Ken: In my understanding Karma Yoga means acting out your program, without attachment to the result of the actions.
Sundari: Karma yoga and dharma cannot be separated. It is correct that acting according to your nature, (i.e., your svadharma), is necessary to take appropriate action at the appropriate time. Karma yoga is doing so in the spirit of consecration or worship, and even when acting for a specific result, not wanting things to be different, offering your actions to Isvara knowing the results are not up to you. It’s the ‘not wanting things to be different’ that messes with most people’s minds and makes karma yoga so difficult, because we are primed with conscious and unconscious likes and dislikes, fears and desires.
Ken: I have a strong business vasana. I like putting ideas into reality and building things. Not necessarily for making money but for customers and employees, and of course for me to feel useful and effective. But it really doesn’t bother me too much if I don’t win business or lose a customer, claiming to have integrated the Karma Yoga attitude quite well.
Sundari: Excellent
Ken: I also understand that actions are a way of expressing your gratitude to Ishvara and therefore you have to contribute.
Sundari: There are two stages of karma yoga. Secular karma yoga is taking appropriate action to achieve a certain result, so there is a doer involved. The second stage is karma yoga sannyas (sacred karma yoga), where you relinquish the idea of doership altogether. All actions are automatically taken in this knowledge, there is no ‘practice’ of karma yoga, as such. It is an attitude of complete surrender to Isvara, which is really, a devotional practice, bhakti yoga. At this stage, karma yoga and bhakti yoga are inseparable. There is immediate spontaneous acceptance of life as it is, and all outcomes, even the tough ones. You live without a shadow of a doubt that Isvara, the Total Mind, is taking care of everything, including you, perfectly.
Ken: But I heard Ramji often say: The world is in perfect order, you don’t need to fix it.
So why then contribute?
Sundari: Why not contribute, if you can and it is appropriate? If you do so in the spirit of karma yoga, you are acting in the name of and for Isvara. How else is Isvara going to get things done (deliver the karma) if not through the jivas, who knowingly or not, share the same identity as the Self? Of course, the proviso here is that you genuinely act in the spirit of karma yoga, and not as the deluded ego ‘trying to make a difference’. That’s when things get sticky.
Ken: I feel a strong urge to write and speak about self-reliance, ownership, self-improvement and libertarianism. Freedom is a value I hold very dear, and I strongly believe the world would be a much better place if everybody overcame fear and acted according to his nature.
Sundari: There is nothing wrong with having high ideals. But there is a big danger in the idea that you can make the world a better place. That is 100% the doer talking. If you are truly practicing karma yoga, you make a contribution accepting the fact that Isvara alone knows why things are the way they are. If Isvara needs you to effect change and make a contribution, do so if you are able to and it is appropriate. But not as the doer who believes it can make a difference. There is no karma yoga there. Expect blowback karma because you are saying that you know better than Isvara what ‘should’ happen. Not a good idea.
Ken: On the other hand I don’t want to lecture people or be intrusive.
Sundari: Well, make up your mind. If you want to make a difference as a doer, you must take the consequences. Whereas if you truly act with genuine karma yoga because you know all life is non-different from you and all is perfect the way it is, the karma does not come to you as the Self.
Ken: So how do I recognize when acting out my program ends and fixing the world begins?
Sundari: When you realize that the world does not need fixing and Isvara does not need you to fix it. If your services are required, and you respond with karma yoga, you will be working with the natural harmony of life. This egoic need to make a difference will go away, and you will just do what you do when you do it because it’s what’s in front of you.
Hari Om
Sundari