Renunciation

Last weekend, I was talking with a friend. In our conversation I came across a very interesting word called renunciation. I came across lot of people talking about it. People give different meaning to it and interpret in different ways. Some say that it means: giving up the worldly duties and leading a holy spiritual life, some people say it is removing of all worldly desires and all lust and cravings. People also interpret that renunciation means giving up everything and do nothing.

I believe that renunciation means giving up of thoughts and actions that lead to fruits of action. Whenever we perform any kind of action we should do the action without judging what benefit/rewards we will gain from it. Hence, should be done in a state where you are not attached with result. It can lead you to a desire free state. This is a sattvic quality. Satavik is a Sanskrit word which means pure.

Some people often interpret action is related with desire. So they assume that if there are no desires that mean that they will not perform any action. That is not true, you perform action no matter if you have a desire or not. Action is anything from taking a breath in or releasing a breath or thinking about someone or something, or performing a physical action.

Desire free state can be easily misinterpret as laziness. Laziness is action by itself. This action is desire state for the body, where body does not perform any action but we still breathe and think etc, which is action. Laziness is one of the bad qualities a person can develop; this quality can also be referred as tamas. Tamas is a Sanskrit word which means darkness.

Only state where you do not perform any action is higher state of meditation where you do not breathe and sit in a place without any thoughts.