Karmic Yoga

The BhagavadGita
A walkthrough for Westerners
Jack Hawley copyrite 2001

When one's actions are ot based on desire for personal reward, one can more esily, steady the mind and direc t it toward the Atma, the true Self Within. For the person of steady mind, Arjuna, ther eis always just one decision, but for the quivering mind pulled in a thousand directions, the decisions that plague it are enless, and they exhaust one's mental strenth. People with an usteady mind inevitabley end up failing; those with an unwavering mind achieve great success.

there are people, ignorant of this principle, who delight in their own particular dogma, proclaiming there is nothing else. Their idea of heaven is their own enjoyment. The main reason they do their activities is to achieve the pleasures and power that heaven promises. Thus, even though their motive is common and positive, their are in truth filled with rather selfish desires.

With their minds thus taken up by their own selfish desires for everlasting pleasure and power, they are not able to develop the utter concentration needed to reach union with God, which is mankind's only real objective.

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To work without desire may seem impossible, but the way to do it iis to substitute thoughts of Divinity for thoughts of desire. Do your work in this world with your heart fixed on the Divine, insted of on outcomes. Do not worry about results. Be even tempered in success or failure. This mental evenness is what is meant by yoga (union with god) Indeed, quanimity is yoga!

When you are endowed with this basic detac hement, you shed the karmic consequences of both your good and bad deeds, casting aside the inevitable effects of your actions. Never loose sight of the overriding goal, which is to free yourself from bondage duringthis lifetime, to shed attatchment to worldly things, detach from ego, and truly release yourself from teh wheel of birht and death. When you do this you actually become one with GOD.

A yogi is a truely wise person whos consciousnes is unified with Brahman (the godhead). True ygis are detached. They are not at all concerned about the fruits of thier actions and thus have left all anxiety behind. Detachment is the means to convert misery laden karma into misery free living. Detachment is the means for rising above worldly activities and gettign to a state beyond the worldly.

When it [the mind] can rest steady and undistracted in contemplation of the True Self Within, you will be enlightened and completely united in love with the Divine. This is where yoga reaches in culmination; the merging of individual consciousness in Cosmic Consciousness. This is nothing less than the goal of life.

The Illuminated Ones
Sthithaprajna (one who is established in wisdom)
This is one who abandons all selfish desires, cravings and torments of the heart; who is satisfied with the true self (atma) and wants nothing outside the Self. This one knows that real bliss is only found with in.

This is the man or woman who's mind is unperturbed by sorrow and adversity, who doesn't thirst for pleasures, and is fee of the three traits that most tarnish the mind. --namely attachment, fear and anger. Such one is an Illuminated One, a sthithaprajna