By Bhikshu

Karma Yoga: Lesson VI

We shall now turn our attention to "Detachment," (see detachment article above) which is said to be the meaning of Karma Yoga & this "detachment" is termed "non-attachment" although the latter phrase conveys no meaning, for the one reason that a negative can't convey any positive, definite meaning.

The difference between the ideas conveyed by "detachment" & "non-attachment" is that detachment is a positive attitude of keeping oneself aloof or detached, while non-attachment is vague & of an indefinite meaninglessness which on that account has been made the subject of voluminous commentaries by cheap philosophers to whom we can attribute the desire to legislate for others via their public lectures.

As says Sankara in his commentary on verse III, 34 of the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I shall tell you where lies the scope for personal exertion & for the Teaching (Sastra). He who would follow the Teaching should at the very commencement rise above the sway of affection & aversion. For what we speak of as the nature of a person draws him to its course only through love & aversion.

He then neglects his own duties & sets about doing the duties of others. When on the other hand a person restrains these feelings by means of their enemy, then he will become mindful of the Teaching only when no longer subject to his own nature. Wherefore, let none come under the sway of these two; for they are his adversaries, obstacles to his progress on the right path, like thieves on the road."

The Sanskrit of Sankara is Sanskrit of the 8th century A.C. & the translator hasn't expressed the sense in modern English using philosophical parlance. What is conveyed is that the practitioner could with regard to the objects of objective world, avoid having either affection or aversion.

He could at all times view the oncoming thought or contacted object dispassionately; having learned to let it pass, as stated in Lesson IV, having learned to bear with it as stated in Lesson V, he might go a step further & remain quite aloof from it, all the while eagerly watching the thought fructify or the object working out the fulfillment.

As already stated, the first position of the Karma Yogin towards the oncoming thought or towards the universe is to accept it, the next position is to accept it without being affected by it. The Karma Yogi must especially guard himself against getting into researches of cosmogony, against bothering himself as to how the thought arose, or how it happened.

"The question of being is the darkest in all philosophy; all of us are beggars here; for all of us alike fact forms a datum, a gift which cannot be burrowed under, explained away or left behind," says a westerner. It's as well to leave aside the logical riddle untouched of how the coming of whatever it is, whether it came piecemeal or came it all together can be or at all logically understood. In the East this is termed Kismet, the Doctrine of Fatalism in the form expounded in Islam, of men who have combined a great sense of personal moral obligation with religious resignation as to the final outcome of human life. These have been characterized by their meek acceptance of the Present, of the Event as an Act of God, something that one should not question or trace out; most of the great religions are clear that life in the world is a tangle of disharmonies; in one way or another they say that this world is damned or is the abode of suffering, but the Doctrine of Kismet says that these disharmonies are here, this damnation is here inexplicably.

Why indeed explain, ask they? In the Buddhist metaphysic, the present is the consequence & the inevitable consequence of the Past of that Freewill once exercised which still is available for exercise.

The attitude towards the oncoming Thought must, therefore, be to put yourself in a proper mental (& physical) condition therefore, to meet it.

Be sane, always. Asceticism is not for you Karma Yogis at all; asceticism excites the mind, the object of the Karma Yogi is not only to calm it but to continue to keep it calm. Of course, during the periods of actual concentration there is no time for any but the work itself, but to make even the mildest asceticism a rule of life is the greatest of errors, except perhaps that of regarding asceticism itself as a virtue. I don't begin here an instruction again asceticism, though asceticism has always been the stumbling block most dreaded by the wise.

Christ said that John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking & the people called him mad; He himself came eating & drinking & they called him a gluttonous man & a wine bibber & the friend of publicans & shlllers. It must always be remembered that the Karma Yogi always does what he likes or rather what he wills & allows nothing to interfere with it, but because he is ascetic in the sense that he has no appetite for the stupidities which fools call pleasure, it has become the fashion with snobs, what we call the Sastris of India, to expect him to refuse things both natural and necessary.

It has been put to the Karma Yogi that he must accept his environment, and also wrongly we say that he should not only accept his environment but also stick on till death to that environment. The notorious caste system had been vainly trying for ages to assert that a cobbler should be a cobbler, an oil-monger an oil-monger, but that only a Brahmin could become a God. Alas, Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya, and a host of others have been deified and were not Brahmins at all. No doubt the Karma Yogi has no right, no business to break up his domestic circumstances; for the Karma Yogi's doctrine is pat with the Rosicrucian doctrine "that the Adept should be a man of the world, for such is nobler than the hermit."

But under any condition, in every environment, confronted without any proposition or any difficulty, aye, even with destiny in its darkest adversity, it is always open to the Adept to exercise his Freewill. Those who have master souls, says M____, refuse to be bound by anything but their own wills. "They may refrain from certain actions because their main purpose would be interfered with, just as a man refrains from smoking if he is training for a boat-race. But there are sane people so hypercritical that they claim their dislikes as virtue and it very often happens that the literature before the would-be Karma Yogi is full of the self-bombast of the poor, weedy, unhealthy degenerate who cannot smoke because his heart is out of order, and cannot drink because his brain is too weak to stand it or perhaps because the doctor has forbidden him to do it for the next two years, the man afraid of life, afraid to do anything lest some dire result should follow." Very often those acclaimed as the best and greatest of mankind are these slaves to custom and habit those unable to realise that the Karma Yogi must never be less, but always more than a man. The desie for the flesh has ever grown stronger for ascetics as they endeavored to combat it by abstinence and when with old age their functions are atrophied they claim vaingloriously "I have conquered," "I have Vairagya."

It is quite possible to attain Vairagya, that sort of indifference that marks a high stage in moral strength; an indifference that approaches disgust for everything what would remind the Englishman a great deal of the "Oxford manner." It is typically the phlegmatic type which declines to be moved by anything good (bad or indifferent) that does not belong to one. When one is affected by a wrong thought, a thought that does not, however, provoke pain for which latter the treatment has already been given, it is possible for the Karma Yogi to remain indifferent thereto; nay the indifference may be so far strengthened so as to be made a sort of disgust not expressively so, not even intensively so. The nature of the attitude of disgust herein called Vairagya is to remain quite phlegmatic about it, towards undesirable thoughts as towards needless Acts and happenings in the world around the Karma Yogi. Where it is as well to let well alone, it is the rule of Karma Yoga to remain indifferent, apparently indifferent all the time. However, the Karma Yogi watches the event, ready to intercede should harm be likely to ensue. The Karma Yogi can remember the famous adage: "Too many cooks spoil the broth too many physicians kill the patient-too much of care is not necessary about every passing thought."

The attitude of Vairagya herein suggested is, of course, a passion-free attitude; there is a particular method open to the Karma Yogi of keeping himself up in the state of equilibrium with which things can be done which bear no fruit and have no reaction. The Eastern Scriptures state that the Karma Yogin's status is like that of fishes in water, of kites in the air; they affect not the element in which they move. The Karma Yogi lives and moves in the world but he lives and moves practically incognito, practically as if he were making himself invisible, while continuing to work. It is best to explain this attitude by a praxis which has been advised and I quote the advice at length:

The student must set aside a small part of his daily life in which to concern himself with something quite different from the objects of his daily occupation. (Five minutes a day will suffice.)

He is not to occupy himself with the affairs of his own ego or with the thoughts that occur to him, in such moments. He should rather let the thoughts he experiences as messages from the outer world re-echo within his own completely silent self. (And note, you, yourself have to be utterly silent), the silence being assured by your taking up the attitude of disgust Vairagya.

N. B. And he will prepare himself to receive quite new impressions of the outer world through different eyes. (He need not be waiting particular results at all; he ought not to do so.)

For it is quite possible to view the universe through various kinds of spectacles, from various points of view; and similarly it is possible to consider each oncoming thought from a different point of view. The hint is to change your Point of View rather than attempt to change the Thought by going into the whence and why of it. He may of course remain perfectly indifferent to the experience furnished by the Thought, and the reason for the indifference requires to be better understood.

Just as the seven forms of perception and contact by perception generate a sevenfoldness of thought, so every thought deals with seven planes of experience in eastern psychology as stated by the Vedas. They are: (I) Memory, Smriti, (2) Vision, Pratyaksha, (3) Association, Aitihya, (4) Induction, Anumana. These four planes of thought work in collaboration and interrelation with thoughts from (5) the Sanchita, the storehouse that is the individual make-up; (6) Association or contact with which creates another thought, Prarabda; (7) accidental sympathetics, Agamya, crowning the whole. When the attention runs as a shuttle does through this warp it creates a weft of Action and Reaction called Samsara. One way to avoid this creation of Samsara is to deal with the original thought and inhibit it, by remaining in an attitude of disgust theretowards, and the attitude of disgust or Vairagya has to be taken up to every thought other than the subject of meditation. And before the attitude of disgust should the attitude of watchfulness hereinbefore advised be taken up.

All that is required in this stage is an inhibition of thought. The Karma Yogi has to recognise that the thought that occurs to him is very necessary in itself and ought to be borne with, suffered, allowed to pass on without regard to any end outside itself. This thought as has been mentioned is but a resultant, a reaction and hence cannot be avoided. But at the same time it is very necessary to avoid treating the thought as all actuality or reality. To do so is a further action, a furtherance of "bondage," as has already been said. It may even be necessary to put oneself in all attitude of disgust. A little later the practice of elimination of thoughts could be tried, but so far the neophyte Karma Yogi has to train himself to change his point of view, whenever he has to deal with an experience that is alien to his own will. He, as it were, goes up the "Hill of Meditation" take up a point of view of Udaseenata, a sort of view of the plains as from the top of a hill, a comprehensive view, the view of a superior person. How can the Karma Yogi think as a God, if he has not the outlook of a God, the Isvara Bhava! And to have the outlook of a God one has to change his own point of view, the point of view that is as but putty in the hands of Intelligence. Towards the on-coming thought what the Karma Yogi here has to do is to judge for himself whether to God such a thought would be possible, before he entertains the thought. This Isvara Bhava has also been spoken of as the attitude of the Kshatriya, Kshatra denoting both the Kingdom of God and the Human Body (soul and body combined). Just as nothing can exonerate the Karma Yogi from doing his utmost to determine and perform the right Act and just as nothing can excuse his failure to do so, in the plane of thought "culture" (miscalled), nothing can exonerate the Karma Yogi's failure to obtain the right thought by the process hereinbefore mentioned.

But if these themselves were not enough, a settled practice has been encouraged by the HinduYogi Philosophy with regard to wrong thoughts namely to eliminate them. The charge to the Karma Yogi has always been to eliminate rubbish from the Mind he should eliminate anything which does not serve his purpose. He can, as by the "Neti," "Neti" mantra eliminate (& thus select for use) thoughts pouring in as he sits to meditation. As each thought comes on before you, you, having been trained already by the practices before mentioned and not being the slave of the thoughts, being careless about the results, begin by examining the thought and reject it, if you think it useless to yourself, by the Mantra "Neti," Not so; "Neti," Not thus; Oh, no, certainly not. This "Neti," "Neti" process requires a very deep psychological investigation as a preliminary. It is not sufficient to get rid temporarily of these thoughts; one must as it were seek their roots and destroy their roots so that they can never rise again. A helpful suggestion is to bring about the habit by auto-suggestion of declining thoughts that are not useful to one's purpose, as a settled practice of Karma Yoga by the use of the Mantra

"NETI, NETI"

All along you have to remember that your experiences, (again these thoughts that you are advised to deal with) are not the ultimate truth. They are only sensations that change with your status and as you advance in the direction of more and more untiring energy. "Thine to do" is with thought only, says the Bhagavad Gita; "not with the results" which results are the resultants of the whole universe acting on the Act initiated perhaps by you, the reaction of your action. It is quite open to you, Karma Yogi, to take out use for anything into yourself because yours is the kingdom of thought but it is as well that you do not revel in the silence of not dealing with the occurring event, as it or as you require. This carelessness as to what it may cost the Karma Yogin is to be found more in the West nowadays apparently combined with the desire and impulse to work; and if it is not to be found in the East, it is because the conditions of life possible in the Sannyasi mode of living have made it unnecessary for anyone to be a Karma Yogin at all. And the commingling of the West and East have made it equally impossible for a Grihee (householder) to be a Yogi, much less a Karma Yogin unless he be truly ardent.

NA ITI NA ITI

NOT THUS, NOT THIS

This articles is from a series in eleven lesson in Karma Yoga, From "The Yoga Philosophy of Thought Use" and "The Yogin Doctrine of Work"

The kingdom of Thought is truly yours; you can select values, reject vanities, eliminate dross, live as the uncrowned and crowned Emperors have lived in the utmost independance, ordering for yourself Happiness, distributing the flowing surpluses thereof to all around you.

Chicago, U.S.A., Yogi Publication Society, 1928