Do the work fully, then hand the result over.

कर्म पूरा करो, फल भगवान को दे दो।

Samarpan, and the most misread teaching of the lot. Surrender does not mean doing less. It means finishing the work properly and then releasing your claim on how it turns out.

Premanand Ji Maharaj during satsang at Shri Hit Radha Keli Kunj, Vrindavan
What it means

Surrender does not mean doing less

This is the teaching he says is misread more often than any other. Devotees hear hand the result over and take it as permission to withdraw effort, to leave a job half finished and call the remainder God's department. He rejects that reading firmly. Surrender begins after the work is complete, not instead of it.

The sequence he gives is deliberate and the order is the whole point. Do the work fully. Then release your claim on the outcome. A person who does half the work and surrenders the rest has not surrendered anything; they have simply stopped, and given the stopping a devotional name. He is fairly blunt about this when it comes up in satsang.

What is actually being handed over is narrower than people assume. Not the effort, not the responsibility, not the consequences. Only the demand that it turn out a particular way. You prepared for the exam properly, you built the case properly, you looked after the patient properly, and then the part that was never yours, how it lands, is let go of rather than clutched.

In practice

Living with this saying

The benefit he points to is immediate and worldly rather than distant. Most of the exhaustion around any large undertaking comes not from the work but from carrying the outcome through every hour of it, rehearsing the failure, negotiating with a future that has not arrived. Set that down and the same amount of work costs less, and is usually done better, because attention is on the task rather than on the scoreboard.

He also blocks the obvious escape route. Handing over the result is not a technique for getting the result. Devotees sometimes surrender loudly in the hope that the surrender itself will tilt things their way, which is bargaining wearing a different coat. If the release is conditional on things working out, nothing has been released.

What it asks of you is a test you can run this week. Take one thing you are anxious about, establish honestly whether your part of it is actually finished, and finish it if it is not. Once it genuinely is, stop revisiting the outcome each time the mind returns to it, and put the name there instead. The work will not suffer. The weight of it will.

A saying, not a certified transcription: a short statement of a position he has taken consistently in public satsang.

About this saying

Questions about this saying

What does Premanand Ji Maharaj mean by “Do the work fully, then hand the result over”?

Samarpan, and the most misread teaching of the lot. Surrender does not mean doing less. It means finishing the work properly and then releasing your claim on how it turns out.

What is this saying in Hindi?

कर्म पूरा करो, फल भगवान को दे दो।

Is this an exact quotation?

No. It is a short statement of a position he has taken consistently in public satsang, not a certified transcription of one recording.

Where can I hear him speak about this?

His satsang is recorded and published on the official channels. This site is an independent devotee site and is not connected to the ashram.

Keep reading

All 30 sayings

The Radha naam is itself the greatest mantra. God is not a judge waiting to punish you. The mind is not your enemy, it is only untrained. Do not give anger a second thought. Do the work fully, then hand the result over. Suffering is the distance between what happened and what you demanded. Service done to be seen is a transaction. You do not need to leave home. Do your sadhana inside it. Keep taking the name even when you feel nothing. Difficulty does not mean you have taken a wrong turn. The name can be taken anywhere. Nobody's permission is needed. Take only as much of the name as you can keep up daily. When you are ill, go to the doctor. Take the name alongside. What changes first is your conduct, not your feelings. Do not hand the mind the problem. Hand it the name. Do not weigh your life against one you only see from outside. The one who wronged you moved on. You are the one still paying rent. Children copy what is done and ignore what is said. Devotion that creates conflict at home has misunderstood itself. If it can be bought, it has nothing to do with me. Begin with the name. Study will follow the practice. Keep the practice running through the doubt. Certainty arrives behind it. With the name in your mouth you are never in an empty room. Put the mala where the phone used to be. Earn honestly, spend without cruelty, give quietly. The relationship does not end when the body does. Fix the routine before you try to fix the mind. Do your own part fully and stop keeping accounts of the other person's. The gap between what happens and how you react is the first real result. One instruction heard two hundred times gets acted on. Two hundred heard once do not.