introduction jnani raja hatha tantric kundalini laya mantra karma bhakti sufism vajrayana zen taoist


Karma Yoga



This Yoga is literally the Yoga of action. It is laid out clearly in the Bhagavad Gita. The Karma Yogi acts in the world but has no attachment to the fruits of his action. It relates to Bhakti as follows: out of love for the divinity one serves the world and creatures he has created and/or is immanent within. There is then no question of the fruits of that action motivating their performer. Karma Yoga is often understood as the doing of good works without ego-gratification. It is in this surrender of self that the subject-object boundary is disrupted. At its best, there is love only as a process in the world, guided by an intelligence undistorted by ego.

From a Vajrayana point of view, the Boddisattva acts to liberate all suffering beings, forsaking his own final nirvana to do so. His meditations have resulted in the fusion of the opposites which formerly resided at either end of the sushumna, the central channel of the microcosm. These opposites are wisdom and compassion. The compassion then perforce acts in the world, guided by the wisdom aspect of enlightenment. This kind of Karma Yoga is hardly liberationary since liberation is its prerequisite. However, it might be argued that the conscious practice of compassion will eventually actualise it as a spontaneously arising aspect of one's being with wisdom being generated as a reflex. The scene is then ripe for the ecstatic embrace of these two.

Sufism also has a notion of service has having profound liberational potential.

introduction jnani raja hatha tantric kundalini laya mantra karma bhakti sufism vajrayana zen taoist