This is the second part of karma yoga. After actions have first been dedicated as a gift (also prasāda) to īśvara with an attitude and intention that is in line with dharma (īśvara’s impeccable laws of existence), the fruits of action are now received with an open attitude. It is logical that īśvara cannot give everyone what he or she wants, and therefore there are also lesser results. Being grateful for what happens implies a certain wisdom, because it is understood that everything happens according to consistent, neutral laws, and one can also be confronted with ‘other people’s’ karma. Collective karma of humanity. Ultimately, the world or cosmic happening, or the manifestation, is all īśvara’s happening (being all knowledge, all power), including īśvara as the giver of results for jīvas (karma phala dātā). In this case, the recognition of living in a divine field is the gift.
Because many people, some in extremis, feel limited, unsafe, inferior, there is a drive to strive in a human life, with all the consequences for profit-seeking and aggression that entails. Even if people seem successful in the world, all these people will experience stress and intensification of their deeper drives as a result of their actions, with all the consequences for the world that entails.
The invitation here is to be grateful. But the mindset ‘īśvara prasāda buddhi’ is eminently intended as a tool to get out of the merry-go-round of action and result of action. For this, it must first be known that every action will yield a suitable result. Someone who is always grateful, first of all, always has a calm, reasonably contented mind. This person can better ‘read’ and interpret the results of his actions and pick them up as a learning moment.
There are four (catur) types (vidha) of outcomes, fruits or results (phala) or effects or consequences (kārya) of action (karma), the caturvidhaṁ karma phalāni or kāryāni:
1. adhikaṁ phalam – more than expected
2. yathocitaṁ phalam – exactly as expected.
3. hīnaṁ phalam – less than expected.
4. viparītaṁ phalam – completely reversed result.
The measure of whether good action has been taken is generally the degree of peace and happiness in the mind. If I get irritated or become gloomy or dissatisfied with the results that present themselves to me in life, then the remedy is to ask myself whether I am thinking healthily, and first of all be grateful for the gift (prasāda) of a human life and then also the gift that I have come to a teaching like this, which is one big helping hand to happiness and freedom.
Lesser results (of type three and four) are more difficult to accept. But it is the art of life to interpret and accept these as gifts, because they invite growth as a person. Such an attitude is certainly not easy, but for those who recognize how this works, it will be a means to (emotional) growth and happiness.
An attitude of īśvara prasāda buddhi is humbling. The goal is that it is so humbling that the entire personality is seen as an instrument in God’s hands, yes as God himself, because God is nothing but the dancer of the cosmos and the dance. An individual is just a divine move, a divine dance step. The goal is to come to live as a person in a devotional love game. Many modern people miss the jeu of life in this. Even if someone knows himself as pure brahman, a devotional attitude of the person is still a bliss. James Swartz told that when someone asked Svāmī Abhedānanda (a paragon of enlightenment): ‘Swamiji, do you want to come back as a human being?’, he replied: ‘Absolutely I want to, so that I can continue to praise the Lord’. This is seeing the ‘gift of life’ of being a (devotional) human being at its peak: Having a body and mind to reflect on reality and to love.
The main gift (māha prasāda) of īśvara is therefore ultimately to successfully complete this dynamic, to return the personality (the three bodies or the five kośāḥ, or the body-mind-sensual complex, the kārya karaṇa saṅghāta, it does not matter what we call it) to the apparent instance where it belongs, īśvara as saguṇa brahma.
It is also seen that īśvara arpaṇa buddhi and īśvara prasāda buddhi complete one wholesome attitude. This starts with upāsana, meditation in which everything is seen as īśvara, then training an attitude of arpaṇa, entrusting one’s body, limbs and experience to the whole, which includes acceptance as a gift of all results and events. Apparently there is wrongdoing and suffering in the world. Wisdom is also seeing that this is due to the complex play of karmic results back and forth, in which the actors in the game are also each other’s results. Just as with results that arise from actions in previous lives of an individual, there is much unseen (adṛṣṭa phalam) in world events and human interaction. This too may be accepted as a gift, prasāda.
Prasāda means in the first instance ‘clarity or calmness’. A clear and calm intellect can read the world and itself well, and help further, by seeing neutrally ‘how things are’.
Knowledge of īśvara is needed for this. Then one is fully receptive to īśvara kṛpā or anugraha (grace). This is the knowledge that removes ignorance, so that one sees oneself as nirguṇa brahma, like īśvara (one’s own sense of reality, svarūpa).
The difficulty in mokṣa is the following apparent paradox: To renounce precisely the entity that intensely yearns for freedom. Karma and upāsana yoga help enormously to come into the endless relaxation that is necessary for this.