Krishna’s thesis in the entire Gita is that a mere running away from life and its duties is not renunciation. The actionless state is reached when we do not identify ourselves with the three instruments of false interpretation of Truth—the body, the mind, and the intellect. To regain our life in pure Consciousness is the Supreme state.
      When we forget our spiritual dignity, the misconception of the ego arises; we lose our real individuality and come to believe that we are merely the limited ego. Such self-forgetfulness can be observed in any drunken reveler. He forgets his individual personality and status in life and assumes a false identity and continues to be in it as long as he is in a state of intoxication. In his false sense of himself, the drunken fool acts…
      The ego arises when we are ignorant and forgetful of our spiritual nature. When this ignorance is ended, there is the experience of infinite bliss of the all-full Consciousness. Naturally there is no want felt, and therefore no desire can arise. Where desires are absent, the thought-breedings end. When thoughts are dried up, actions—the parade of thoughts marching out through the archway of the body—are no more. This state is called “actionless.”
—Swami Chinmayananda

      No undertaking is a new act that has an individual beginning or end. All actions in the world are in an eternal pattern of the total world movements. If correctly analyzed, we see that our undertakings are controlled, regulated, governed and ordered by the available world of things and situations. Apart from the all, no individual action is undertaken or can be fulfilled by anyone.
     We should be conscious of this fact and work in the world as an independent agent in the undertaking. The inaugurator is the Lord. He inaugurated this cycle of creation and set it in motion and we should recognize that all our undertakings are mere links in the great chain of action coming from the immemorial past into the immediate present and flowing into the infinite future.
—Swami Chinmayananda

      Grace is only to be found by effort, although it is here and now.
—Swami Chinmayananda

      We are all working to get out of the dream of the world of work. Man's experience in the world is to enable him to get out of its whirlpool.
—Swami Vivekananda

      If you can invariably take the pose of a giver, whereby everything given by you is a free offering to the world without any thought of return, then will your work bring you no attachment. Attachment comes only where we expect a return.
—Swami Vivekananda

      If one is so interested in this play, one will always be in the playground.
—Sri Karunamayi

      Work is inevitable. It must be so. But we should work to the highest purpose...Work incessantly, but give up all attachment to work. Do not identify yourself with anything. Hold your mind free. All that you see, the pains and miseries, are but the necessary conditions of this world. Poverty and wealth and happiness are but momentary. They do not belong to our real naure at all.
—Swami Vivekananda

      To be free in the world you must be free of the world. Otherwise your past decides for you and your future. Between what had happened and what must happen you are caught. Call it destiny or karma but never freedom. First return to your true being and then act from the heart of love.
—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

      The only duty of a human being is to know one's true self. To know the true self is realization of God.
—Anandamayee Ma