Karma Yoga: Selfless Action in a Selfie World

Aum namo bhagavate vasudevaya.

Haribol.

So this is a continuation in a series of talks that I was requested to give here in Hamilton on the wisdom of the Bhagavad-gita. And every time we do it, our host, James, chooses a topic that he thinks will be relevant to people, and I speak on it. So today, the title is Karma Yoga, Selfless Action in a Selfie World. It’s kind of like, what?

The message here is actually very simple and straightforward. When we speak of yoga, we are speaking of the nature of the union between the individual soul and the Supreme Soul. That is the essence of yoga. And of course, there are many different types of practice that led one towards, or increasingly made it so a person could experience this union, so we’ll deal with that a little bit later, so the topic being being karma yoga. So, we’re speaking of a particular spiritual pathway.

So, from the onset, since we’re talking about selfless service in a selfie world, I will offer a proposition to everyone to consider, that self-centeredness is actually the enemy of self-realization. That is a really profound truth and reality, and we will deal with that and explore it as we go forward.

When we look at the world, the current situation, I mean, since we’re talking about a selfie world, we need to consider where we find it. We are in a place, and I’m talking about humanity at large, that has never been experienced in thousands of years of human history. We’re in a most extraordinary place. And what I would just like to offer is that, whatever this place is, the reality is that it’s not good, and it’s not good because of empirical evidence. We have greater rates of reported unhappiness, depression, mental health issues, suicidation and actual suicide. We’re experiencing it at levels that are unprecedented in the history of keeping records on these things. And so we have to accept that if that is the case, then obviously something is wrong.

There’s a BBC documentarian, a very smart guy, Adam Curtis, and he did a documentary I reference often, called A Century of the Self. And he said that in this documentary he explores how in the last century, and, in his words,

“We saw the rise of an idea that has come to dominate our society. It is the belief that satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority.”

And of course that is a fundamental reality, but when you look at the fruit of that, it’s a very undesirable fruit. When we look at some of the impacts—I mean, we could go on for hours dealing with a lot of the data around these subjects, but I’ll just reference a statement that a well-known environmental lawyer, his name was Gus Speth, he was formerly the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, and he is one of the administrators of the United Nations Development Program… So this is somebody with a lot of exposure, he knows a lot of stuff, and so his words carry some weight.

So he has stated that,

“I used to think that the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that 30 years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these, we need a cultural and spiritual transformation, and we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

So, it’s very telling that he points to problems, individual problems, and the way people are looking at the world, looking at others, relating to the world and relating to others.

So, this world where self-focus is not just promoted, but it is actually ingrained by social media and internet use, and of course everybody lives on their phone. So, ingrained, that’s kind of like a pretty heavy word. Ingrained means it can no longer be kind of separated. It’s become part of who we identify as and part of how we are living.

So in this regard, another gentleman, Tristan Harris, who used to be a design ethicist for Google and then left Google because he was so dismayed at how the products being created were, he considered, so unethical, because they are all about manipulation. They’re not about providing service or information, they’re actually about manipulation. And so, giving evidence in the US Congress, he, in speaking of the business model of big tech, he said,

“[It] is to create a society that is addicted, outraged, polarized, performative [and I will come back to that word performative] and disinformed, and that’s just the fundamentals of how it works.”

Of course, performative ties into part of the title, talking about a selfie world, where everybody’s performing for the camera. They’re performing, looking for that shot that they can blast out to the universe, that everybody’s going to just fall in love with or be so interested in, that thing that will make me look like an amazing, really interesting person who is very attractive and very lovable. And so I’m constantly performing for the camera.

And all you’ve got to do—I mean they’ve got these brilliant clips on—I’ve seen them, where people see someone getting ready for the selfie shot. And so you’ve got like, they’ve got a whole production team and everybody, and there’s some influencer, and they’re there at some protest, and you see them all in a huddle, and they’re talking about what they’re going to do, then everybody gets ready, and they’re ready with the cameras, then the person jumps out in front of the protest, and doing their trip. And then as soon as they’ve got their footage everybody leaves. They’re not interested in what’s really going on, and what there is to protest about. They’re there to be seen to be interesting and concerned and compassionate. So this really epitomizes selfie world.

The fact that you have this thing on your phone where you can take multiple shots, Brrr, Brrr [miming taking shots] and then you’re scrolling through to see which one you’re going to share with everybody. That’s so pretentious, you’re just pretending. But this has become like the reality that people are living in.

And it’s become so problematic, I feel, that in a very recent survey of children in elementary school, grade school in the UK, when these young children were asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” 30% of the children said they wanted to be an influencer. It’s like, what the hell is going on? Where you—You think that’s noble? You think that’s going to enrich your life? You think this is going to contribute something to society, that you’re doing something actually worthwhile?

And so, we are in this space where people are utterly self-absorbed. And of course, the reality is that self-centeredness—and when I say self-centeredness, people understand the word in different ways. I’m just talking about where it’s all about me. And we don’t realize that this is the case for practically all of us, to different degrees. I see everything in the world in relation to me. I put myself in the centre, my husband, my wife, my children, my parents, my friends, my countrymen, my species. I see everything in relation to me. And that is incredibly unhealthy.

And this is not how humanity has existed since time immemorial. This is a relatively new phenomena. And in most religious practices and spiritual paths, the idea, up until about 50 years ago, was a person that is very self-centred, you should avoid them. It’s corruptive. It’s going to corrupt you. It’s going to hurt your life to become closely connected to someone like that. Now, that’s all gone. And it’s all just in this short period of time, we’ve got this massive transformation where people are utterly self-focused. And it leads, as I said, to unhappiness and suffering.

The words that I copied of a well-known, highly qualified clinical psychologist, they stated,

“One of the words that clumps with negative emotion is self-consciousness…”

And here, the way he’s using it, it’s in a technical and a clinical way, it means self-centeredness. It doesn’t mean just to become a little embarrassed, how a lot of people use the word self-conscious, but here you’re talking about a deep absorption in the idea of self.

“…which means that self-consciousness is so tightly associated with suffering that they are not conceptually distinguishable, which means literally the more you think about yourself, the more miserable you are.”

That has completely escaped everyone in this current time, but this is a really important principle to understand.

So, I mentioned earlier that yoga is really about the process of the union of the individual soul with the Supreme Soul, and in that there is a harmony, rather than feeling estranged. Like most people in their life, they feel somewhat disconnected and disassociated. This is a really common thing, especially with young people. They don’t know where they fit. They don’t know what they’re meant to be doing, the idea of purpose. Everybody feels kind of alone, and they’re struggling to find purpose and meaning. There is not an experience of harmony between what they are thinking and how they are living, their choices in life, and a peacefulness within their heart and within their mind, what to speak of happiness.

So, fundamental reality: “The attainment of the goal of yoga means that we overcome the suffering and the isolation, including spiritual isolation arising from a self-centred existence and self-centred state of consciousness.”

So I thought that was a very wonderful description of what the process of yoga actually does.

So there are of course different yogic paths, and I will just read from a commentary by Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami in the Bhagavad Gita.

“When we speak of yoga we refer to linking up our consciousness with the Supreme Absolute Truth. Such a process is named differently by various practitioners in terms of the particular method adopted. When the linking up process is predominantly in fruitive activities, it is called karma-yoga, when it is predominantly empirical, it is called jñāna-yoga, and when it is predominantly in a devotional relationship with the Supreme Lord, it is called bhakti-yoga.” [Commentary by AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada Bhagavad-gītā 6.46]

So, this word karma literally just means action, but actually not all action. In the Bhagavad-gita, they talk about akarma, vikarma. So karma relates to action that is not excessively sinful, what is considered excessively corrupted, where people engage in activity seeking to derive some benefit, some good result for themselves. But when we use the word karma, we must understand that it is action which binds. It binds us to the material world. It binds us to material consciousness. It binds us to the cycle of repeated birth and death. That is what is karma.

I think—and I’ll mention something about James a little bit later on, and I know he finds this topic actually really interesting, and it’s related to his personal life, his own journey and his own life experience. While karma is binding, selfless action is liberating, and it awakens one to their real identity, and this process of beginning to engage in selfless activity, selfless service, is broadly called karma yoga.

So the word is actually used in the Bhagavad-gita, in the 3rd chapter, the 3rd sloka. In speaking about this process or this form of activity, the term karma yoga is used in a specific case, the karma-yogena. It means through karma yoga. So in this verse, it’s translated,

“The Blessed Lord said: O sinless Arjuna, I have already explained that there are two classes of men who realize the Supreme Soul. Some are inclined to understand Him by empirical, philosophical speculation, and others are inclined to know Him by devotional work.” [Bhagavad-gītā 3.3]

So right now we’re seeing the two categories of people on a spiritual path: those that want to try and do it through the power of the mind, to try and think and to understand and to seek, to reach the dizzy heights of self-realization and God-realization just by mental gymnastics, but then you have another category of people who choose to engage in activity, activity not for self-satisfaction but in a mood of selfless service.

And it’s important—you’ll see that in many dharmic traditions and in certain parts of Vedic teaching people have this idea, yeah, they understand, “Wow, material activity, the material world, it binds me here and because of that I suffer, and so I need to reject everything, I need to run away from it, I need to get as far away from the material world as possible. Let me go to the mountain.”

I mean, it was interesting in the beginning of Bhagavad-gita, Arjuna, who is a warrior-prince, he’s on a battlefield, and he’s suddenly confronted with the reality of what is about to happen (and he’s a great hero, he’s not a tilly, he’s not a coward), and he suddenly decides, this is horrific, what is about to happen, and I don’t want any part of it, I think I should go to the mountains and live a life of renunciation. In Sanskrit, this is tyaga, or vairagya. Krishna said that that is not possible for you. Because your body and mind already comes with a certain nature, you get to run off, but very quickly you will be stimulated to want to engage in some form of activity, you’re not going to be able to do that. That is not practical for you.

And so he raises and brings to light the whole process of karma yoga, which is this idea of being able to live in the world, and not for the purpose of just taking, grabbing as much as I can, the question is, what can I give? And this applied in all aspects of life, even something such as marriage, which from the ancient Vedic teachings, was considered something very sacred. It was meant to be a process for spiritual enlightenment. They call this the grihastha, ashram. It is one of the four ashramas. They wouldn’t use that term if living together in a marriage situation could not be spiritually uplifting.

In one kind of consciousness, people want to put themselves at the centre, or their partner in marriage at the centre. And we want to be the focus of things. In a spiritual tradition, people placed God, however they understood that, at the centre, and they saw each other as fellow pilgrims on the same journey towards a higher spiritual truth, or reality, and they compassionately supported and helped each other.

And so we have this introduction of an idea that a lot of people have difficulty grasping. To become spiritual doesn’t mean you have to run off to the mountains. In reality, you can’t renounce anything because the fundamental truth is you don’t own anything. You showed up in this particular lifetime with nothing, and you will leave with nothing: but the whole time you’re here, you’re laying claim to everything that you encounter. And so the idea was introduced that one should rather live a life of duty, but to do it as a sacrificial offering to God or to some higher spiritual principle.

And so we have a verse:

“Work done as a sacrifice for Viṣṇu [meaning the Supreme] has to be performed, otherwise work binds one to this material world. Therefore, O son of Kuntī, perform your prescribed duties for His satisfaction, and in that way you will always remain unattached and free from bondage.” [Bhagavad-gītā 3.9]

One of the—I’ll share another verse too, because more often than not, you will see that when people approach spiritual life, they often will do it when it is self-centred. They will try to do things like externally. They want to appear as very holy, or very renounced, or they’re attaining something great. But whatever clothes people are wearing, and how they’re appearing in front of others does not necessarily reflect what’s actually going on inside. And so there is a verse that states:

“One who restrains the senses and organs of action, but whose mind dwells on sense objects, certainly deludes himself and is called a pretender. On the other hand, he who controls the senses by the mind and engages his active organs in works of devotion, without attachment, is by far superior.” [Bhagavad-gītā 3.6-7]

I’ll read another couple of verses because it kind of rounds out the subject:

“One who neither hates nor desires the fruits of his activities is known to be always renounced. Such a person, liberated from all dualities, easily overcomes material bondage and is completely liberated, O mighty-armed Arjuna.” [Bhagavad-gītā 5.3]

And then in another verse:

“One who knows that the position reached by means of renunciation can also be attained by works in devotional service and who therefore sees that the path of works and the path of renunciation are one, sees things as they are.” [Bhagavad-gītā 5.5]

So this is a unique idea that I can live in this world and not be part of it. I can go through all of the—I can undertake, I can engage in relationships, I can engage in work, but it is a question of, what is the central focus of my life? Who am I doing it for? So, when we ask the question, then, what is selfless service that’s being spoken of? what does it look like? we have another verse from the third chapter that states:

“Therefore, without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty; for by working without attachment, one attains the Supreme.” [Bhagavad-gītā 3.19]

And then a few verses later,

“Therefore, O Arjuna, surrendering all your works unto Me, with mind intent on Me, and without desire for gain and free from egoism and lethargy, you should fight. One who executes his duties according to My injunctions and who follows this teaching faithfully, without envy, becomes free from the bondage of fruitive activity.” [Bhagavad-gītā 3.30-31]

And later it’s described as, one can learn to live in this world in much the way that the lotus leaf, how it is untouched by dirty water that it might be growing in, that one can attain this transcendental position.

So, okay, that’s all kind of like theoretical. On a practical level, what is it that we should be doing? How to live a life in this world and attain God-realization and self-realization? The great Caitanya Mahaprabhu, over 500 years ago, He stated the following, that:

“One who has taken his birth as a human being…. should make his life successful and work for the benefit of all other people.” [Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta – Ādi-līlā 9.41]

So now we have a prescription.

You know, a lot of people struggle with purpose. What’s my life for? What am I doing here? What should I be doing? Where will I find that place where I feel I have come home and everything is functioning the way it should be? The purpose of your life, the purpose of human life is self-realization and God-realization.

If you remove that, then your life is like that of an animal, simply focused on eating, sleeping, mating, engaging in sexual activity and defending what you see as yours. That’s the sum total of animal existence. And if we remove the quest for self-realization and God-realization, it puts us in that category.

That is your purpose. When that becomes central to your life and everything else is incorporated, one can attain great peacefulness. And what is it that makes life successful? It is, in reality, the awakening of my spiritual identity and my actual spiritual purpose.

In this world, and I use this example often, every single person, when they show kindness to someone, when they do something helpful, whether it’s for a child, an old person, anybody in between, you immediately have a feeling of goodness. This is good. I’ve done something worthwhile. When I feel that, I experience there is a contentment and there is a happiness. And the reason that you feel that is because it is the nature of the soul itself to love and to serve. That is part of your spiritual identity, of your spiritual purpose, the natural expression of the soul.

And so to make life, one’s life, successful, is to actually attain perfect love of God and then to manifest that love in both service to the highest truth, but service to all others as well.

So continuing, Caitanya Mahaprabhu said:

“It is the duty of every living being to perform welfare activities for the benefit of others with his life, wealth, intelligence and words.

“By his work, thoughts and words, an intelligent man must perform actions which will be beneficial for all living entities in this life and in the next.” [Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta – Ādi-līlā 9.42-3]

And of course the focus is not to just become concerned with relieving people’s passing suffering, but to actually permanently relieve them from suffering. And that of course means providing spiritual food, spiritual direction, spiritual association.

I remember, and I don’t know if things have changed very much, and I might have got some of it wrong: I remember when I first met James, he was a bit of a lout. He had lived a life of drug usage and drug addiction. He was raised in a pretty rowdy environment with all his mates. Or not? And it was pretty out there. It’s not like he’s the only one, but I think it’s an amazing example. And then he’s looking for something. You’re looking for tools, how to deal with addiction, how to find purpose, something in life. And he comes along to one of the meditation programs and it’s kind of like something going on here! And he keeps coming back, and he comes to a point that a lot of people don’t come to, and it was like this clarity and the way he is speaking to me, that “My God, my whole life is about me, and my search for happiness and enjoyment. It’s all about me, and trying to get, get, get, get. It’s not a life of giving” And he’s hearing about karma yoga and selfless service, so he consciously decides that he’s going to put it to the test. He’s going to try it and do it.

Is this pretty much a reasonable summary? Or? Yeah.

So he decides he’s going to give it a blast. And so the only goodness that he’s experiencing around him is that he’s met some people that are trying to teach others about meditation and cultivating understanding of your spiritual identity and spiritual knowledge. And so he decides, “I’m going to try and be helpful.” And so he’s helping set up at the programs, and then he’s wanting to hang out with people that are fired up to try and serve and help others. He’s drawn to those kind of people. And so he wants to go hang out with them and listen, “What have you got to say?” He wants to attend classes. He wants to learn.

And he became increasingly absorbed in that kind of activity, to the point where not only is he assisting other people who are going out to serve others by providing this wonderful spiritual experience, but he starts doing it on his own, with the help of others. He starts taking a lead role, in the beginning in a smaller way. He’s spending a lot of time helping others; but then I remember when we started doing the thing in the (where was that? the park?) Mount Eden in park, we’re doing a kirtan evening. A lot of people were coming. It was actually really, really nice. And it inspires—he’s got a taste for something, to the point where he actually decides to pretty much base himself here in Hamilton, along with Connie, for the primary purpose of wanting to offer you people something of enormous value. He’s doing the other stuff, but it’s all centred around this desire to be of service to others.

And has it changed your life?

James: I don’t particularly feel like I deserve the attention I’m getting, but it’s that something was even more far out than that, is that, I’d felt so—I’m so anxious that I’m [word]  live the life that was so—I was so depressed, and there was just [words hard to hear] and God knows what else. I just was so desperate that I just had to give it a go, that I did something called the surrender experiment, which I’ve decided for one month of my life I was just going to give without expecting anything. And within one week of that—I just went around my tools and my van just fixing things for people, and within one week I just became—I just had this massive smile on my face. It was involuntary. I couldn’t even just get rid of it. I just felt so happy. [Acd: Yeah.] I haven’t felt that in my life, I don’t think. I’d felt the fake happy. I’d felt having a laugh with your mates happy, but I’d not felt this happiness that came from inside before, and it was just, I couldn’t believe it, and that scared the shits out of me, because I thought it was going to go again. I thought that [words hard to hear] [Acd: Yeah.] It’s been amazing.

Acharya das: So, you know you would all benefit from actually asking him to share, and Connie as well, what is it that draws them to do what they do, and what is it that they’re experiencing? This is not just a philosophy or an idea. You are connecting with your true spiritual being. It means you are beginning to function on a spiritual platform.

When you ask the question of who am I? who am I? it must be answered. Three things must be answered. What is my essence? What is my position? And what is my natural function? These three things must be answered. My essence is that I am Brahman, aham brahmasi. I am spirit. I am spiritual. I’m not the body. I’m residing temporarily within this body, but the body is not me. But that doesn’t tell me everything.

Where do I fit in this world in relation to everything? Well, I’ve been trained to see myself as like a small God. I’m at the centre of everything. It’s all about me. What can I get? How can I get? What can I do to get, to get, to get, to try and be the centre of enjoyment and happiness? But that’s not our position. We are not the Supreme. We are not great controllers. We are small spiritual beings. And we must embrace the reality and be humble about this reality.

And what is my natural function? Your natural function is the awakening of spiritual love. It is called prema. And the manifestation of that love, just as in relationships in this world, if people say they love each other, how is it manifest? Your concern for the well-being of the other, your desire to see them happy, which means you engage in actions of service. When that is directed to the highest spiritual reality, to God, and it is—overflows to all of God’s children, then one will come to experience the reality of complete spiritual realization and ecstatic happiness.

Okay, so thank you very much, James, for the topic. It was—it’s a simple message. You try to live for yourself, you will be unhappy, and you will become bound—not—you will continue to be bound to this cycle of repeated birth and death. If you adopt a life of selfless service and make an offering of your life, an offering of your thoughts, your actions, your words, that will transform you. Everything will become transformed. I can actually guarantee that. And it’s the same for all living beings. Okay?

So we’ll—I’ll chant a little because there’s two kind of things you need to do. Well, one of them, you need less. That is like spiritual conversation and discussion. It’s good because it sort of orients you. It gives you sort of direction. It may inspire you. It may help you to stay on track. You can come to intellectually understand that I am an eternal spiritual being, but the thing that will make it so you realize and experience, that you see the reality of this, is going to be through the process of chanting these spiritual sounds.

When there is spiritual sound, it is inseparable from God and all His forms and aspects. And by associating, by placing ourselves in the proximity of spiritual sound, it is like we are immersing in an ocean, a warm balmy ocean. After we’ve been all hot and we’re looking for some relief from the heat, and being all sweaty and dirty, we become immersed in a spiritual ocean that will transform us. It will purify our heart. It will lift the fog that clouds our mind, and we will gradually and increasingly have spiritual vision and understanding. So, nothing more important.

So, I will chant the mahamantra, the Hare Krishna mantra.