Karma yoga helps to manage the six conditions of the mind. Action, something that we do continuously all the time, is used to counteract the negative product of the six conditions which hamper the expression of the natural happiness, creativity and positivity. Therefore, one of the first components of karma yoga, is atmashuddhi. Atmashuddhi means self-purification.
Karma yoga follows the same pattern as hatha yoga.
The first practice of hatha yoga is shatkarma, physical purification. The first practice of awareness in karma yoga is self-purification, atmashuddhi. While hatha yoga is dealing with the physical humors, in karma yoga we are dealing with the mental wounds and boils created by kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada, matsarya which are reflecting in our behaviour, altering the course of our action and intention, creating more expectations and frustrations. And this cycle continues.
The first aspect instructed in karma yoga is to focus to attain internal cleanliness and purity. How to do that? When you engage in any action or work, always accept it as a challenge and with the attitude that you are doing it for the first time in your life. When you begin to believe that you are doing it for the first time in your life, you always try to do your best, and make it the best product possible. In simple terms, it means that you avoid boredom, you do not get bored doing the same thing day in and day out. Every day have a new perception, a new vision, a new expectation of yourself to do better than what you did yesterday. Even if it is making your bed, making food, meditating and practising yoga or interacting with people who are your friends, do it with dignity and wisdom, not with expectation and other tentacles of the six conditions which are trying to envelop you. In this way, cultivate awareness, mindfulness.
Moment-to-moment awareness has to be developed.
Sometimes, people have asked me how much of the witness attitude, drashta bhava, should be cultivated in meditation. I have replied, ‘Drashta bhava is not for meditation. Meditation is immersion into drashta bhava, the witnessing attitude. You have to maintain the witnessing awareness when you are not meditating, which is twenty three hours of the twenty four. That is moment-to-moment awareness, what people call mindfulness. We call it moment-to-moment awareness of the present. If that moment-to-moment awareness of the present is there, and you are observing your reaction, response, action, intention, mood and behaviour, and you are balancing it, then you are not only working at the physical level, you are also working hard at the mental level.
Cultivation of awareness leads to atmashuddhi and also avoidance of the pitfalls that you can become aware of and observe. Don’t go willy-nilly into the environment of anger, hatred, jealousy, frustration, depression and anxiety. Don’t discharge your battery. If you keep on discharging your battery, you will have chronic fatigue syndrome, for the battery has gone flat, the pranas have gone flat. Avoid these pitfalls and heal the mind of the wounds and scars that it has developed over a period of time, when you were not even aware that you were suffering mentally. That is atmashuddhi. This awareness is combined with the normal activity.
The second aspect is to avoid expectation. Follow your dharma to do what is right and correct. Do not crave, expect or desire praise or promotion. If you expect praise and promotion, you are expecting the result and outcome for your own satisfaction. You are disconnecting yourself from your creative nature. It is normal human behaviour, thinking, ‘I do something good, so pat me on my back.’ If your intention is to do good, it does not matter whether somebody pats you on the back or not. It is not your expectation. Your intention has become prominent, not your expectation. Many times expectations become prominent and intentions become secondary. That pitfall also has to be avoided.
This is possible when we connect with our dharma, ‘What is my responsibility to myself, to other people, to life, to my society, to my civilization?’ It is growth, development and upliftment which is our inherent responsibility, duty and commitment, to live this life properly. We have to understand it in the right manner, before we go beyond the tipping point. We are close to the tipping point. The effort has to be made now by people who are aware and responsible. You can understand the responsibility for the continuation of the human life, with humanness. You have to meet human life with humanness. Yoga has always supported this idea. Therefore, a simple, normal thing like karma yoga that you engage yourself in every day, becomes a tool to observe yourself and to manage the disturbing, distracting, blocking and restricting conditions to create another one which is more positive, optimistic and creative.
The third aspect is naishkarmya siddhi, where you only become the instrument of God’s will. Your awareness as an individual is gone, and you become part of the cosmic expression which you can see in the lives of all saints and traditions. They have become an expression of the cosmic power, after having transcended the bondage that their karma created. Karma does create bondage, with our involvement and our association of maya and moha, infatuation. We create a web of karmas around ourselves. In this process of self- observation and self-correction, this web is dissolved. Inner purity and harmony is experienced. Hatha yoga is to remove the physical imbalances and its effects and karma yoga is to remove the mental imbalances and its effects.
22 September 2023, Hatha Yoga–Karma Yoga Training, Ganga Darshan, Munger