I get a lot of questions from yoga teachers about how to explain karma-yoga — the yoga of liberation through action.
And I frequently get asked for advice on how to speak about bhakti-yoga, the yoga of devotion, in yoga classes.
Speaking about karma-yoga is challenging because it seems impossible to act in the world without generating some kind of reaction.
Speaking about bhakti-yoga can be tricky because yoga is not a religion but bhakti is theistic by definition.
But what happens when you put karma-yoga and bhakti-yoga together?
This verse from the Bhagavad Gita speaks to the idea that the ultimate goal of karma-yoga, liberation, can be only be reached by adding bhakti: devotion to a personal form of Divinity
Offering your actions to God definitely makes yoga sound like a religion, perhaps even a sectarian religion since “Viṣṇu” implies Hinduism.
It also sounds dangerous, as if it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re doing it for God.
Yoga teachers who want to speak about bhakti in their classes justifiably assume that most of their students are not coming to their classes to hear about God. But some of them may be interested to learn how to act in the world without generating a karmic reaction.
In the interest of playing it safe or simply due to a poor fund of knowledge, many teachers opt for modern interpretations of bhakti that employ all manner of evasive maneuvers to avoid acknowledging the centrality of a Supreme Being in bhakti-yoga.
And all too often, karma-yoga gets reduced to providing someone with free labor or donating your time to some worthy cause or, at best, the unattainable ideal of action without attachment, as if it were possible to do anything without being motivated by something.
My advise is always to stick with the traditional understandings of karma-yoga and bhakti-yoga. A good way to do that is to talk about them in relationship to one another. This approach doesn’t just honor the wisdom tradition from which yoga comes; it provides us with a philosophically sound approach to connecting yoga wisdom to current events.
I’m not saying this is easy. On the contrary, the idea of karma may sound simple at first — what goes around comes around — but it’s actually one of the most complex elements of yoga philosophy.
One reason why it’s so complicated is because the concept of karma is so tightly intertwined with other aspects of yogic metaphysics, such as the gunas: the three modes of material nature — illumination, passion, and darkness.
Bhakti is also a rich and complex topic. It’s not just devotional sentimentality nor is it a specific set of rituals and doctrines that apply to only one form of faith; it’s a nuanced aesthetic philosophy that supports the development of God consciousness in ways that can be applied to a wide variety of faith forms.
And, according to yoga wisdom, action in — or in pursuit of — God consciousness doesn’t generate a karmic reaction.
How can we tell genuine devotion that doesn’t generate a karmic reaction from pseudo-religiosity that does?
This is where the three modes of material nature come in:
Here are three examples of discernment in the mode of darkness and how to look at them through the lens of guna, karma and bhakti:
- The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received over 200 complaints from U.S. service members alleging that military commanders have been framing the conflict with Iran as a “biblically sanctioned” mission that foreshadows “the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
- The Iranian clerical establishment’s atrocities in response to the protests that preceded the current attacks was just the latest in a long history of human rights abuses and cruelty towards Iranian citizens that was rationalized by a radical and politicized interpretation of Shia Islam.
- Jewish settlers in the West Bank are driven by a messianic ideology that views the West Bank as a God-given ancestral inheritance. They believe settling this land is a divine command that justifies using violence to displace Palestinians and establish “greater Israel.”
The details of how these are all examples of religion in the mode of darkness are beyond the scope of this email. Suffice it to say that the inability to distinguish “between action that should be taken and action that should not be taken” tells us that this kind of mis-directed and de-humanizing devotion is a sure-fire formula for generating negative karmic reactions, otherwise known as bad karma.
For devotional action to be properly directed, it must, at the very least, be aligned with action in the mode of illumination. Knowing the difference between “what is binding and what is liberating” is the obvious pre-requisite for liberating action.
So how can teachers speak about the intersection of karma-yoga and bhakti-yoga in a yoga class? Try something like this:
By framing karma-yoga as the path of action without reaction and bhakti-yoga as a non-sectarian culture of devotion, we can talk about how they work together as a twin path to liberation and God consciousness in a way that honors the yoga wisdom tradition without sounding like a preacher.
What do you think? Has this helped you think differently about karma-yoga and bhakti–yoga or see how to connect them to current events in a relatable way? Write back and let me know.
Wishing you all good fortune,
– Hari-k