Karma Yoga is not workaholism

Since the time Sri Krshna spoke the Gita on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, it has remained one of the most important foundational texts of Hinduism. Its language is simple and its philosophy is wide and vast, covering different paths and yet uplifting them and still bringing something new and fresh into our spiritual worldview. Wise men and scholars have delineated the Yoga of Gita into some basic paths: Jnana yoga, Bhakti yoga, Karma Yoga - where each one is often looked at as an independent path to one’s yogic development.

Karma Yoga, especially during the British rule, when many great Indian revolutionaries were attracted to the idea of service to the motherland, became perhaps the most widely used spiritual phrase/term to inspire a temperamentally flaccid nation into a severe and concentrated activity. Members of the Anushilan Samiti (Ōnūshīlōn sōmītī) would take an oath on the Gita dedicating their lives to liberating India from British rule. Service to the nation, service to mankind, and service for all was taken as the ultimate goal and practical manifestation of Krshna's advice to Arjuna. Not only the youth but also the leaders and thinkers of the previous century, mostly, in a valiant attempt to enthuse a tamas-infected nation took recourse to highlighting the worker's role in both social and spiritual life.

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