Give up the Fruits of your Actions

Another way of saying this is, give up the fruits of your actions. Perform your duty with a sense of complete detachment, realizing the defects in the objects. Once you understand the underlying laws that govern the world and recognize the defects that are inherent in both the objects of the world and the relationships you have in the world, you will quickly be able to overcome the attachments you have towards them.

Before you were born, who was the parent and who was the child? Before marriage, who was the husband and who was the wife? Only after birth was there a parent and a child. Before birth there was no such relationship and after death there will be no such relationship. It is only during the short transitional period in-between that the feeling of possessiveness and attachment arises. This is all due to defects in your vision and defects in your approach. It comes from a narrow-minded, short-sighted attitude. For all your sorrows, it is your feelings and attitudes alone that are responsible. Once you recognize the defects in objects and relationships you will have no desire to possess them.

Try to understand the principle of detachment. You must reach a state in which you do not have any kind of attachment and bondage even during the dream and deep sleep states. If you encourage a sense of attachment during the waking state, it will also be there in a subtle form during the dream state and the deep-sleep state. The dream state may be compared to a reflection in the mirror. Whatever you experience in the waking state will impress itself into the dream state, and will be seen as a reflection there. Therefore, the waking and dream states are something like the object and its image. If in the waking state you take the right path, recognizing truth and conducting yourself in the light of this truth, then you will be treading the right path even in the dream state. To succeed you have to recognize the defects of the sense objects and overcome them by giving up your attachment to them.