Talk:Transcending Karma through Moksha:Integral Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita and Vaishnava Tradition

By Vishal Agarwal

In the concluding verses of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna advocates that the common man should combine the four Yoga-s sequentially to reach the Supreme Goal of Moksha.

• He should cultivate the Divine qualities (Gita 16.1-3) and give up the Demonic ones (Gita 16.4-5) and cultivate Jnānayoga. This is the preparatory stage.

• The first stage is to determine one’s Svadharma, or personal duty. He should spiritualize all his actions belonging to his personal duty and perform them as worship to the Lord, without attachment to the actions or any desire for the fruit of these actions (Gita 18.45-50). This purifies his Buddhi and prepares him for the next step. This first stage approximates Karma Yoga.

• Thereafter, he should meditate on the Lord and give up negative emotions and traits like anger, desire, ego etc. He should see all Jīva-s as alike and abiding in Brahman. This approximates Dhyāna Yoga (Gita 18.51-54).

• Thereafter, he seeks refuge in the Lord, surrenders his entire being to Him, performs everything for His sake and fixes his intellect on Him (Gita 18.55-58) and becomes an instrument if Divine Will (Gita 18.61-62, 65-66).

In the Vaishnava Hindu tradition, the four Yogas are often combined and are regarded as complementary to each other. The spiritual seeker continues to perform his worldly and ritualistic actions or duties, meditates on the Lord, understands the nature of the universe, the Lord and the Jīvas and surrenders himself completely to the Lord with his whole being. In this spiritual framework, Bhakti is privileged over Jnāna, Dhyāna and Karma and is said to be the culmination of the latter three.