Karma Yoga

We have a Karma Yoga (KY) class here thats in the evening for around 45m. I was a little unsettled during it since my understanding of KY doesn't go well with what they have here. I was doing the job for the sake of the class and given an option, I would lovingly have skipped it. There were multiple reasons for it. The first one that I mentioned was my understanding: any job done without expectation of any result as Gita says makes up KY; any association to the work done has to be given up; it has to be done wholeheartedly too; with a bhakti-bhaava... and so on. I did not have any of this, since I was thinking of my purpose of jnaana-yoga while doing KY and then bhakti didn't arise every evening. Also my health gave way after a hectic day during KY.

Thus I felt that I was being unjust to the course and talked about quitting it. After some discussions with the respective authorities, they gave exempted me from this so-called KY. However, I shifted to doing other things out here like serving in the canteen, data entry jobs or library work instead. (I also got exemption from the bodily-focussed yogAsanA class and took to long walks instead that gives me time to continue my manana on vedAntic learnings). So much for KY here at YVFA. Now for some stories about what KY is:

The first story goes about Swami Sivananda who used to serve people endlessly with his catchy tagline: Be Good, Do Good. Swami Chidananda went on to say this later on: Do as much good to as many people in as many ways as is possible. Sw. Sivananda was Dr. Kuppuswami in his purvAshrama and so he used to give medication to many a people who used to walk to Kedarnath-Badrinath. Once, one of the persons on such yatra left his medication behind and Sw. Sivananda followed to trace him in order to give the same. At each chatti, having missed the person, he caught up pace, eventually running, in order to catch up and finally handing over the medication advicing prescription and walking back from 7kms upwards of Rishikesh!

The second story, interestingly, was narrated to us by Sw. Radhakrishnanandaji during his special class on dharma. A sannyAsi starts walking from an ashram, after having collected food. Towards the afternoon having come 10 miles into the forest, he decides to have lunch. His lunch is, however, covered up with ants! The sannyAsi ponders so: "If I leave the ants here in the forest with my lunch, they'll have the food now, but they'll starve for want of more later". So, he goes back 10 miles and leaves the ants at the ashram so that they get their share of food!

How many of us would have left the food and the ants to themselves in the forest, let alone walk back?!!! So, sevA in itself seems like a big word to me; we can hardly do any service to anyone with such comparison!