacrifice.

Verses 3.17 -3.28 One who taking pleasure in, illuminated in and rejoices in the Self as also fully satisfied with Self realization has sacrificed all desires and ego. He/she does not need to perform the action of symbolic / ritual sacrifice. A self-realized person has no purpose to fulfill through actions and yet has no purpose to serve by remaining inactive. Such a person may not depend on the sacrifice by any other living/ non-living being. Thus, performance of actions without being attached to the consequences of actions is consistent with the pursuit of knowledge of the Self. A self realized person merely acts to become a role model for others. Even God is not in the need of anything, nor does God need to obtain anything--and God is continuously in action. If God did not engage in work, everything in creation would follow suit and the Universe would come to an end. Had God ceased to work, God would have caused chaos and the entire creation would be ruined.
The ignorant perform their duties with attachment to results. But the learned act without attachment and set examples for people to perform actions. The wise and learned do not disrupt the minds of the ignorant perform actions with attachment to results of actions. They set examples to discourage common people from remaining inactive and encourage people to perform action in the spirit of devotion to God. The bewildered person thinks that he acts as per his/ her own decision though actually he performs whatever the three Gunas of material nature drives him/ her to think and do.

Verses 3.29 – 3.43
A person with knowledge of the Absolute Truth does not use the senses to seek sensual enjoyment and pleasure, while the ignorant fully engage the senses for material activities with attachment to fulfill sensual desire. However, The wise do not unsettle the ignorant even if the latter perform actions to fulfill material pleasure. The task is to act without ego and lethargy and to surrender all actions and their fruits to God, with desire-free mind fixed on God. Performance of actions faithfully in accordance with these requirements frees a person from the bondage of actions driven by the illusive pursuit of transient sensual pleasure. But driven by envy and desire, persons do not perform in the manner required and remain ignorant and slave to the senses..
All including the one with knowledge act according to his own nature imparted by the Gunas: attraction and repulsion for sense objects are felt by embodied beings. But those who fall prey to desire flamed by senses and sense objects fail to progress on the path of self-realization.
Performing actions without desire but in accordance with one’s own nature, even if not performed with perfection, is better than trying to perform actions that are consistent with another person’s nature: rather trying to act against one’s nature may be dangerous.
It is lust born of contact with the material modes of passion and later transformed into wrath that forces a person to act under the control of the senses. Fire may be covered by smoke, a mirror covered by dust and the embryo covered by the womb. Similarly, different living beings are covered by different degrees of lust. The eternal enemy of insatiable lust corrupts the mind and the intelligence by creating a veil over the pure consciousness of a person.: because of this veil the intellect, the mind and the senses cannot attune themselves to the Knowledge in the pure consciousness. This great force of lust can be overcome and eliminated only by systematic and hard practice of regulating the senses. Once this lust is completely vanquished, the true knowledge becomes clearly visible to and attracts the intellect, the mind and the senses.
The working senses are superior to dull matter; mind is on a higher plane than the senses; intellect is at still higher level than the mind; and the pure consciousness/ knowledge is even higher than the level of the intellect. The knowledge available at the highest pure consciousness Self can be accessed only as a person moves/ transcends from the control over the lower level self to the highest level Self. When the highest level of Self is in control of the intellect, the mind and the senses, the person is freed from all burdens and bondage because there is no lust left anymore to the intellect, the mind and the senses remain in ignorance and attached to the goal of sensual pleasure.