What is Karma Yoga?

Our mandate is supporting as many beings as possible to experience spiritual awakening in this lifetime. We do this through four approaches – spiritual awakening via action, meditation, learning and integrating the shadow. Karma Yoga is the practice of awakening through action.

Do you want to be a karma yogi? Find out what it is like and how you can practice Karma Yoga with us.

Spiritual Awakening through Action: Karma Yoga

Many of us feel challenged to meditate every day, and even more so to meditate for the hours needed to make true spiritual progress. What our modern lives really call for is a spiritual practice that goes beyond the meditation cushion to bring awareness and meditation to every action and interaction we have, 24/7/365. We propose Karma Yoga, a.k.a. Awakening in Action, as a spiritual path for the 21st century and beyond.

Clear Sky Mind, Cloud Mind

“Karma” literally means “action” or “decision.” Since every action or choice (whether by individuals or communities) has a result, it also refers to the law of cause and effect.

Our moment-to-moment decisions are often based on conflicting emotions and self-limiting views, resulting from the familial and societal conditioning that each of us naturally has. However, there is always another state of mind available to us: we call this the “clear sky mind,” as it’s spacious, calm, luminescent and blissful.

This is in contrast to the “cloud mind” of our conditioning, which obscures the clear sky mind. If we make decisions from our cloud mind, the result tends to be more clouds. Sometimes the clouds interact harmoniously, and sometimes they don’t. The clear sky mind is harmonious by nature, so everything that arises from it is harmonious too.

 

Uniting Body and Mind

Karma Yoga

© C. Pawasarat

Back to the meaning of Karma Yoga: “yoga” means to join, unite, or to be yoked together. Principally it’s about the dialogue between the body and the mind. If these two are working together, like a pair of oxen pulling together in the same direction, things tend to go well. But if they are at odds with each other, chaos ensues.

In meditation, also called Dhyana Yoga, we observe patterns that arise from our body and mind (aches and pains, emotions, stories, attitudes, etc.) on our own, on the meditation cushion. We learn to recognize that conflicting emotions and self-limiting views are like two oxen pulling in opposite directions. More importantly, we learn to discern the clear sky mind behind these phenomena.

When we move and decide on what actions to take from the clear sky mind, conflicting emotions and self-limiting views dissipate. We’re then able to accomplish, explore and share in far more effective and joyous ways.

 

Relationship and Work: Pillars of Karma Yoga

Maya Lewandowsky, Evangelos Diavolitsis, Stephen Gilmore

© E. Diavolitsis

In Karma Yoga, we watch the patterns that arise as we interact with others. We use the same principles that we’ve learned in meditation and apply it to our work, our relationships and our communities. When we use activity and work as objects of meditation, we’re able to see to the spacious clear sky mind state … even amidst the distractions of interpersonal conflicts, goals or obligations at work, family emergencies, stock market dips and dirty dishes.

As you may have gathered from your own experience, it’s far more challenging to practice with others and while being active, than by oneself on a meditation cushion. This is because interactions bring as many sets of potentially conflicting emotions and self-limiting views as there are people involved. Since they all arise, each must be identified and worked through.

However, the good news is that the path of Karma Yoga empowers people to move past their limiting views together and simultaneously. This means we become better at communicating with each other, with our communities, and ultimately become more effective as positive forces in the world. This is something to celebrate!  Read and hear about other’s experiences here:

Why would I want to be a  Karma Yogi.

 

Spiritual Practice for the 21st Century

Busy modern life

Photo: Yumikrum

Although it may be more challenging in some ways, in other ways Karma Yoga may be easier: this type of “active meditation” fits in better with our 21st century lifestyle, in which work takes up the majority of our day and our headspace. Very few of us are going to live a life of solitary meditation, so it’s fundamental that we learn how to be mindful in our interactions with others.

By establishing the clear sky mind first in our being, we act from the spaciousness and clarity that is our true nature. This allows us to orient our best awareness and effort to the work or the activity that we are trying to accomplish together.

When we have a job to do, the objective is more important than the challenges experienced by us, the individual. Karma Yoga helps us train ourselves to step beyond our ego and work harmoniously together, like two oxen pulling in the same direction.

 

Sitting Meditation vs. Active Meditation

Catherine Pawasarat Meditation PracticeHow does Karma Yoga compare to meditation? In meditation, we reach bliss and clarity by applying concentration and calm to an object (such as the breath), thereby dropping hindrances (such as pins and needles in our leg, or repetitive stories about how somebody has done us wrong). We reach wisdom when that bliss and clarity are combined with investigation and discovery: for example when we perceive the layers of experience and feeling that lie behind our story of “someone did me wrong.” These revelations free us from being stuck in these patterns.

In Karma Yoga we contact calm and concentration by establishing attention on the activity in front of us, rather than on our personal issues and difficulties. This allows us to work with others unhindered by our own conflicting states or those of others.

 

Beyond Habit and Ego: Spiritual Awakening

 

Most of our lives are lived in habit, and habits are built in our early childhood. They enter our subconscious and from there may drive our actions without us knowing it. Our individual and social conditioning are constructed to help us become functioning adults in the world we are to inherit. Habits are formed to make life easier, and to lubricate our social interactions, but often they bury our unexpressed or unfulfilled desires.

Our largest and most central unfulfilled desire is for unity and wholeness. We feel this only when we access the clear sky mind. One of the fundamental challenges of our human nature is the conflict between our desire for wholeness and our conditioning.

 

In order to reach unity and wholeness, we must get past Karma Yoga Zen Sweeping at Clear Skyhabit. Habits bury and obscure underlying struggles, and thus only by disturbing them will we be able to clearly see what lies underneath. This is why Karma Yoga is so effective: it disrupts habit while bringing attentive awareness to what this stirs up in the psyche, which can create a powerful shift in our perspective.

The seeds for these shifts can be found in our work and the activities we are involved in. Karma Yoga uses these as the meditation object and teaches us to reach calm and concentration, even in the midst of activity, that lead to bliss and insight.

In this way we can use all of our daily actions to contact the clear sky mind, that lies behind, within, and around every activity, thought, sensation, and feeling. Making everything in our daily lives a potential source of bliss, wisdom, and awakening.

Some of our students have shared their experiences as Karma Yogis, and you can hear what they have to say here: Why be a Karma Yogi.

Want to experience the path of karma yoga first hand?

Online Karma Yoga and Dharma training with the Planet Dharma team

For Existing Students:

Did you know there are opportunities for online karma yoga and Dharma training with Planet Dharma’s team of committed and experienced karma yogis?

  • Be of direct service to the teachers, Dharma and Sangha, building generosity and merit.
  • Benefit from working directly and personally with experienced practitioners on that path of karma yoga
  • Uncover blocks, transform patterns, and discover hidden talents.
  • Draw on your karma yoga learning to help your career and livelihood flourish.
  • Learn to discover the clear sky mind in all your actions.

If you are committed to transformation through karma yoga, and willing to build towards five hours of karma yoga per week, contact [email protected] for more information.

Why Be a Karma Yogi?

Hear voices and stories from students on this path about their experiences practicing Karma Yoga: Why and how to be a Karma Yogi?

Combine retreat and karma yoga with Clear Sky’s new hybrid program

One of the many benefits our having our own base at Clear Sky Retreat Center in the BC Rockies is the opportunity for people to experience karma yoga in a supportive and focused setting. 

For Existing Students:

Another great way to explore this pillar is to join Clear Sky meditation centre’s hybrid retreat / karma yoga package.

Designed for students of Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat, this affordable program offers you a way to combine a personal or group retreat followed by a period of karma yoga, benefiting from quality time onsite learning and training with the teachers’ and resident sangha community.

The program also gives the opportunity for you to work remotely at your livelihood so that you don’t have to give up your income to join.

For Newbies:

If you have not yet met the teachers or community, consider applying for the three month immersion program at Clear Sky. Led by senior students, Clear Sky offers a 3 month karma yoga immersion program that we have found to be incredibly transformative for participants. Three Month Karma Yoga Immersion Program

Its sneaky. Its not always obvious. But Karma Yoga is possibly the most influencial work I’ve done in my life to date. I’ve had many experiences in many countries, and I’ve completed the highest level of education in my field, and yet, I feel my work accomplishments have amounted to very little. Until now.
Dr. Lisa Feder

Ph.D, Professor of Anthropology

Karma yoga has grown me. I’m more engaged with people and the world, I experience far more joy and bliss from simple tasks and interactions. Karma yoga has brought me better states, more compassion and equanimity, and shown me that there’s far more to the world than what’s going in inside my own head!
Andy Rogers

Copywriter and Writing Coach

If you want true, authentic transformative change, I would highly recommend karma yoga and dharma training. It is not for the faint hearted. But actually transforming at depth level isn’t either. For me it cures the desperate superficiality of a consumer life.
Karen McAllister

Money & Transformation Coach, The Mindful Money Coach

Awakening today.

We offer an ever-evolving modern spiritual path for committed, courageous seekers.
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I came to Clear Sky after years of wandering on the path of self-transcendence; I was trying to do it by myself and it just wasn’t working. The teachers at Clear Sky immediately saw my self-imposed limits and provided me with clear, direct instructions on how to really accelerate growth. After putting my personal preferences aside and deciding to work with awakened teachers I have become far more focused and clearer than I could ever have been on my own.

Matt O’Rourke

Hydro-Engineer

I have been terrified my whole life to grow and to show up and to be seen. I understand now that through my participation in karma yoga, there has been enough wearing away of the rock by drops of water, drop by drop by drop. I am at a point now where I am saying, “OK, lets do this!” And I don’t think there is any faster process. The karma yoga practice is changing our very chemical make up so that we really are letting ourselves be recreated. I’ve achieved two Bachelor and one Masters degrees and none of my higher education comes close to the profound learning and core depth changes that I have experienced through doing karma yoga. It’s definitely the PhD of life.

Maureen Smith

Counsellor, MBSR Trainer, Alive Mindfully, BC

Since I’ve been active with Karma Yoga, my skills have grown exponentially. My teaching has improved, I have clearer guidelines for students, I insist on accountability, I return assignments on time, I redirect unproductive conversations, I close as many communication loops as possible and so on … I feel like a professional who is on top of her game. So great results are evident. Yay!

Jane Casey

University Instructor

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