Karma-Yoga at Work

Introduction — The Man Who Wanted to Resign

The third chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā opens with a resignation letter. Arjuna, standing between two armies, has just heard the Lord glorify transcendental intelligence above fruitive work, and immediately his mind seizes upon the loophole every tired professional has entertained on a Monday morning: if wisdom is higher than work, why must I do this terrible work at all? Let me withdraw. Let me renounce. Let me go to the forest and be spiritual, and leave the battlefield, the office, the deadline and the difficult colleague to somebody else.

Kṛṣṇa's reply occupies the whole of the third chapter, and it is one of the most practical documents ever spoken, because the Lord does not accept the resignation. The spiritual life is conducted in the middle of the working life, through the work itself, by a science called karma-yoga — action yoked to the Supreme.

yajñārthāt karmaṇo 'nyatra loko 'yaṃ karma-bandhanaḥ
tad-arthaṃ karma kaunteya mukta-saṅgaḥ samācara (3.9)

Translation: Work done as a sacrifice for Viṣṇu has to be performed; otherwise work causes bondage in this material world.

The modern economy has trained you to ask only two questions of your work: what does it pay, and what does it cost. The Gītā adds the third question that redeems the other two: what does it offer? The salary need not change for the bondage to change; the direction of the offering changes everything.

Inside the full illustrated e-book: why not even a moment without action is possible, the wheel of sacrifice that feeds the world, King Janaka and the science of example, the machinery of the guṇas and the death certificate of anxiety, your own duty imperfectly done versus another's done brilliantly, the three coverings of desire — smoke, dust and the womb — and five practices for the working devotee, beginning tomorrow at your desk, not someday in a forest.