KARMA YOGA
In case you didn’t know, we have a karma yoga program at Mala. We offer free yoga classes to students in return for helping us keep the studio clean, laundering the towels & blankets, washing the mats and signing in classes.
Our studio is maintained and supported by this wonderful group of committed students and we are immensely grateful to all of them for helping us manage the day to day needs of the studio.
Karma is often defined as the law of cause & effect…… The definitions and explanations of karma are numerous, dense and different based on whether the definitions come from a Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, or even Western perspective. There are lengthy definitions on the web if you are interested and Yoga + Joyful Living magazine has a long editorial on Karma & Destiny in the Summer 2009 issue.
So I won’t attempt to paraphrase, or summarise here – instead I will introduce a definition of Karma Yoga by Georg Feuerstein, from The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga:
“Karma Yoga – Yoga of self transcending action was first communicated under this name well over 2,000 years ago in the Bhagavad Gita, though it undoubtedly existed prior to that scripture. The Gita introduced this path as one of the two “ways of life” taught by Krishna.
Karma yoga encourages an active life, though from an ingenious perspective: All work must not only be appropriate, which for the most part means allotted to one by one’s position in life, but must also be performed in the spirit of an inner sacrifice. Only then are one’s actions not karmically binding.”
So one of the ways to break out of the cycle of samsara, the cycle of suffering that we are caught in as we are born, die, are reborn…. Is karma yoga.
Taking action in our lives, doing work, with no attachment to the outcome, without identifying with those actions; performing in this spirit of inner sacrifice is an integral part of freeing ourselves from the bondage of karma.
If you are interested in joining our team of karma yogis, contact Rick Jean Trink: rickijean@yahoo.com .