From Sacred Action to Devotional Feelings to Bliss

Nature has been described as the field of action; it gives you the opportunity to sanctify your work and reach your goal. When you perform 60 good actions, one good feeling will emerge. Therefore, to get the one good feeling you have to perform so many good actions. And it is only when you have sixty such good feelings that there will be one small movement of the hour hand, which represents the ineffable experience of divine joy. Therefore, Krishna told Arjuna to perform good actions. When you do innumerable good actions, you are likely to get one or two deeply satisfying and lasting good feelings. And it is only when you develop innumerable such good feelings that you will be able to reach the bliss that is the eternal state of the atma. Therefore, you must start by performing many good actions.

The body has been given to you for this specific purpose of performing actions. It is impossible to spend even a moment without being active. That is why the performance of sacred activities, which includes ceremonial and ritual worship, has been given so much importance in the Vedas, the holy scriptures of India. But sacred actions do not just refer to performing sacrifices, doing penance and giving charity, each of which gives rise to an anticipated result. There are many actions that you can undertake from which you would not expect any fruit, at all. Such actions, which are performed without any concern for the fruit, can be termed karma yoga.

When an action is performed without desire and without any feeling of egoism, then it is karma yoga. That is the highest form of action, the most sacred of all, and it's one you should follow in every move you make in life. Remove your egoism. Drive it away. Remove your desire for the fruit. When you perform action with this attitude, it becomes work in the spirit of true sacrifice, it becomes penance and it becomes yoga. All three of these, sacrifice, penance and yoga convey the same idea. Every action you perform should be sanctified in this way. Even inhaling and exhaling are actions; they are also karma. Without performing karma, man cannot live for even a moment in the world. But karma associated with ego will always be narrow and harmful.