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WHAT IS KARMA?
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Consequently, the tenets of Karma Yoga are a devotion of one's life to selfless service without any attachment whatever or consideration for rewards. The student of Karma is taught indifference to praise and blame alike. He may not accept gifts but must always work for work's own sake. His heart must be a garden filled with the flowers of good deeds. He must ever listen to the inner voice of his conscience for guidance, fear no one save the Divine power, and devote his life to his fellow-creatures. Mahatma Gandhi, who lived by such precepts, himself taught that there were no distinctions between menial and dignified work. He himself often performed the most menial tasks, and his was an example of the deepest humility, love and goodwill. While it is always unsatisfactory to suggest parallels, medieval anchorites and St. Francis of Assisi come to mind as we try to translate some of these attitudes into Western terms.
A further parallel is equally striking: Karma teaches that a man who lives a life of idleness and luxury cannot hope to help his fellows, for he is handicapped by enslavement to his Indriyas or sense powers. It follows that if he would become a true Karma Yogi he must cast outside his rich robes and take on the beggar's garb. This, after all, is not very different from the basic philosophy behind the words, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the needle's eye than for the rich man to enter the gates of heaven." Still another school is Janna Yoga, the Yoga of Knowledge as against that of Action. Jnana educates the mind to perceive Self and so free itself from all forms of delusion. It aims at the realization of the Supreme Self by means of learning to see the everyday world in its true proportions, making a complete cleavage between the objective manifestations of consciousness and the subjective working of the mind. Three thousand years after Hindu philosophers formulated this approach, modern Western psychiatry began to explore the same problems in the laboratory. The Yogis, however, attain their goal through purely philosophical, meditative channels; they consider the first step to be comprehension of what mind consists of, and the second a mastery of all desire by the development of wisdom. Again, such speculation is beyond the realm of ordinary people's interests. Specifically, what Jnana says must follow is complete non-attachment to the things of this world and constant sacrifice of self to enlightenment. Jnana demands of the student a technique of living so rigorous and an asceticism so extreme as to be totally alien to most of us. Bhakti Yoga is a system of intense devotion, with emphasis on faith. The true follower of Bhakti is one who is free from both guilt and egoism. He is humble, unaffected by either happiness or sorrow, and hasn't a single enemy. Greed, injustice, rashness, persecution of others, jealousy, stealing, harsh words and cruelty are foreign to him. His heart is pure. He has faith, innocence, simplicity and absolute truthfulness. By Western norms he would be considered a saint, with this addition: The Bhakti Yogi considers it as much a sin to waste time as to waste talents—to him sins of omission are as great as those of commission.
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