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Doing Karma Yoga on Karma Yoga
Hi Sundari,
I am a senior studying finance and I have been on the spiritual path for many years, with Swami Tadatmananda – a student of Swami Dayananda – as one of my primary teachers, along with a consortium of Arsha Vidhya teachers. Here are their websites respectively: arshabodha.org; https://arshavidya.org/;
Sundari: Thank you for your honest and well-written email, I am glad you wrote in. We are very aware of Swami T and D, both excellent teachers. James was a student of Chinmayananda at the same time as Swami Dayananda, so he knew him very well, for many years.
Arend: I started on the spiritual path as a junior in high school. Frankly, I will admit I am still highly immature and am still at the mercy of attachment to pleasure, excessive fear, and anger problems – as is typical with my age group. I don’t consider myself even close to self-knowledge, let alone self-abidance.
Sundari: This is a wise and dispassionate assessment of the jiva (individual) at your age, well done. It shows that you have objectivity about the jiva’s conditioning, even though you are still identified with it.
Arend: Some other swamis have told me to not worry about self-knowledge yet and only focus on karma yoga for now. My mother – who put me on the spiritual path all those years ago – thinks I shouldn’t even worry about karma yoga because of my massive anxiety surrounding the need to become a “true karma yogi”.
I feel like I am stuck in the middle, unable to master karma yoga due to the fact that I definitely love worldly things such as sex and money but am unable to let go of Vedanta because of my immense value for Swami Dayananda’s teachings and for Vedanta itself.
Sundari: Your teachers are correct, there is no other tool better suited to help us at all stages of self-inquiry than karma yoga, even if we are still attached to worldly pursuits. But your mother is not correct. If you truly understand the purpose of karma yoga, you could definitely use it to your advantage. If karma yoga is employed correctly, it should take care of all anxiety because that is what it is designed to do: remove the existential anxiety of doership from the doer, the ego. If you are having anxiety over karma yoga, you have missed the point and do not understand what karma yoga is. You are still invested in the doer and have not surrendered results. You need to do karma yoga on the way you are applying karma yoga and add a very important missing step.
The first step in karma yoga is recognizing that you can take appropriate action, but you are not in control of the results. A good T-shirt slogan that sums this up is: “stop worrying, everything is out of control!” That is the truth, so why not accept it? It is very freeing if you think about it. It is an illusion that we are in control of anything because there are so many factors present for anything to happen that have nothing to do with us, how could we be in control? Only Isvara is in control and surrender to that is the first step away from the neurosis of doership anxiety, even as a karma yogi.
The second stage of karma yoga is consecrating each thought, word, and action to Isvara, the creator of the Field of Experience, in the spirit of gratitude for the great gift that life is. Everything we are and have is thanks to Isvara. Surrendering action is very necessary and important, but without gratitude, it is empty, devoid of faith and grace. I have attached a teaching on the stages of self-inquiry for you to read, which explains the different stages of karma yoga as we mature as individuals and inquirers. Please make sure you read it carefully and slowly.
The stage you are at is a secular karma yogi, someone who has deep spiritual vasanas but still wants things from the world. You want to use karma yoga to get what you want, which is be expected for someone your age. As your teachers have told you, in traditional Vedantic tradition, young people are encouraged to exhaust their worldly vasanas until they realize that life is a zero-sum game. That there is nothing in the world ultimately, and what you are really looking for by chasing your desires is what you already have: the Self. You are the sought and you can never find what you are really looking for because you are it. When that realization dawns, the mind is ready to turn inwards and submit fully to the non-dual teachings of Vedanta, not before.
Arend: I have heard the words of karma yoga millions of times: “You have a choice over your actions, but never over the results thereof” but I cannot seem to assimilate these teachings for the life of me. I still chase pleasure, I find it impossible to admit to myself that I am not the Karma Phala hetuh, and I am still very easily subject to anger from perceived insults. I also do not yet have the discipline to meditate every day and am subject to laziness in the form of procrastinating on important schoolwork.
Sundari: See above. When the mind is under the spell of duality (Maya), it is under the whip of its fears and desires, its conditioning, which is very painful. The mind is convinced that it is insufficient, and it needs objects to complete it, so it chases objects in the world. An object is anything other than you, and known to you, the Self. This includes subtle things like thoughts and feelings, and gross objects, like the body, a car, anything. The belief that you are incomplete is the cause of all suffering because the world (Isvara) does not care what you want. It takes care of the needs of the Total first. You may well get what you want or avoid what you don’t want, but this is no guarantee of satisfaction. In fact, it is often a guarantee of dissatisfaction because the mind under the spell of Maya is never satisfied, even when it gets what it wants.
The mind under the hypnosis of duality is an experience-hungry consumer, ever hunting for more, better, different. Maya is a cruel master, tempting us with all its sexy objects which we can never quite grasp. It never fills us but always leaves us wanting. As desire is painful, we feel good for a while when we get what we want because desire is temporarily satiated. But sadly, it never lasts, and desire returns. So off we go, chasing the next experience in the vain hope of permanent satisfaction. On and on, like a little hamster on a wheel, getting nowhere.
As the jiva, you are most definitely not karma phala datta, the giver of the results of action. If that were true, you would always have everything you want, you would never suffer, and you would be free of the jiva, the one who wants. This is clearly not the case. Only Isvara, who is the Self wielding Maya, has that job. The jiva (individual or doer) has the same essence as Isvara (the Self) because this is a nondual universe, and ultimately, there is only the Self.
But Isvara is not deluded by Maya as is the jiva. Moksa or Freedom is breaking the spell of Maya/duality. To actualize your true identity as the nondual Self (the witness or non-experiencing entity), freedom means freedom from and for the jiva (the experiencing entity). Self-actualization means the end of bondage to objects (experience) and the permanent satisfaction the jiva so vainly seeks but never truly finds.
To commit to self-inquiry means that you have understood that the joy is not in objects/experience. You are the source of joy. But you need not only to understand intellectually but to assimilate what that means. If you do, then you are ready to investigate what drives the jiva, where its likes and dislikes (fears and desires/conditioning) originate from, i.e., Maya or beginningless ignorance, the hypnosis of duality. Also called mithya, that which is not always present and always changing. Then you are ready to take a stand as Satya, that which is always present and never changing. But to be able to discriminate between Satya and mithya 100% of the time requires a journey (which is not a journey because you are never not the Self), which takes time, qualifications, dedication to the teachings, and being properly taught. You cannot read your way to moksa because the mind will interpret the teachings according to its precognitive commitments, or biases.
Arend: How do I learn the foolishness of chasing worldly happiness without suffering and struggling in my love life and in my career pursuits?
Sundari: Take it easy, don’t be too hard on yourself, this will pass, as do all things in the world of duality. Maya is simply that which deludes the mind into believing that the changeless changes. It is a trick of light; it is not real. Real is what never changes, the Self. Everything else is not real because it is always changing. Enjoy the world for what it has to offer, only finite passing experiences. Do not expect more from the world than any experience can deliver, which is temporary bliss. “Sin” intelligently, with your eyes wide open to the upside (temporary bliss) and downsides (bondage) of getting what you want or avoiding what you don’t want. When you want only permanent satisfaction, the other desires will fall away if you commit to the nondual teachings and apply them to your life.
Most importantly, trust that Isvara has seeded a strong desire for freedom from bondage, which is grace, and grace is earned. Your mind is not quite qualified (ready/purified) to let go of worldly pursuits and is still seeking objects to complete itself. As stated, this is normal at your age. But Who You Truly Aware has no age. The Self is unborn and undying. And as the ever-present, nondual, unchanging, ever full, and complete Self, you are not going anywhere. You cannot go anywhere because there is nowhere you are not. And you cannot lose it because that is who you are.
Arend: Any help is appreciated. As of now, I have watched Swami Dayananda and the Arsha Vidya Youtube videos but have lacked a fully enlightened guru who meets with me on a regular weekly basis and gives me proper instruction tailored to me specifically, in my current situation as a college student and investment banking job applicant.
Sundari: Please make sure to read the instructions we give on the home page of our website, www.shiningworld to inquirers. Vedanta is a progressive teaching, and it meets the inquirer at whatever level they are at. But you need to follow the methodology to the letter, or you will get stuck, as you are now. Start with the basics and stick with the teachings. We offer three online courses which cover all the teachings carefully, from beginner to advanced. You need to put in the work, we cannot do it for you. We cannot teach you if you are not committed.
I am very happy to guide your inquiry, and I am available for weekly zoom sessions on a donation basis. We can set a regular date for this, but you also need to do some work first. It is not my job to convince you of anything. The nondual teachings of Vedanta are impersonal and infallible, but they belong to nobody and everybody, we are just part of the delivery system. They are the logic of existence, and they work to free the mind of suffering, assuming qualifications. Start by reading the satsang I have attached then move to the first phase of the online teaching course. Watch as many teaching videos as you can, but it is better if you do so by following the methodology from the start. Don’t jump around, it will only confuse you further.
Om and Prem
Sundari
ShiningWorld.com