Doership - There is no doer

Having talked about the theory of Karma and nullified its existence.  Many would have wondered, is Karma just a cause-effect relationship or is there more to it?

Yes, there is another most vital aspect of Karma, which is the feeling of Doership.  What is doership?  It is the agency or feeling of ownership of doing something. I or mine thought. 

Most of us feel that we are the owners or have agency over our actions and thoughts.  Is that really the case?  Do we really have agency or control over our thoughts or actions?  Have we pondered over this? 

If we had control over things, then why, even after a well-established system of rules and regulations, so many events happen, which at the outset appears as if this could have been avoided or controlled.  I am not referring to any big event; the question here is about the smallest and most trivial actions.  The will to do something or not to do something; is that alone sufficient?  Are we able to accomplish the task with this will alone?

Even to exist as this body-mind being, the first and foremost requirement is the presence of "nature," which is taken for granted almost always. Our simplest of actions, e.g., movement of eyelids, need the complete support of nature.  Basic movements of the body need the support of millions of cells inside our body, on which we have no control.  Though we feel and are one entity; we are a conglomeration of millions and trillions of tiny particles.  And we clearly see that we are intertwined with nature so we constantly need nature to exist as this body in the true sense.  And the most important point to be mentioned here is that we are part of nature and not isolated creatures interacting with nature.  So when we say, I can walk, or talk, we should be uttering these words with a fundamental understanding that this would not have been possible if there was no support from nature.

Many might say okay, agreed, my body needs the support of nature, but my thoughts are my own. 

Let us dive deeper to find if our thoughts are our own.  Most of us would know that we are what our genes and conditioning have been and nothing else. We had no control over choosing our parents to whom we would bear to; even if we had a choice, we would not have been able to change the already existing gene pool that was part of that family.  We had to accept what has been given to us in the way of this body & mind.

The second aspect which influences the mind is the environment that conditions us and forms our thought process.  From the most basic choices to complicated decisions that we make directly depend on these two aspects, our genes and conditioning.  So any thought that would arise in our mind cannot be outside the purview of these aspects.  

Now tell me, are our thoughts ours?  Even science accepts that genes are the only possible thing, which carries an unthinkable amount of information, which no human-made device can match.  So our desires, wants, or thoughts that arise in our mind is not ours; it is coming from this gene pool and conditioning, which is nothing but the universal memory, so to say for now, because this "universal memory" itself is a topic of study in itself.

Now let us put the pieces together; our existence and sustenance are dependent on the physical nature and the non-physical aspects.  Having seen this, how can we claim the doership of anything?  The writer clearly sees that life is just happening in its own accord.  

This analysis was at the most fundamental level. All of us will more or less agree to this; even then, many of us would still feel that we have control over our thoughts and actions.  Let the conditioning and genes may be influencing my thoughts, but my actions are my own.  I have control.  Yes, why not?  Let us examine.

Say, a thought appears in my mind to have a cup of coffee.  Is this my own thought, or have I been conditioned to like coffee hence the thought arose in my mind to have coffee?  Having said that, let us examine if this desire to have coffee will be fulfilled by my will and action alone?

Here, the most crucial part is, the writer is assuming that the reader understands that he or she is not the body or mind and something that is witnessing these objects.

As the witness of thoughts and actions; are these becoming possible by our will, or are they just happening?  Let us suppose that I decided to have coffee. Will this desire be fulfilled?  Obviously, I have to get up and make it myself or go to a shop to fetch it. 

Again an important point to note, the writer is making a humble request to be brutally honest and drop the prejudices of having freewill.  Kindly examine the situation with complete openness.

We have clearly seen that the body can function only when there is complete support of nature.  To further examine the decision to have coffee, let us suppose that there are no issues with the body's functioning, so I get up and go to the kitchen to check out the ingredients to prepare a coffee.  I find everything available, so I do the needful and make and have the coffee. So what's the big deal about it?

Obviously, I had complete control over this situation.  Did I have?  We have been conditioned to stock up things for the future.  So in the past, I was made to take some actions to fulfill this action in future. So precisely, this action in the so-called future is possible only because of the prior actions.  So this action here now is not an individual and isolated decision or action. It is in a continuation of previous thoughts & actions.  Equations have been worked out very well to carry on with the business of life.  

Readers might be thinking, what is the point here?  The writer is just trying to assert a point by only bringing in assumptions.  I totally agree with the reader.  This "doership", the agency of doing something, has been taken very lightly.  The writer's intent is only to turn the attention towards the most basic aspects of our life.  The analysis that we did was for the simplest of thought or desire, this analysis applies to each and every thought, desire and action.  Our thoughts, our actions are not ours.  Everything is happening on its own.  As a witness, I see the body-mind complex working in harmony with nature as per the grand scheme of things.

Individual personalities have no role here.  As a seeker in the path of knowledge, we know and is our daily experience that "me," or "I did" is an afterthought.  Events happen, or rather they are happening irrespective of "I" or "my" thought.

No individual can work in isolation or is working in isolation.  Everything that is happening as one whole event.  The one whole is a random event. But some sub-events appear to have cause & effect relationships, and we seem to have a doership of sub-events. They are just "appearances." In reality, that is not the case.  Existence is one whole Reality happening without any parts or subparts. 

What is the point of this article? If everything is happening on its own, why is the writer making an effort to write?  Please understand writer does not have any say here on what is happening.  This has been happening from time immemorial.  Someone somewhere is given some understanding and provided an opportunity to say or write about these understandings to facilitate a kind of conditioning of the minds.  :-)  

How else can the conditioning happen?  With this understanding, no one gets the power to manipulate things or situations.  It makes functioning in this world easier because this understanding only culminates in humility and surrender.  With this surrender, one is off of the responsibility, which was never theirs from the beginning.  We start seeing the story as it is.  

This understanding has been dawned eons ago, and many have been talking about it for centuries. Still, Existence goes on the way it wills, so to say.  I am a tiny part of this Existence who is just confirming that, yes, this understanding is my own now and not just a conditioning or a blind belief.  Examine everything and try to make your own, don't go by blind beliefs or only because it has been taught to us in the educational institutions or told by some authority.

I want to conclude here, by quoting a very famous dialogue from a popular Hindi feature film, "Anand.

"बाबमुशाई, ज़िन्दगी और मौत ऊपर वाले के हाथ है  ... उसे न तो आप बदल सकते है न मैं  ...

हम सब तो रंगमंच की कठपुतलियां है जिनकी डोर ऊपर वाले  की उँगलियों में  बंधी  है".  

:-)