PATH OF WORK
What is Karma Yoga?
Karma Yoga is communion with God by means of Work. Ashtanga Yoga or Raja Yoga is also Karma Yoga, if practised without attachment. It leads to communion through meditation and concentration.
The performance of the duties of householders (i.e., self-regarding as well as altruistic work, social and political)
- doing them without attachment to the end that God may be glorified
-is Karma Yoga.
Again,
worship according to the scriptures, silent repetition of the 'name' of God and other pious duties of this kind, are Karma Yoga if done without attachment and for the glorification of God.
The end of Karma Yoga is the same (as of other Yogas), namely, the realisation of God, impersonal or personal or both.
In the case of a person endowed with the quality of Sattva (purity of being), action naturally falls off. Even if he tries, he cannot engage himself in action. God would not allow him to act. For example, the daughter-in-law who is with child is gradually relieved of her household work, and when the child is actually born, she is given nothing to do and is left exclusively to attend to the child. Those who are not
endowed with the quality of Sattva have to attend to all worldly duties. With complete dedication to the Lord, they should behave like the servants in the house of a rich man. This is what is called Karma Yoga.
Its secret consists in repeating the 'name' of the Lord and meditating on Him as much as one can, and at the same time attending to one's duties in the spirit of dedication described above.
🕉 Wise Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna.
814 & 815.
Grateful thanks to
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