Learning karma yoga

Karma yoga is the yoga of action.  It is the path of selfless action, without seeking personal gain or reward, detaching your ego in the process.

I was first exposed to karma yoga during a short stay at an ashram in India.  Here we had to practice karma yoga while cleaning, peeling vegetables or working in the Garden.

We were taught these basics: have the right attitude, do your duty, do your best, give up results, and follow the discipline of the job. We had to go about our tasks with humility, do our very best and not be attached to praise or outcome from our hour of work.

It was a little difficult for me to grasp the principles of karma yoga.  I am someone who is always attached to the outcome and I like my efforts to be noticed or rewarded, as most of us do.

We had to go about our tasks with humility, do our very best and not be attached to praise or outcome from our hour of work.

With our busy lifestyles and duties to loved ones, our employment and our community, one might say it is almost impossible to complete any task with detachment to the results, or to complete a task where there is no personal gain for you.

It of course is difficult to achieve this, but there are ways to learn and incorporate karma yoga into our lives.

Let’s say you work in a busy restaurant and it is the end of the shift. You have finished packing up and need to mop the floor. Instead of seeing the task as a chore, you could see it as your duty.  It is part of the job.

When we pick up the mop we are committed to cleaning the floor as best as possible, we scrub away (maybe getting out the old scrubbing brush for a few stuck in stains), and complete the task.  Job done!

Another staff member walks in the door and leaves footprints all over the clean and sparkling floor.

Uh oh! You just cleaned the floor, and now someone has the insensitivity to tread all over the shiny floorboards.  Is it important?  Should you be upset about it?  Of course not!

You cleaned the floor to the best of your ability. It’s done, no one has said ‘good job’ and it doesn’t matter.

Not getting upset about the footprints is karma yoga in action.

This is just a little example of how karma yoga works. Through bringing mindfulness into our daily lives, by observing our reactions, thoughts and emotions we can strengthen our practice of karma yoga.

Simply put: do your best, be happy and don’t worry.