It’s a very fine line between karma (action and its consequences) and karm yog (the path of selfless action performed without attachment to the results). From one perspective the physical actions seem very similar, but internally, there’s a world of difference. And the outcome is also a world of departure, because through karm yog you attain God and you get perfect happiness forever. And through just karm, you remain bound in this world.
So, again, talking about these misconceptions of karm yog does not mean doing actions without caring about the outcome. We do care about the outcome, but we’re just not personally attached. Here’s the best way to think about it: karm yog means you’re not performing this action because you think that by succeeding you’re going to get happiness out of that. That’s not karm yog. If you think that by doing this,
“I’m going to get happiness!”
You’re not doing karm yog because happiness is involved. So, karm yog means just doing the best with the understanding that your real goal is to attain God, but you do this because you also have to exist in the world. So it’s a very good way to live in the world. You can be calm and balanced. You can react to situations appropriately instead of emotionally reacting.
See, parents say, “How can I take care of my kids without attachment?”
Do you know what attachment is? Attachment is inherently selfish. If you’re attached to your children, it means you expect to get happiness out of them. That’s the basis of attachment. Where we believe we’ll get happiness, that’s where we get attached. So it means you’re selfishly desiring that your kid should behave in a certain way, turn out in a certain way. Why? So it will make you happy, proud. That’s selfish.
So being attached is not helping your kids. Attach your mind to God and then do your duty towards your kids. Duty means educate them, guide them, give them affection. Give them what they need, not what you want. And that’s only possible when you’re attached to God instead of to your kids.
This is our own homemade philosophy when we think, “Oh, wait, I have to be attached here!”
That’s not said in any scripture or by any Saints. We made that up ourselves to justify our own attachment. It’s natural because our mind likes being attached. It’s attached because of its own decision that there’s happiness here. So, of course, it wants to stay attached. It thinks it’s going to lose something by releasing that attachment. But it’s not losing anything, it’s gaining.
Our attachment is what binds us in this world. Release the attachment and you’re free. You’re free to do your duty responsibly and to the best of your ability without the interference of those attachments. And you’re free to attach your mind to God to attain eternal happiness. So you’re not losing by releasing attachments, you’re gaining. Yet, the best approach is still not to try to remove attachments from the mind. The best approach is to reason with the mind and just say,
“You should desire happiness from God. That’s what happiness is.”
Just reason with the mind and let it start to experience happiness from God. Then, it will naturally start to divert from the world towards God. It happens naturally, not forcefully.
