MEDITATE WHILE YOU WORK (8)

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MEDITATE WHILE YOU WORK : A NEW PATH FOR A NEW AGE (8)

Swami Ashokananda

 

(continued)

 

Even our great Shankara in his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita,

which embodies the teachings of Sri Krishna and is the first

great book on karma yoga, has said that practice of karma yoga

succeeds only in purifying the mind, and then, when the mind is

purified, other practices begin. In other words, Shankara reduced

karma yoga to a subsidiary spiritual practice. The essential

practices, according to him, are upaasana, or mental worship,

and contemplation and meditation. That is, only through jnana,

knowledge, which is derived through contemplation, is one able

to realize God. That is his interpretation. Even those who have

not taken such an extreme view of spiritual practice as Shankara

and have not interpreted the Gita as he did, feel that karma,

or action, is not in itself a path to spiritual realization.

For example, in contrast to Shankara, Ramanuja maintained that

the path to God-realization is a mixture of karma and jnana.

He said that it is jnana-karma-samuccaya, 'the coordination

of knowledge and action'. But here Ramanuja interpreted action

in the very restricted sense of performing ritualistic practices

such as external worship, and even before that, of doing one's

duty according to codes enunciated by the great sages. He did

not mean any and every action as such; there was that restriction

in his definition of karma.

 

 

(to be continued)