The word, karma is usually associated with the Law of Karma. But karma yoga? Are you supposed to do some yoga postures in the hope that they will add to your bank of good karma?

What is karma yoga?

Yoga comes from the Sanskrit root word yuj, which means “to join.” A path or means that helps us progress toward our union with the Self is called a yoga.  In other words, a yoga is a means to grow spiritually.

The word karma simply means “action.” Karma yoga is the art of doing the right actions with the right attitude so as to grow spiritually.

This article is extracted from chapter 9 of my book, So You’re a Spiritual Being—Now What?  In it I share various aspects of karma yoga:

  • What are the right actions that we must do
  • The right karma yoga attitude
  • The art of action
  • The secret to being happy through karma yoga

Karma Yoga—The Right Actions

From the lowest to the highest, there are three types of actions: prohibited actions, desire-prompted actions, and obligatory duties.

Prohibited actions violate standards of what is universally considered good conduct. These actions harm others physically or emotionally. Examples include lying, cheating, stealing, and killing to protect one’s own interests or for personal gain.

This category of actions strengthens our negative tendencies and backfires as mental agitation in the form of remorse and fear. In addition, when caught, the wrongdoer has to suffer the physical consequences of his or her actions.

Next are desire-prompted actions, which are not prohibited. These are activities that we do for personal pleasure and entertainment such as indulging in our favorite foods, hobbies, traveling, watching sports, and so on.

Both prohibited actions and desire-prompted actions are driven by our vasanas* [inherent tendencies] which express themselves as our personal likes and dislikes.

These actions strengthen or add new vasanas to the load that we are already carrying. Because of this, the spiritual masters urge us to strictly avoid prohibited actions and to thoughtfully and gradually reduce our desire-prompted actions.

The right actions that we must do are our obligatory duties. We are required to perform our duties at home, at work, in our community, or for our country. They come to us as part and parcel of our roles and relationships with others such as being a parent, an employer or employee, resident in a community, or citizen of a nation.

Humility and service being practiced by a caregiver to a senior in her home. The volunteer is practising the principles of karma yoga, the art of right actionDuties are done to benefit others or for the common good of all. We are expected to fulfill our duties simply because they need to be done.

Most of these duties are done daily, but we may also be called to perform occasional duties. For instance, you may need to visit someone at the hospital or attend a funeral or a wedding. Or you may need to fulfill your duties as a volunteer at an annual fund-raising event for your favorite charity or do jury duty.

Since duties are done for others, they help lessen our selfish tendencies and cleanse our mind of vasanas. This is the reason why daily and occasional duties must never be neglected.       

Karma Yoga—The Right Attitude

More important than doing our duties is how we do them, because it’s the right attitude that advances our spiritual growth. In Karma yoga we do our actions without attachment—neither to the work nor to the anticipated results.

Attachment to the work means doing it with a sense of ego and allowing what you do and how you do it to be driven by your personal likes and dislikes.

You may want to do only a specific job or task or do it only in a particular way. You may also be reluctant to give up or share the responsibilities with others because of a sense of possessiveness toward your position or fondness for the work.

Our duties entail doing many tasks, some of which we may dislike. We often want to do only what we enjoy and try to avoid or delay doing what we find difficult, inconvenient, or unpleasant.

For example, a personal support worker, caring for the elderly in their homes, may love being with her clients and serving their needs but dislikes putting together the periodic reports required by the company that employs her. Consequently, the reports are often late or lacking all the necessary information. The company has to frequently remind her to submit them.

We must fulfill all our prescribed duties readily, cheerfully, efficiently, and to the best of our ability. We shouldn’t complain about what we have to do or do tasks grudgingly.

Personal likes or dislikes should not stand in the way of doing our duties. Instead, our actions must be guided by what we know is right and ought to be done.

Attachment to the anticipated results is an insistence that we get the results that we want.

For example, Susan is a floor supervisor at a manufacturing company. She knows that her manager will be retiring in the next three months and she’ll be one of two people being considered for the position.  She’s anxious for the promotion not only because it will raise her status in the company but also because it will mean a significant increase in her salary.

She puts in longer hours and works harder than before. She frequently imagines the general manager praising her heartily for her efforts before offering her the position. She feels excited knowing that she can use the extra money she’ll get toward a down payment on an apartment of her own.

After a few weeks, the general manager calls her into his office. Susan knocks at his door with nervous anticipation. He smiles, shakes her hand, and leads her inside. After a little pleasantry, he tells her that he’s happy with the work that she has been doing. And so he’s decided to offer her a promotion to assistant manager along with a modest increase in her salary.

Susan is crushed. She tries her best to hide her disappointment and feigns a half-smile. She feels that all her efforts went to waste and thinks that he’s being unfair, as she is the better candidate for the managerial position.

As she takes on her new responsibilities, bitter feelings constantly interrupt her mind from the work at hand. Her work begins to suffer, and she has frequent disagreements with her new manager.

The general manager notices the change in her attitude. When another opportunity for a promotion opens up in the company a few months later, he doesn’t consider her, as he feels she doesn’t demonstrate good leadership skills and team spirit.

When practicing karma yoga, we give up the anxiety for the results of our actions.

Results can be tangible, such as money, power, position, gifts, and favors, or intangible, such as praise, admiration, and appreciation. There should be no hankering for any rewards. Whatever the results, we accept them cheerfully without complaint. The only reward we seek is the satisfaction of doing the right job in the right way.

Susan in the example above worked with attachment. As a floor supervisor, she hankered for the position of manager, and as an assistant manager, she worked with strong personal likes and dislikes. Had she kept her focus on doing her best at her job, she could have advanced professionally and spiritually.

Gurudev [my guru, Swami Chinmayananda] sums up attachment as “Attachment = Ego + Egocentric desires.”

Another way that he explains attachment is performing your actions with a sense of “I” + “I want.”

Now, to perform your duties without attachment to the work or to the results requires a strong motive to inspire you. Otherwise, you may lose the enthusiasm that you had when you started.

The solution is to find a higher aspect of the work that you love and enjoy, and dedicate your actions to it. Think of it as an altar at which you mentally offer your actions.

The first motivating factor could be the people you serve. Examples include a doctor who loves his patients, a tour guide who loves meeting people from different countries, or a mother dedicated to her family.

The second factor could be the service you provide. Whether small or significant, you can have the satisfaction of knowing that the service you provide helps others in some way. You could be a cashier at a supermarket, a policeman, a mortgage broker, or a high-ranking politician.

Third, the cause that you work for can be a great motivator for you. For instance, you could be a soldier fighting to protect lives and maintain peace in your country.

Having an altar of dedication that you love makes you feel that the work itself is your reward. No task feels like a burden or inconvenience, no matter how small or routine it may be. The higher your altar of dedication, the more inspired you will be. The more the inspiration, the greater the work will bring out the best in you.

As Vedantic master Swami Tejomayananda puts it, “An altar in life alters your life.”

The highest altar of dedication is the Supreme Consciousness or Om—the source from which all things and beings emerge, and which pervades them all. All our actions at the body, mind, and intellect level are possible solely because of its enlivening presence. Therefore, it’s apt to gratefully offer all our actions to it.

Dedicating our actions to a higher altar is the essence of karma yoga. What’s wonderful is that the attitude of dedication to this noble altar turns everyday work into worship.Gurudev is my altar of dedication. Having attained the realization of the Supreme Consciousness, he is the personification of it.

I keep a simple affirmation in mind as I work, and strive to live up to it: “Only you—for you.”

I say, “Only you” because as the enabler of my actions, I consider him to be the real doer. It’s only he, and not me. And by saying “for you” I drop my expectations of the rewards of my actions and dedicate them to him.

When we dedicate our actions to a higher altar, we temporarily give up the ego that wants to claim credit for doing the actions. This helps erode our vasanas [inherent tendencies] which form when actions are done with an egocentric sense of agency or a feeling that “I did it.”

It is this sense of agency that spurs us to perform actions prompted by personal likes and dislikes and crave particular results. In other words, it makes us work with attachment.

Karma yoga helps exhaust our vasanas instead of accumulating them. As the vasanas decrease, the impurities decrease. This makes the mind more peaceful and balanced, which in turn gives it a greater ability to concentrate in meditation. As one progresses in meditation, the ego is eventually transcended, and the pure Self is realized.

Karma Yoga—The Art of Action

The art of action is beautifully encapsulated in this verse from the Bhagavad Gita, Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits; let not the fruit of action be thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction.

The first part of this verse, “Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits,” tells us that we can choose what actions to perform, but we have no claim or control over the types of results we get, how we get them, and when they come. The results of actions, or the “fruits,” emerge from an interplay of many other factors.

Let’s say you have an important presentation at work. You research, plan, and prepare for it. How it turns out, however, depends on many factors. Do you have everything you need and is it functioning properly (the projector, the screen, the slide clicker, the computer)? Is everyone who is supposed to be present there? What mood are they in?

So you can put in your very best effort in preparing and presenting, but the success of your presentation depends on many factors out of your control. Can you think of a time when you put in your best effort, but things didn’t turn out the way you had expected?

Understanding that the results of our actions are out of our hands, the verse continues to advise us to do actions without being concerned about gaining specific outcomes of our efforts. “Let not the fruit of action be thy motive.”

Now, you may ask why would you do anything at all if you’re not motivated to gain the desired results of your actions? It’s not that we shouldn’t have plans and goals for our work. We are advised to not focus on the results of our actions while we are doing the actions. This frees up our mind to focus on the task at hand, thus increasing our efficiency and chances of success.

Lastly, the verse tells us not to let laziness stop us from doing what we should and could be doing: “nor let thy attachment be to inaction.” It also means that if we think that we won’t get the results that we desire from our actions, we may feel discouraged or unmotivated to do them at all. We should not avoid doing work because of our attachment to future rewards.

Karma Yoga—The Secret to Being Happy

Applying the principles of karma yoga to our work helps us to be happy regardless of the results we get. Let’s see how this is so.

The results of actions can be of three kinds—desirable, undesirable, or mixed.

Desirable results make us happy because we get what we were hoping for. Examples include receiving a good bonus at the end of the year, finding the perfect job, or being able to buy the last two tickets to see a sold-out show.

Undesirable results make us unhappy because they are unwanted by us. Examples are an event that flops after months of planning, losing money in an investment, or failing an exam.

Mixed results may be good in one way but not so good in another, for example, finding a suitable new house in your preferred neighborhood but it’s on a busy street, receiving a good promotion that also demands that you work weekends, or eating at a restaurant that has a pleasing ambience and good service but the food isn’t very tasty.

Gaining undesirable and mixed results leaves us dissatisfied and unhappy. They motivate us to continue doing more actions to find the happiness we want.

But even desirable results are unsatisfactory. This is because the happiness isn’t permanent and is tainted with a fear of loss or change in the desirable thing, situation, or relationship.

For example, let’s say you bought a lottery ticket and won five million dollars. After the initial excitement and happiness dies down, you may start to fear that with your long list of wants, you’ll quickly run out of money. Or you fear that you won’t manage the money well, and you begin to stress about how to maximize your winnings—what to spend them on, where to invest them, whom to give them to, and how much. Your good fortune doesn’t come with peace of mind.

Think about these facts: We do actions to reap happiness from enjoying desirable future results. But the results are not always desirable. Even if they are, the happiness doesn’t last and is spoiled with fear. Next, we are in control only of the actions we choose to do, and the attitude with which we do them, not the outcome.

The strange thing is that instead of focusing on what we can control now, we’ve made our happiness dependent on future results that are unknown, temporary, and out of our control. This keeps us continuously chasing an elusive future happiness.

Sign saying Love the work itself!! The right karma yoga attitude
Why wait to be happy later? It’s wiser to work without ego and attachment to the results, giving full attention to the task at hand. This quiets the chattering mind.

When the mind is calm, a spring of joy that is within flows out and is channeled into the work. You may have experienced the feeling of being so happily immersed in your work that you became unaware of time and the other things that normally occupy your mind.

Detaching from the anxiety to gain the results of action by finding happiness in the action itself is the simple secret to being happy now.

Can you think of how you can detach from worrying about a particular outcome when taking on your next task or project at home or at work?

The principles of karma yoga apply to everyone, young and old alike. Here they are again in brief:

  1. Always do your duties.
  2. Do them readily, cheerfully, and to the best of your ability.
  3. Work without attachment. This means working without ego, personal likes and dislikes, and insistence on any tangible or intangible results.
  4. Dedicate your actions to a higher altar, and stay focused on the work at hand.
  5. No matter what results you get, accept them graciously without complaint.

Working in this way will bring you happiness in your day-to-day life and efficiency in action. Importantly, it will reduce your vasanas, cleanse the impurities in your mind, and help you grow spiritually.

Click here for more information on So You’re a Spiritual Being—Now What?

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Manisha Melwani

Manisha Melwani is a teacher and the author of, "Your Spiritual Journey" She offers spiritual and wellness solutions for life and stress management. She teaches classes in personal growth, stress management and meditation. Contact her for more information or to have her speak to your group or organization. She also offers private counseling sessions on-line.
Manisha Melwani

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