Karma Yoga - The Path of Renunciation
I first read the Bhagavad Gita when I was 18. The part on Karma Yoga was revolutionary to me, and since then the words “renounce the fruits of your actions” has forever echoed in my mind. Despite this, the true meaning of the words have remained tainted with mysticism. The path of Karma Yoga, more than most, is one clouded in deep mist. As always, its meaning must be found in its practice, and not the other way around. I will try to expound my own understanding, which has to start with an admittance of my background in western philosophy and buddhist thought. Wherever I go, this is my lens, that through which my understanding is colored. I think this is especially important to acknowledge in relation to Hindu thought, which I am not that familiar with, as it could otherwise easily be misappropriated in this context. The Karmic Path is in my opinion the most accessible, and the most honest. It’s the merging of the spiritual life with the habitual one, the slow and steady purification of everydayness into sacred ritual. Its foundation is the realization of where the work has to be done; wherever you are.
The most common spiritual pitfall, in a vast amount of different forms, is the attempt to walk someone else’s path, to walk from where you are not. As such it serves as just another distraction, enjoyment, escape. It serves the same thing as everything else; to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. We amass knowledge, forge personalities, create an identity, all revolving around this idea of self-transcendence. The word self-improvement, or the commonality of going out to ‘find myself’, paints a very clear picture of the Ego’s appropriation of the path. It’s blameless, of course, an honest attempt that falls prey to the habituation that we’ve all succumbed to. The radical orthogonality is not grasped in the commercialization of its message. But truth be told it’s beyond market forces, the pleasure-seeking is ingrained in our physiology. Its intensification cannot, however, be denied, and its fullfillment in a world of availability creates an interesting dynamic; spirituality as another in-group accepted by the mainstream and a billion-dollar industry.
What we must start recognizing is this seeking. The idea that we have somewhere to go, something to do, someone to be. My reiteration of this fact is a naive attempt at cutting through, because language itself is the problem. It’s what’s truly been appropriated, what creates the chains with which we are bound. We talk of the ‘present moment’. But in its description the only thing we are painting is another place to get to. “There’s nowhere to go. Just be here.” So where am I right now? In the height of our desperation we find the attempt to ‘become’ present. The mind ties knots upon itself. Presence is sought because it is recognized as another something, another state to attain, to get to. Here we find the first clues of the meaning of renunciation. The path does not require attaining a single thing. The common metaphor of clouds blocking the sun in the sky shines true. Presence is not attained, it emerges in the absence of seeking.
Thus we must come to understand the perversion, the everyday-ification, which lies behind the language with which we express the path. It is a pathless path - there’s no distance to be traversed. It is a timeless path - it can be made in an instant. It is a journey from nowhere to nothing. “Nirvana” is not a point of bliss which delivers us from all of our pain and emotions into a timeless perfection. Let’s say it again for those in the back. IT IS NOT THE ATTAINMENT OF ULTIMATE PLEASURE. Its reduction as such places it among all else - delayed gratification. I choose to work for a year so that I might enjoy my money by traveling in the future. I choose to meditate diligently so that I might reside in pure pleasure for timeless existence, it seems like a trade-off anyone would take. It becomes the next object of attainment the seeker clings to. Naturally, because it’s all we know.
It’s a precarious situation, laughable really. The fabric of our reality starts stretching as we might ponder; how do I escape seeking? Isn’t the attempt to do so simply seeking the abolition of seeking? What an indulgence. We should be reminded of the (Mandelbrot set)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mandelbrot_sequence_new.gif#/media/File:Mandelbrot_sequence_new.gif], a geometrical fractal (recursive) pattern. The solution is found, because who could deny that the universe has humor, in the words of Nike: “Just do it.” Attempts are infinitely complex, caught in possibilities. With our actions, with determination, we cut through all of it. This is Karma Yoga. We renounce the path itself. Even the darkest cavern, tucked away for a million years, is in an instant illuminated by a flashlight. It does not recognize the mountain we think we have to scale.
Extremities of mood clearly shows us that the surroundings don’t matter; that there’s no way and nowhere to escape. Sylvia Plath gives us a tragic insight in her depression as detailed in “The Bell Jar”:
… because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.
The thing we have to change is our internal relations. We have to ventilate the room, open a window, get in some fresh air. We hear, and might even acknowledge, this fact all the time; yet we contionusly find ways to delude ourselves, to project our happiness into the future. “On my next meditation retreat I’ll find calmness”. But the future never comes, despite our prayers. The only thing we can do is to work in the moment. The future has only relevance in the way it affects the present. The entire universe, the infinite space-time continuum, fits inside a speck of dust, inside the miniscule moment of your next breath. This is the respect, the deep reverence, which we have to approach it. We have to give, fully, the only thing we can give; attention. And what a beautiful thing to acknowledge. Judgement-free, even in the deepest sorrow we allow it to be.
I AM.
Do you believe?
Is your faith strong enough to dare to see it?
To cut through the words, opening your heart and allowing it to resonate to the frequency of the transmission?
To allow it to uproot everything?
To fully let go to its radicality?
What can be said that hasn’t been already?
You must bridge the gap between the words, their symbolic existence, and that which exists within.
You must allow them their full power, through the devotion to the practice.
I AM.
Words fail me as I sit with my breath. How can I communicate that which is? Philosophy traps us so easily in its abstract maze, the message confused with its messenger. It is never abstract. Whatever you cannot feel in your heart, that is not Truth. Wisdom resides, for a lack of a better word, in the body. Allow yourself to hear it, without conceptual appropriation. Just feel it. A light summer breeze. Heavy rain rushing down as you run towards safety. The sun, its shy rays looking out from behind the clouds for the first time in days. A gentle smile or a violent laugh. The shedding of tears and the aching of joints. This is wisdom. My heart drowns in sorrow as I come to accept its utter wordlessness. The suffering of the world; the karma of Others. What is there to be done? Silently we walk our own path, hoping, wishing, praying, that its brightness will be able to reach out to the one next to us. Yet we shall know;
All beings are the owners of their karma. Their happiness and unhappiness depend on their actions, not on my wishes for them.