Karma Yoga
karmayoga · कर्मयोग
What does karma yoga mean?
Karma yoga means the discipline of action: doing your work with the senses held in check and without attachment. The compound karmayoga appears in four verses of the Bhagavad Gita (3.3, 3.7, 5.2 and 13.25, numbered 13.24 in most printed editions). Krishna sets it beside the path of knowledge and rates it above renouncing action.
Karmayoga joins karma (action, deed) and yoga (discipline; from the root yuj, to join). Every use is Krishna's. The compound never defines itself; its sense comes from what stands around it.
In 3.3 Krishna answers Arjuna's complaint that he is being pushed into terrible action. He names two footings (niṣṭhā) that he has already declared: jñānayoga for the Sāṅkhyas and karmayoga for the yogins. Telang renders the second "that of the Yogins by devotion in the shape of action." The next verse adds: no one reaches freedom from action merely by not starting it (3.4).
Verse 3.7 says what the practice looks like. One who reins in the senses with the mind and, unattached (asaktaḥ), undertakes karmayoga with the organs of action "is far superior." The contrast is 3.6, the person who stills the organs of action while the mind keeps dwelling on sense objects, whom Telang renders "hypocrite".
In 5.2 karmayoga is weighed against karmasaṃnyāsa, the renouncing of action. Both lead to the highest good, but karmayoga excels; Telang puts it as "pursuit of action is superior to renunciation of action." The surrounding verses (5.4, 5.5) then say that the wise see sāṅkhya and yoga as one in their result. By 13.25 (13.24 in editions that do not count Arjuna's opening question as a verse) karmayoga is simply one way, beside meditation and Sāṅkhya, by which people come to see the self, and it is not ranked there.
The yoga part is spelled out earlier, without the compound: "(such) equability is called devotion" (2.48) and "devotion in (all) actions is wisdom" (2.50).
Where it appears
- Bhagavad Gita 3.3Names karmayoga as the footing of the yogins, set beside jñānayoga, the footing of the Sāṅkhyas.
- Bhagavad Gita 3.7Describes the practice: senses reined in by the mind, action done with the organs of action, without attachment.
- Bhagavad Gita 5.2Used twice (karmayogaś, karmayogo): both karmayoga and renunciation lead to the highest good, but karmayoga excels.
- Bhagavad Gita 13.25Listed, without ranking, as one of the ways people come to see the self, beside meditation and Sāṅkhya; 13.24 in most printed editions.
Questions
Is karma yoga the same as nishkama karma?
The words differ. Karmayoga is in the Gita's verses; the phrase niṣkāma karma is not. The later phrase names the same unattached action that 3.7 and 3.19 ask for with the word asaktaḥ.
Does karma yoga mean giving up action?
No. In 5.2 karmayoga is set against renouncing action and judged the better of the two, and 3.4 says freedom from action is not won by simply not acting.
Where does the word karmayoga occur in the Gita?
In four verses: 3.3, 3.7, 5.2 (twice) and 13.25, which most printed editions number 13.24 because they do not count Arjuna's opening question in chapter 13 as a verse. The idea runs more widely, especially through chapters 2, 3 and 5.
Related terms
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