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Śrī Īśopaniṣad
altogether from the actions and reactions of work. Intelligent men know well that both good and bad works are equally causes of the material miseries of life. They therefore seek to do work which will free them from the reactions of good and bad work. This freedom from good and bad work is ascertained herewith in Śrī Īśopaniṣad.
The instruction of Śrī Īśopaniṣad is better explained in the  Bhagavad-gītā , sometimes called the  Gītopaniṣad , the cream of all the  Upaniṣads . In the  Bhagavad-gītā , the Personality of Godhead says that no one can attain the state of  naiṣkarma  or  akarma  without beginning the prescribed duties mentioned in the Vedic literature. The Vedic literature can regulate the working energy of the human being in such a way that one can gradually realize the authority of the Supreme Being. When one realizes the authority of the Personality of Godhead, it is to be understood that he has attained the stage of positive knowledge. At this purified stage of life, where the modes of Nature—namely goodness, passion and ignorance—cannot act, one is enabled to work on the basis of  naiṣkarma , or work which does not bind one to the cycle of birth and death.
Factually, no one has to do anything more than to render devotional service to the Lord. In the lower stage of life, however, one can not at once adopt the activities of devotional service, nor can one completely stop reactionary work. A conditioned soul is accustomed to working for sense gratification, for his own selfish interest, immediate or extended. An ordinary man wants to work for his own sense enjoyment, and when the principle of sense enjoyment is extended from the individual to include the collective society, nation, or humanity in general, it assumes various attractive names such as altruism, socialism, communism, nationalism, humanitarianism, etc. These isms are certainly very attractive forms of  Karmabandhana , the bondage of one's own work, but the Vedic instruction of Śrī Īśopaniṣad is as follows: if you actually live for any of the above isms, make them God-centered. There is no