Yoga
Different Styles of Yoga
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Karma Yoga
Practice Of Karma Yoga - Yoga Poses and Positions
The practice of Karma yoga is
based on the simple ideology of doing good actions
under all circumstances and believing them to be
directed towards the divine consciousness at every
step of execution. It embodies the factor of
selflessness in all actions. This means that all
actions are performed with no hidden desires or
feeling of receiving anything in return. This is
the path of Karma yoga, which emphasizes that all
human actions are bringing the person closer to
God every time. Actions are necessary to be
taken. Actions have a purifying quality to them.
This can be experienced in our everyday lives.
When a person performs a certain duty in the right
fashion he feels light and his conscious is
cleared. He feels a sort of burden lifted from
him. This is exactly what the practice of Karma
yoga is. In the ancient texts this philosophy has
been propounded and discussed in great details.
This feeling of ridding the conscious with the
burden is defined as something that is akin to
experiencing Godliness. If the person continues to
indulge in good deeds he will come closer and
closer to experiencing this divine consciousness. Karma yoga is considered to be
the basic step before any other form of yoga can
be practiced. This is the form of yoga that makes
the mind fertile for impregnation with the seeds
of further advancement on the path of attaining
divine wisdom. Any yogi who wants to proceed
further in his quest of supreme experience has to
follow the path of Karma yoga. His practice and
all efforts in other directions will remain
completely futile if he does not follow the
principles of Karma yoga in all his daily actions.
This certainly proves the basic
misconception of yoga being a practice of
renouncing the world and indulging simply in the
service of God wrong. If all yoga practices for
their fructification have to be dependent first
and foremost on performing one's all duties
responsibly, then yogic methodology has to begin
with correct actions only. This brings to light
many so-called propagators of yogic philosophies
and their fallacies as well. There is a huge
discord between what is being put forward and what
actually the reality is. The practice of Karma
yoga is based on Nishkaam karma which means
performing actions without any self interest,
greed, jealousy and desire for a reward, and also
considering that every action is one step taken
closer to God. Many present propagators and
teachers of yoga may probably fail to qualify as
teachers on the basis of this initial
discriminatory stage. Selfless service is the only
way to proceed further on the path to quest of the
divine. Many people make the mistake of going
straight to the path of Gyana yoga or even
practice Hatha yoga but they cannot get the divine
until and unless they purify their souls with the
practice of Karma yoga. The aspirant to the wisdom
of yogic knowledge will qualify as a true aspirant
only when he concentrates on his actions and
awakens the consciousness of his self. Then he
truly becomes an Adhikari or real aspirant to
further wisdom and can be called a Karma yogi. This is a stage when he becomes
free of all egos. Human ego is the first barrier
to attainment of salvation. For further progress
the ego has to be resigned and the self should be
made completely devoid of it. This is indeed a
very difficult thing to do. But all the ancient
texts and practices of yoga consider this as the
first step and the foundation. So for beginners it
is essential to understand that if serious
learning of yoga has to be done this necessarily
has to be the first stage. This again brings us to the
fact of many different teachers and propagators
available to us these days. The person who can
really qualify to be a guru has to be free of all
egotisms, greed, selfishness, warped thought
processes, prejudices and other such derogatory
feelings. Another basic qualification for
the practice of Karma yoga is that a person should
have sufficient courage. It is a reality of this
world that the right action cannot be taken by
many because of lack of courage. This is a
necessary step towards practice of Karma yoga
because the practice of right actions is an
intense act of bravery. But at the same time the
karma yogi has to keep away from other vices like
arrogance and prejudice. So he has to maintain a
difficult balance of socially acceptable behaviour
and at the same time be assertive in all his
actions. This is certainly not an easy task and
requires lot of innovative thinking as well. In
the modern times many people fit this definition
of true karma yogis. In India the person who
perhaps comes closest to this is Mahatma Gandhi. Karma yoga is a dynamic
practice and not a static one. It is a devotion
that should run for a lifetime for ultimate
fulfillment.
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