Acting in the world according to this wisdom, one can aspire to live a hundred years and action shall not restrict your freedom.

Just as the message of the first mantra of this great little work addresses the yogī who has undertaken the path of wisdom, this second verse addresses the karma—yogī or the individual that follows the path of action. The Upaniṣad presents us with a vision in which these two complement each other.

"Acting in the world according to this wisdom"... We do not know something just because we have it stored in our mind our due or due to its being part of our memory. In religion, we only know that according to which we live and act. Only while acting and living according to this wisdom, we really know it. If the only requirement to be religious in our religion was knowledge of the scriptures, Max Muller had been an Ācārya. Nobody possesses real knowledge of the holy Vedic scriptures without displaying ahiṁsa or "non—violence", satya or "truthfulness", and perfect brahmācārya or "celibacy", the true wisdom and evolution is expressed by our behavior...

Our comprehension is displayed in our conduct...

Our actions are the most faithful reflection of our development...

Sanātana—dharma is not about information, but it is a complete existential transformation.

To act in the world according to this wisdom means to live "simple but elevated life"...

In Bhagavad—gītā (3.16) we read:

evaṁ pravartitaṁ cakraṁ

nānuvartayatīha yaḥ

aghāyur indriyārāmo

moghaṁ pārtha sa jīvati

"He who is uncooperative in maintaining the cycle of Vedic sacrifices, and who only enjoys the sensory pleasures, such a person only lives in vain."

Because a life of eating, sleeping, mating and protecting oneself, a life merely dedicated to the sense enjoyment, is in vain...

We know that someone is alive because he breathes, his heart beats, he moves, speaks, and so forth. However, life is much more than breathing and moving, life is much more than the heartbeats...

To live irreligiously, without spirituality, is to live in vain...

"One can aspire to live a hundred years", refers to the aspiration to live the most possible, not in quantity, not only it terms of length, not only in hours, days, months and years, but to live profoundly, totally, intensely... to really live...

Always remember that this life can be lived in such a way that you may live a thousand years, while actually it will only have the value of one day... But you can also live so totally, so intensely, that one day may leave in your heart and in your soul, such wisdom that remains after having lived for a hundred years.

I don't think there's anyone who has never found in his life, not even once, these fragile pearls of time... I refer to those small moments so lively in which we find the value of all we do, of our entire existence and life... a look, a silence, a smile, a hug, a simple — "thank you" — ... moments scented with infinity, and flavored with eternity... in order to remind us that life is not a question of clocks, age, calendars, gray hair or time, but of intensity...

Growing old is not necessarily a symptom of maturity, aging is a superficial process that appertains the body, like getting ill or dying. To mature is to have the courage to make use of our faculty of choice, which scares us because it obliges us to take responsibility...

Because the oaks grow upwards, but they mature in the root. We grow old and die in the external, but we mature in the depths of our interior. If we neglect our roots, our interior, if we only grow, the slightest breeze will cast us down, and the higher we reach, the more danger we incur. The greatest danger of this immature humanity that "advances" and "progresses", that grows higher and reaches unimaginable heights in science and technology, is its complete neglect of spiritual evolution and development, on the level of consciousness...

"... and action shall not restrict your freedom". Any action returns to its origin, in the form of reaction. This phenomenon occurs in the emotional, mental and physical levels. Egoistic actions bind and enslave us, because whether they are positive or negative, after all, the results of our actions constitute our bondage to saṁsāra, the wheel of successive births and deaths...

In the beginning of the third chapter of the Bhagavad—gītā, Arjuna asks Lord Kṛṣṇa:

arjuna uvāca

jyāyasī cet karmaṇas te

matā buddhir janārdana

tat kiṁ karmaṇi ghore māṁ

niyojayasi keśava

"Arjuna said: O Janārdana! O Keśava! If you think intelligence is better than fruitive work, why do you wish to have me fight in this terrible war?"

What Arjuna asks here is tremendously meaningful. Arjuna says: if you say knowledge and intelligence are much more elevated than action, then it would be much more appropriate for me to accept the renounced order of life and leave for the woods or a cave, or maybe I will just sit beside the road and stop fighting. In other words, I will stop doing. If action, in the form of reactions, restricts my freedom, than perhaps it would be better to stop acting... However, in chapter 3, verse 5 of the same sacred text, we read the following:

na hi kaścit kṣaṇam api

jātu tiṣṭhaty akarma—kṛt

kāryate hy avaśaḥ karma

sarvaḥ prakṛti—jair guṇaiḥ

"Everyone is bound to act helplessly, according to the qualities they have acquired from the modes of the material nature. Therefore, no one can stop acting, not even for a moment".

In other words, the human being is condemned to act, it is impossible to stop, even for a one moment. The only way to act so that the action and its consequent result will not restrict our freedom is to act without being the source of action, or that the action will not be discharged while only looking for egoistic results. In this way, our action will become what we call meditative action...

Only by acting meditatively, only by acting in watchfulness, can you free yourself from the action and its effects... because when the actions are discharged selfishly, seeing ourselves as a part, these actions create hopes and expectations. Acting and expecting certain kinds of results forms a great obstacle for the meditative state, because the search for results fixes our direction entirely in the future, it does not allow us to be in the present...

The exploitative attitude originates in the ego, or the sensation of being "the doer" of what actually happens... when acting without an exploitative attitude, without only trying to receive but rather to give and serve, when only acting in wisely, the action and its result do not enslave us. Only while acting in the world according to this wisdom, the action does not restrict our liberty...

This mantra presents a synthesis between wisdom and action...