Karma Yoga

This article was probably an outcome of the book I read on Karma Yoga and my past experiences. Read and enjoy. Please leave valuable comments too!

The concept of Karma Yoga has fascinated me from a long time. It is not something which is out of this world or something which only the saints and seers understand and practise. All of us as beings of this world do some Karma (work) and reap the benefits of the actions we have performed. There are plenty of examples in daily life in which we can see the effect of Karma Yoga instantly so to say. If one studies well for an exam, one will, in most cases, do well in that exam. There are several other examples in daily life that one can find.

There are other examples which have longer time spans over which the effect is observed. The most famous example is global warming. Of course, global warming is not entirely caused by the human race as is believed by most people or as it has been portrayed by some of the HARD core environmentalists. It does have shades of grey, but there is a significant contribution from the human kind. The effects of global warming are not felt instantly, but it is slow because of the sheer size and inertia of the earth. In the context of scientific intuition, we are somehow limited by the time span of a human life which is approximately 75 years. We cannot fathom a time span of millions of years. Prof J Srinivasan had stressed on this very perspective, but there is a catch! We all will agree that, what we cannot explain or fathom cannot be ruled out as non-existent, for it is one of the prime objectives of the research community in fact, to uncover the hidden truths of nature and explain what has not been understood. So, going with this idea, we can safely say that every action of ours will have some reciprocation or effect at some point of time in the timeline of this earth, whether it does matter is a different issue. In keeping with the same idea, all Karma Yoga suggests is that we become aware of every action of ours and do think of the implications of our actions. The question now arises whether then that we should become conscious of every move of ours and make it a thought out and well planned action, for that will not allow for spontaneity. But, the way we can tackle this problem is that we can make our basics strong. By basics I mean, the set of values and experiences on which we base our daily interactions and reactions to situations. When these values become really clear in our head, we can be sure that our actions will be in the right spirit of improvement. It is highly important that one is heavily logical and scientific in the way one questions and debates the doing of any action. The one golden rule which is generally followed or I presume is followed universally is that we all need to improve and become better from what we were and not take the path of degeneration, for degeneration or a backward step will only lead to ones downfall as has been seen in the past with many of the great dynasties. When the gladiator fights started in the Roman Empire no one had ever thought that all pervading Roman Empire would be extinct in a few hundred years. Now, however, it presents us the opportunity to learn and observe what went wrong.

Another really important point which Karma Yoga stresses on is that we must not be expectant of the results of our actions. At this point I would like to bring out one important process involved in the quality assurance of any product. There are two approaches to quality assurance; one is of trying to correct the mistakes after they are done, in the sense that we reject products after they are made since they don’t conform to the required standards. This definitely is important. However, there is a second approach to quality assurance and that is if we find a set method or process of producing the product, we can be assured that the product will have the quality and the product will also conform to the standards of production. In a very similar fashion, if we assure that our actions will make us proceed towards improvement, goodwill and joy, we can be rest assured that we will lead a better and improved life which is more fulfilling.

Prof J Srinivasan is a very dynamic and highly knowledgable teacher and person. He is the Chairman of the Mechanical Sciences Division at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He was also the lead author of the Physical Sciences section of the IPCC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 along with Al Gore. Reference : http://caos.iisc.ernet.in/faculty/jayes.html