What is Karma Yoga?

Gita is an ancient book that teaches on how to live and it stresses the importance of karma. Now, karma is your action and the result of that action or its fruits. Hindu saints of ancient times believed that any individual’s life is a direct result of their karma. Good words, thoughts and deeds pave the way to a happy life while your bad words, deeds and thoughts take you into disaster.

Now, karma yoga is that branch or form of yoga, which deals with the karma. Most often, the desires and cravings that are linked with your action bind you. however, you can set yourself free by performing the action but separating yourself from any consequences.

This concept forms the base of karma yoga and the individual who chooses to follow this path is the karma yogi. The behavior of such an individual is mainly of indifference. The world might get the idea that he is uninterested. However, he has in fact, managed to master his desire. In fact, he has also developed an awareness of the actual significance of all the events occurring around him.

This yoga does not interfere with you performing your duty; you can do it, however, it sets you free from any cravings of the subsequent results of that action. This is a difficult attitude to achieve or acquire and the reason is that we always expect to get some results from our actions. When we do not get the expected results, then we tend to get frustrated and resort to negative thinking.

Besides, obsessing about the results can also cause you unnecessary stress, aggression and competition. This is the reason for the increasing stress levels and depression in people, not to mention the ever increasing number of people getting diabetes and heart disease.

Thus, instead of stressing over what the results of your actions are going to be, it only helps to follow what the book of Gita says. It says to do your action but not crave its fruits. This will help you lead a stress free happy life.

An individual who is karma yogi comes upon this realization and therefore, he chooses to follow the path of separation or detachment. However, this will not make him inefficient or even dull. Alternatively, he can channel his energy into whatever job he has on hand and he can finish it with complete energy and vigor, giving it his best shot. Therefore, the results are naturally outstanding because of extraordinary actions. As a result, he now stops chasing pleasure and pleasure is now seen chasing him.