Arjuna asks:

sannyāsaṁ karmaṇāṁ kṛṣṇa punar yogaṁ ca saṁsasi (5.1)?’

‘Kṛṣṇa! Now, will you please tell me surely, which of the two: karma, action or Sannyāsa, renunciation is more beneficial ?

Again and again, all of us ask ourselves this question. The mind is in dilemma! The mind asks for a single instruction! Our mind will be alive as long as we are caught between any two extremes. The moment we come to any single conclusion we will be liberated. We will be ignorant as long as we are moving from one extreme to the other. Don’t say ‘Ignorance is bliss.’ If ignorance is bliss why are so many people suffering on this planet?

Ignorance is not bliss. Innocence is bliss.

Innocence means we will not carry a scale with which we are continuously measuring our life. Ignorance means we will have a scale but we will not be able to fulfill our life according to that scale.

We have made our mind itself a disease, a dilemma. Dilemma is the disease of incompletions with which man starts his life and ends his life too. Even ‘ends’ is not the right word to use because he is in a dilemma about whether or not to end it! But death comes and his life is just taken away from him. Here, Arjuna is in a dilemma as to which of the two is more beneficial for him. If we look into life as a utility, as some means to a benefit, then we are creating our own hell. If we reduce life to this, we will be in hell.

Listen!

Life has no separate benefit. Life itself is a benefit.

There are people who have achieved all that they wanted in life. But they feel a deep void, a deep incompletion in them. This is what I mean by the term ‘depression of success.’ They feel something is deeply lacking and are unable to comprehend what it could possibly be.

This is because they ran the rat race of life without carrying the space of completion, without stopping to complete with their root patterns of desires, of fear and greed, without any self-inquiry. They ran foolishly because everyone else was running. They never stopped for a minute to question—‘why am I doing what I am doing’, ‘what do I really want’, ‘why do I feel the way I feel’. So, without finding the root patterns that drive them in the rat race, when they stop running or when they can’t run anymore, they fall back into their incompletions.

They suddenly find themselves diseased with their own being. This is what becomes depression or disease. So, if you constantly look for some benefit from life, if you don’t achieve, you will feel life is a failure and if you achieve, you are bound to face the depression of success. Either way it is trouble. Life itself is a benefit. If we constantly try to see which of two things is more beneficial, it means we have a pure business mind. We can’t do business with life. At some point we need to relax from the business mind. I always tell people, ‘For at least half an hour per day, do some enriching which will not get dollars for you—some painting, some writing.’ When you start painting, don’t think of a big gallery with your paintings! Do some creative work without bothering about how to show off your artwork to people. Even before starting to paint, we will think, ‘My friend will come home. I will show him how I developed this concept.’ You will decide how to bore your friend with your plans. Do something enriching just for the sake of enriching, not for any purpose. Enrich just for the sake of enriching. You will see that during that half hour, you will fall into your very being; which is the space of completion!

You can also enrich at some place of worship by cleaning it without expecting anything in return. Engage yourself in any form of selfless enriching activity. Serve food to people. Even while volunteering, we do it so that we can tell others about it and get applauded for it. So now at least for 30 minutes, authentically enrich with responsibility, without the cognition of getting yourself any benefit. No money or name and fame should come to you from that half an hour. If you can just do this, you will start tasting the real power of life. Enriching is the power of living, ātma śakti.

Listen! With enriching, you will achieve the ultimate result of establishing your existence into everything. You establishing your existence into everything is what I call ‘serving.’ In any form of serving or enriching, you expand and become part of it.

As long as you are in your own head, continuously calculating, you will only be bargaining with life, ‘What is more beneficial? What am I going to achieve by this?’ You will see the power of living—a different dimension of your being, if you practice this technique of enriching. I promise you that this enriching will lead you to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the consciousness of completion.

When you stop calculating for getting benefits, you will start tasting the fruit of life. Listen! Enriching is enjoying and sharing the fruit of life! When you enrich others you will come alive. A mango does not achieve its ultimate, if you just eat the fruit and destroy the seed. The fruit realizes itself only when the seed is able to give more fruits.

Life is not and can never be business. Here, again and again, Arjuna is stuck because he thinks that life is business. Of course, Kṛṣṇa is very compassionate. He is the embodiment of kindness! Literally, inch by inch, He brings Arjuna up without giving up on him. He does not lose His patience. He does not say, ‘I told you earlier…’

I can say that Kṛṣṇa uses at least 100 verses to explain this one concept of Karma-Sannyāsa yoga, the paths of responsibility and renunciation. But He does this without losing His patience at any point. Not once does He shout at Arjuna. He is an embodiment of compassion. He comes down to the plane of Arjuna and gradually transforms him by enriching him with the same teachings in different ways.

source: Bhagavadgita Decoded