Karma Yoga - the Art of Living

The branch of yoga that deals with karma is called asresults leads you to stress, competition and
the karma yoga. Usually you are bound by theaggressiveness. This has led to increased incidences
cravings and desires associated with your act butof stress, diabetes, depression, heart ailments and
you can free yourself by doing the act butsuicides and has led many youngsters to use drugs,
dissociating yourself from its consequences. This isalcohol and cigarettes. Hence following the teaching
the basic concept behind karma yoga and the personof Krishna in Gita, wherein he advises Arjun: "You are
who follows this path is known as karma yogi. Hisentitled to an action but not its fruits" will lead you to
behaviour is of indifference and while the world maya happy and stress free life.
think he is not interested, in reality he has masteredA karma yogi realizes this and hence he follows the
his desires and has developed awareness of the realpath of detachment. But this does not make him dull
significance of the events that occur around him.or inefficient. On the contrary, he channelizes his
This yoga involves doing your duty without anyentire energy into the tasks at hand with complete
reservations but is free of the cravings of the resultsvigour as his energy is not dissipated and gives it a
that are obtained from the act. This attitude isbest shot. Hence the results of his actions are the
difficult to acquire because we are taught to hankerbest and he gets good fruits. He does not run after
after the fruits of our labour and any failure to obtainpleasure but pleasure follows him. This makes him a
the desired results leads you to frustration andpleasant person to be around and thus enjoys
negative thinking. Also, constant attachment to thesuccess in his life.