Four essential Goals/Aims - Outcomes
a.k.a. "act, renouncing the fruits of one's actions, but act" -- the intentions -- and thus "Outcomes" and not "goals" per se.
Remember, Gita is a book of choices and not commandments, that speaks to a diverse population.
contrast relative to own essential goals and aims in life
within the
Path of Desire, not a denial, but all in moderation
Gita 6:16-17
1.
kama - aesthetics and pleasure, e.g., Kamadeva, Kama
Sutra 2.
artha - wealth, fame and power, e.g., Ganesha
within the
Path of Renunciation, why not rest with these first two goals?
Gita: 2:62-64, 3:34, 37-38 - What are
you renouncing?
3.
dharma - religious/spiriual and civic/social responsibilities, and
virtuous duty,
e.g., Hanuman,
4.
moksha - "spiritual liberation"
Liberations,
from continual
cycles of re-birth - samsara - and
freed from earthly desire, attachments, sorrow, plain, suffering,
never re-born;
and Liberation,
to the realization of
joy, bliss, the hidden eternal Infinite
Self within our own being, the Atman, and the
Infinite Self throughout all reality, the Brahman.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote: "Man is not at peace
with himself till he has become like God. The endeavor
to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth
having. And this is self-realization."
We are talking "liberation," and not
"salvation." Liberation not via membership in a
particular community or submission to a particular spiritual
figure.
A
drop
of water? One in a
hundred million attain.
Gita 2:55-72
What's in it for
me? What's
the carrot? you
might ask?
can you reach moksha if you are searching for
"rewards"?
can you reach moksha shackled to your "individuality"
can you reach moksha without acknowledging that
Brahman/Atman already exist within you?
can you reach moksha without holding that the ultimate
realization is the Infinite? As a drop of rain in the
great ocean? Your essence reunited with the truth of your
being?