The distinguishing feature of karma yoga is that even though you may offer the fruits of your work to the benefit of others, you honestly do not have any expectations whatsoever that you will gain anything from that offering. In this way work itself is important to you, and eventually the work becomes art. In the yogic sense of the word, art is more than creating a pretty design, an accurate replica of something in life, or a fine representation of some aspect of religion. Instead it is a connection through the heart to the very essence of one’s being—a connection to the truth within everyone’s being. In this light, the quintessence of the path of karma yoga is the understanding that yoga is the art of work. Such non-self-conscious art is naturally beneficial to others.
As we undertake any task, begin any work, we find ourselves embarking on a process that can eventually lead us to insight and to truth, even though in the beginning we may be a little bit confused by a situation that seems to be presenting many different ideas and options for action. This is the same confusion Arjuna experienced when faced with the dilemma of which action to take, and it happens any time we are presented with multiple choices between which we must choose in order to act. But because in order to work we are obliged to take some action, we gradually begin to gain knowledge about the situation and the impact of our work, which makes us better at the work when we return to it the next time. If we stick with the essence of the work itself, rather than focusing on the fruits of our actions, we eventually find ourselves in the presence of truth. This is how karma yoga works—we simply begin by taking conscious action, working with great care, then naturally the quality of our work is integrated into the context of the situation and the work is therefore excellent. Because we work with no expectations and no attachment to the payback, the outcome in terms of what we are going to get out of the work, we can then work with deep concentration, an open mind, and an open heart. This is actually how people become incredibly efficient at their work and extraordinarily gifted in the art or their actions. If you have ever studied a musical instrument you may have experienced this process. Until the music is so very smooth and seamless, until you can play as if there is nobody performing, but in a manner that the music simply flows on its own, then there is tension in your body and distraction in your mind. When learning an instrument you eventually find yourself at a point where you have failed so many times that you have finally given up any attachment to the by-product of your performance, and it is only then that you can melt into the music and finally start playing the instrument simply for the sake of playing it. This is the underlying feeling inspired through karma yoga. There is always a great aesthetic pleasure that results from this kind of work, and it is through the aesthetic experience that we then discover our deep connection with other beings. Karma yoga may appear as our desire to help others or to serve others, whether they are immediate family or friends, or whether our actions come as a desire to serve society as a whole. When we are doing work that really needs to be done in such a way that the work itself becomes joyous, then we are doing karma yoga. You must be willing to really get your hands in there and engage with whatever form the work takes when doing karma yoga. Even if it is the most simple or menial type of work, the work itself becomes an essential path, and in this way all other types of yoga become supported by the activity of karma yoga. In fact no matter what type of yoga practice you take up, you will find that karma yoga is an operating and crucial element within it. Through karma yoga the work itself becomes an experience of aesthetics and beauty—the experience of art that inspires a depth of appreciation for the grounding and visceral nature of the aesthetic experience. Because it is so fulfilling to work in this way, when your aesthetic sense is gratified, it is quite simple to develop a healthy detachment from the fruits of your actions. In fact, this is the same detachment that Kṛṣṇa was hoping Arjuna would experience as he gained the insight that his ability to work with detachment rested in an understanding of Sāṁkhya philosophy.
The story of the Bhagavad Gītā demonstrates the necessity of certain types of work (in Arjuna’s case, the necessity of participating in the battle), and it also demonstrates that through an understanding of work as an aesthetic experience, a significant concept of dharma becomes clear. One of the many important meanings of dharma is as your own true, deep individual nature. Looking at dharma in this light, we see that there are different types of things that you must do in order to fulfill yourself. These things are closely associated with the real necessities that are part of the circumstances of your own life, and they, too, are considered to be your dharma. For some of us, for example, it turns out that our dharma is the necessity of getting a job and learning to deal with financial matters. For others it is the necessity that we create art or that we compose music. Or sometimes our dharma might be that we give up painting or composing in order to care for our ailing parents. All of these different and unique sets of circumstances are our individual dharmas, which define the genuine work that is laid out for us. It is vital to realize that we need to do what we truly have to do for ourselves in relation to our unique historical circumstances. Who and where we are in relation to the rest of our lives—our family, our past choices and actions, the state of the world—all of these things help to determine the dharmic path we pursue. It is also very important to remember, as is pointed out in the Bhagavad Gītā, that it is better to do your own dharma poorly than to do someone else’s dharma well. In other words, it is essential that each of us follow our own individual dharma. Rather than pursuing your own conveniently imagined dharma, oblivious of its effect on others, and rather than taking on the dharma of someone else and in so doing avoiding the work and relationships that really connect deep into your own heart and gut, your actual dharma must be in tune with the truth within you in the context of your actual circumstances.
Often when we engage in an activity or some work, we discover that there is some small imperfection to our image of what that work is. We develop a great idea, a great plan, but when we actually execute it we discover the occasional rough edge, or we run into some by-product that we had not anticipated. Kṛṣṇa explains to Arjuna that just like fire always has smoke, so too whatever you do always has a residue of imperfection. Eventually either you have to offer the residue itself into the fire of your own consciousness, or you have to go back and create another little project to deal with that residue. This is why people who are perfectionists seem always to be working: they are constantly going back to tidy up the edges as nothing is ever explained perfectly nor is anything ever done correctly. This process of dealing with the residue can go on to infinity and is true even within our yoga practice. If you are a relentless perfectionist you will occasionally, almost by accident, come to the point of being absorbed by the pure art of the practice; we find these points when, perhaps unintentionally, we have offered our practice—our work and its residue—back into its source. It is when you give up perfectionism that you are able to appreciate a sense of fullness or completeness in a yoga pose. If this intention of offering the practice back into its source is not part of the practice, then the yoga practice itself can become the best system of self-torture ever devised; perfectionists love to grab it and misuse it that way. Remember dharma is specific to the individual; if you are not a perfectionist, then giving up perfectionism is not the best path.
A superficial inadequacy of the karma yoga system, if taken alone, is that we easily fall into the mind-set that yoga is something mechanical, that if we simply perform certain specific actions, we will get certain specific results. There is actually a whole school of Indian philosophy, called Karma Mīmāṁsā, which is a school composed of precise ritual. The underlying philosophy of this school is that if you simply perform a series of extraordinarily detailed rituals without mistake, then you are certain to get the benefit of the ritual—which is essentially that you go straight to heaven. The theory within this school is that the gods will grant you certain rewards if you mechanically foll
ow specific rules. Of course the fallacy in this thinking is that it reduces the universe to merely a machine, and in so doing it reduces the principle of relationship with others to a predetermined mechanical prison. Another inadequacy of karma yoga taken alone is that when work does become art, it does not really provide the language or the refinement of methodology to deal with the deep aesthetic experience that is stimulated through the execution of the work. So in the story of the Bhagavad Gītā, after teaching Arjuna about karma yoga, Kṛṣṇa introduces the practice of sacrifice called yajña.
All action and all work are ultimately an investment of energy and time that produce some form of result. To not be attached to that result, to give up the fruit of your actions, is the art of karma. Sacrifice or yajña brings into that act of giving up the intention of offering the results—the whole process—to another. This expands our view of everything we have and all that we do into a greater matrix beyond our own self-centered needs. In the ancient Vedic religion, sacrifices were made to the various gods as a gesture to please and nourish the gods as a means of lubricating the cycles of nature. In turn, the gods would make the rains fall on time, so that the crops would grow; crops could then be harvested and eaten as sacrifice; and many offerings to the gods could be made so that the whole wheel of the good life would continue. Even if you do not believe in a poly- or a pantheistic cosmos, an understanding of this interpenetrating nature of all things can still make sense if you consider the gods to represent the deeper patterns and collections of ideas in the buddhi. Through yoga sacrifice can be experienced viscerally, by observing how the actions you offer as sacrifice have a profound effect on your own deep mind, emotions, and the current functioning of the ego, the ahaṁkāra. What we could call our inner gods are functions of the ideas we have about who we and others are. Appearing as forces and impulses beyond our control, they are how we give value to things, how we rate the results of actions, and how we image our intentions and plans. In the Vedic age the principle ritual of offering to both inner and outer gods was the fire sacrifice, in which various symbolic items were poured or placed into the fire. The vision ultimately revealed by these practices of yajña was that all of the things and processes of our life are interdependent and that they move in cycles of renewal that are kept in motion through the act of sacrifice.
In the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa introduces a refined interpretation of the ancient religious sacrifice. Kṛṣṇa says that he himself, as the ātman (the Self) within the heart of all beings, is the true receiver of sacrifice. Being the ātman of all of the gods too, he has no ulterior motives nor does he desire the fruit of anyone’s actions. He is not bound by work in any way. With this in mind as we ourselves practice the art of work as sacrifice, we can experience a sense of freedom and can become unbound by our own work in the same way. The immense satisfaction arising from this form of practice allows us to understand one of the core mysteries of the Bhagavad Gītā; we can see inaction in action, and action in inaction, the beautiful nondual vision of the world in which our bodies and minds are without a self. To truly understand this paradoxical action-inaction formula, we must peel back the layers through which it unfolds into its background. The first layer, revealed in the context of our understanding of Sāṁkhya, might be understood like this: when we experience either action or movement within the body or the mind, it is prakṛti acting on prakṛti. You (as puruṣa, the true you) are not doing anything. There are many ways of saying this same thing. Action done without attachment, without a sense of selfish interest, produces no karma or further attachment that must be resolved in the future. Such conscious work produces wisdom or jñāna. “Yoga is the art of action,” says Kṛṣṇa. The following well-known verse of the Gītā sums up the mystery of the cycle of nature: “Brahman is the act of offering; Brahman is the oblation, poured by Brahman into the fire of Brahman. Brahman is attained by one who experiences that action and Brahman are one and the same” (IV. 24). Generally, our minds picture Brahman as the quiet substratum of pure, infinite joy, which exists beyond time. Forms, actions, and even vibrations are understood to be different. This is due to the natural way our minds make images and concepts of Brahman in order to be able think about what Brahman might mean. Ultimately, however, forms, actions and vibrations all interconnect without end, so ultimately they are not different from Brahman.
You can see a deep yoga practice as an internalized form of the classic Vedic fire sacrifice if you imagine pure awareness to be the fire. Within the Bhagavad Gītā we find suggestions for ways to actually experience this. For example, we can offer the sense objects, like sounds, smells, or any objectified sensation, into the fires of our senses. We can offer all of our sense actions and the actions of our prāṇa into the fire of pure consciousness. The prāṇa, which controls inhaling, can then be offered into the apāna, which controls exhaling, and we can then turn around and offer the apāna back into the prāṇa. (This, of course, is the basis of prāṇāyāma practice.) In fact, in the story of the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa mentions many, many variations of yogic sacrifice, almost as if to eliminate divisive and sectarian misunderstanding of the practice.
Finally Kṛṣṇa introduces the idea of knowledge as the ultimate sacrifice. Knowledge or jñāna is a product of action and conscious sacrifice. On a simple level consider the act of shooting an arrow from a new bow. The first shot lands short of the target, giving you information, and you adjust your aim. The second shot goes too far left, and you correct for that. Soon you and the bow are calibrated, and the art of archery is now carried in your mind and flesh as jñāna specific to archery, the new bow, and the circumstances at hand. With no action—with no shooting, missing, and correcting—there can be no real, grounded knowledge. Concentrated internal sacrifice, with its processes of gathering together materials of all levels of subtlety and then offering and letting them go in sacrifice, gradually increases our understanding of interconnectedness to the point of insight into the nature of all things. The sacrifice of knowledge is understood in two ways. First that the sacrifice—all work for that matter—is done with the understanding that work is selfless; it is a joy in and of itself and therefore produces no delusion or ignorance in oneself or in others. The second is that one must give up or sacrifice knowledge. Jñāna of course is not a thing that can be tossed in the fire, but the formulas, symbols, partial philosophies, and language games that are vehicles of pure intelligence burn beautifully. They must be seen through as context dependent structures, just like the gross, tangible objects all around us. Sacrificing them means entering into a state of not knowing, of having no image of self or other.
By the sixth chapter of the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa decides to teach Arjuna dhyāna yoga, the yoga of meditation. He introduces the formal structure of classical yoga practice as meditation. He carefully helps Arjuna to avoid many of the obstacles and misunderstandings that often arise within that austere path by placing it within a broad vision of integrated aesthetics, as part of the direct experience of the world of our everyday lives. Through this kind of focus of mind you can gain a direct experience of the heart—the ātman—which is simply pure consciousness. Even a fleeting encounter with the ātman reveals that there is nothing greater that could ever be experienced or attained; it is a completely satisfying experience. The taste of reality is so profound that even in the face of the most confusing dilemma or the greatest sorrow—even in the face of death—those who have experienced pure consciousness are not shaken from the deep internal experience of yoga. All yoga is aimed at this state of being, and in particular the practice of dhyāna yoga because it trains the mind, thought by thought, to be open to the experience of pure consciousness. Kṛṣṇa, by exposing Arjuna to yoga as meditation in this way, was giving him enough of a taste of reality that he could face with strength and clarity the situation before him on the battlefield.
Within the story of the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa is very careful to point out to Arjuna that yoga is not
for someone who “lights no fire,” meaning it is not for someone who experiences detachment due to laziness or avoidance of the rigor of work. Instead yoga is for those who are deeply inspired, who work in a focused, concentrated way while remaining truly nonattached to the fruits of their labor. Kṛṣṇa explains that when one is beginning the path of yoga, karma (work) is said to be the path. In this context, work may mean the actual activity of studying or of doing the yoga āsanas, or of carefully observing sensations and feelings within the body as they arise. There are phases of sitting meditation practice that are excruciating and can only be called hard work. We want easy pleasure, but the mind might be presenting sensation patterns, emotions, neurotic thought patterns, or hellish situations, which are reflexively rejected. We tend to jump away, thinking that meditation is not working or that we are failures or that we need a different teacher. Yet the simple requirement of mindfulness practice or discriminating awareness practice is to “sit with it” or to “see it just as it is.” This is easy to say but not so easy to do when the shadow side of our ego rises up as the content of our consciousness. Seeing through concepts of pain and hell are absolutely vital to yoga practice. Otherwise we might think that we are advanced practitioners when in fact we suffer from ego inflation. The initial work of yoga, therefore, is to carefully observe your mind as you begin to stretch out the breath in prāṇāyāma, as you begin to engage the body in āsana, and as the whole spectrum of a mind-created heaven and hell unfold in actual meditation practice. By learning to stay attentive and focused within these aspects of yoga, you discover that the true work is the fervent, passionate inquiry into the present moment, into what is actually arising, as it arises. For the beginner therefore, work is the means to liberation.
The Mirror of Yoga Page 14
