Knowledge Versus Karma
Shlokas 9 to 16
Lakshmana had asked for the direct road to liberation. Here Rama fixes on a single point, that karma binds and knowledge frees, and at this very turn Vedanta breaks from Purva-Mimamsa.
Rama first points to the root that the whole bondage stands on. Ignorance is the source of it all, and every injunction of the shastra aims at erasing that ignorance. In that erasing the skill belongs to knowledge, and action holds none, because action is itself born from ignorance and sets itself against it. Rama says that if ignorance is not erased and attachment is not thinned, that same action turns faulty, and out of it the same round of birth and death returns, unchecked. This is why the wise should weigh knowledge alone.
विद्यैव तन्नाशविधौ पटीयसी न कर्म तज्जं सविरोधमीरितम् ॥9॥
ततः पुनः संसृतिरप्यवारिता तस्माद्बुधो ज्ञानविचारवान्भवेत् ॥10॥
Now Rama sets out the objection that rises from the side of Purva-Mimamsa. Someone says the Veda has commanded action as well: just as it named knowledge a means to the human goal, so too it fixed a duty for the living being, and that action comes in as knowledge’s helper. The Shruti has called even the neglect of action a fault, so the seeker of liberation should always perform this action. But Rama answers that knowledge is independent, accomplishing its own settled work by itself, needing nothing from anyone, not even in thought.
कर्तव्यता प्राणभृतः प्रचोदिता विद्यासहायत्वमुपैति सा पुनः ॥11॥
ननु स्वतन्त्रा ध्रुवकार्यकारिणी विद्य न किञ्चिन्मनसाप्यपेक्षते ॥12॥
Here Rama deepens the opponent’s argument, then cuts it down. Just as a yajna, a true act in itself, still calls for several other factors, so too someone says that knowledge gives liberation only when it joins with the works that ritual injunction has brought to light. But Rama says those who speak this way are merely debaters, and their claim is unreal, because it collides with plain experience. Action grows out of pride in the body, and knowledge is proven only when that ego dissolves. How could the two run together?
तथैव विद्या विधितः प्रकाशितैर्विशिष्यते कर्मभिरेव मुक्तये ॥13॥
देहाभिमानादभिवर्धते क्रिया विद्या गताहङ्कृतितः प्रसिध्द्यति ॥14॥
At the end Rama gives the conclusion the whole part rests on. The movement of the self that is lit by the light of pure knowing is called the final movement, the last rung of all. Action rises with all its factors, and knowledge wipes out those very factors, every one. So the discerning person should give up work entirely, because knowledge stands opposed and there can be no combining of action and knowledge. Let such a seeker stay always intent on the search for the atman, past the reach of every movement of the senses.
उदेति कर्माखिलकारकादिभिर्निहन्ति विद्याखिलकारकादिकम् ॥15॥
आत्मानुसन्धानपरायणः सदा निवृत्तसर्वेन्द्रियवृत्तिगोचरः ॥16॥