In my recent unemployment and shift to a new house, I've taken on the task of building some storage in my upstairs bedroom. The bedroom is at the top of the house and has a slanted roof, so, nothing could really be bought for it. I built two wardrobes out of pine and melamine (the painted chipboard that is often used in IKEA furniture), and I have never gotten as angry and frustrated with a project as I did with this one. It was a perfect exercise of karma yoga.
It is generally considered that there are four paths of yoga. Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of worship; Karma Yoga, the yoga of selfless action; Raja yoga, the yoga of discipline and control; and Jnana Yoga, the yoga of knowledge. These are described by Krishna when Arjuna asks about the superior path of yoga in the Bhagavad Gita (chapter 13). The destination of each path is the same, though each path may suit different people according to their disposition. But that does not mean that each path is mutually exclusive.
In the west, we are most familiar with some aspects of Raja Yoga, which many call Ashtanga Yoga, with poses, pranayama, and meditation. In the asana practice of Raja Yoga, we put ourselves in different bodily positions, and align to the divine, learning to experience without the filter of our body identity, or learning to experience that selfless wonder of the absolute. In adopting different poses, we often learn things about ourselves - our desires, ambitions, perceived inadequacies, and through practice and understanding, eliminate them (this understanding of asana may not be common in the yoga studios of the suburbs, I know!). Similarly, Karma Yoga puts us in different situations in which we are able to learn about ourselves, and learn to practice selfless action.
I learnt about Karma Yoga in my first visits to ashrams in Rajasthan, India. During my stay, we would practice (pranayama, meditation, asana) in the morning, and in the evening would be lectures, songs, and prayer. For most of the day, however, we were doing ‘karma yoga,’ which involved work in the kitchen, the garden, and in various building projects. Whatever we did, we were encouraged to do with an open, giving heart. My parents brought me up in the same manner. While my childhood friends received pocket money for their chores, set out in timetables alongside their siblings, my parents told me to do the work out of love, with no need for reward. It was only until I left home and went to India that I understood their message. The beauty of doing karma yoga in an ashram is the company of other yogis. No work is too big or small, too dirty, or too boring. All work is done in good company, where all are doing the work without any aim of gain or ego-boosting.
Now, back to the wardrobe building. Karma yoga is a rather universal path that exists wherever one performs an action. The beginning of the frame built for the wardrobes started off wonky (I was using a protractor from a Christmas cracker for starters!), and as I built the frame, all the small errors started to multiply upon each other. By the time I put the frame together, it was all twisted and the doors didn’t want to stay on. Everything I tried to compensate for my mistakes didn’t seem to work all that much, and there were days that I wanted to give up and go lie down somewhere (and I did exactly that!). The two wardrobes took me about two weeks altogether, with a few rest days in between, and many trips to the local hardware store. It all came together at the end when I pulled everything apart and made it with correctly-measured angles. It was a journey of planning, self-doubt, regret, trust, and willpower. On some days, everything went according to plan, and on others, no amount of effort could make it right. In fact, misplaced effort and perseverance often led to making things worse.
All this in a couple of weeks for a wardrobe is pretty great! I don’t think I even experienced the same range of inner turmoil in writing my PhD thesis, at least, not at the same rate. Every time something surprising came up from inside me was a chance to reflect on my subconscious inner state. Practicing this almost every day for a couple of weeks gave me the chance to have some regularity in the exposure to this inner state, and allowed me to find enjoyment and wonder in both the physics of the woodwork and the reactions of my emotions. Practicing karma yoga, the yoga of action, is simply a matter of bringing the right mindset to our work. In doing so, we learn to observe ourselves in relation to the work, and to cultivate the principles of trust, acceptance, and compassion. An important attitude to bring is to not be attached to the fruits of one’s work, but to let the work itself be a source of contentment. The result is an even-mindedness that is an immense help in being calm and seeing things clearly.
While karma yoga can be applied to any work, the benefits will be more easily identifiable with physical labour, and with larger projects. Most discussion of yoga is on the elimination of the ego and the identity. In our current society, I believe that the act of creating physical work is very helpful for nurturing an identity that is aligned with the divine consciousness. We are often portrayed as passive consumers, rather than active creators. Such projects may include building furniture, building garden beds and growing vegetables, producing visual artworks, and knitting. Karma yoga can be applied to more subtle actions, such as washing the dishes, weeding the garden, cleaning and cooking, and to even more subtle actions, such as office work, programming, writing, and consulting.
If we can learn to become even-tempered in all that we do, through trust, acceptance, and compassion, then the work becomes an act of love.