Loka Sangraha: Practicing Selfless Service in Everyday Life

Join hosts Kamala Rose and Nischala Joy Devi as they take a deep dive into the heart of Karma Yoga through the lens of Loka Sangraha—the Vedic ideal of acting for the highest good of all. Drawing on the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, personal experiences, and practical wisdom, this episode explores how selfless service can be woven into our daily actions, attitudes, and communities. Whether through small gestures, community aid, or deep reflection, learn how living for the collective benefit uplifts us all.

Key topics covered:

• The meaning and significance of Loka Sangraha in the context of Karma Yoga
• Acting without attachment: Bringing benefit to all and harm to none
• Reciprocity and interconnectedness: How individual actions ripple through the community
• Practical ways to practice selfless service in everyday situations
• Overcoming unconscious bias and cultivating humility
• Women’s unique challenges and contributions to service
• The spiritual power of small acts of kindness
• Stories and lessons from real-life mutual aid experiences

Transcript

Kamala Rose: 0:40

Welcome to a woman's Gita Podcast. I'm Kamala rose. Let's start over. We can just start from right here. I'll clap. Oh, I just did you end it? Okay?Clap again, and I'm Nischala Joy Devi, thank you so much for joining us today under the banyan tree, where we continue to discuss Chapter Three of the Bhagavad Gita, the chapter titled karma yoga. Today we are beginning our discussion on the very important verse, chapter three, verse six, if while stilling the organs of action, the mind remains engaged with the sense objects, there is a lack of understanding of one's true nature. When one balances the senses, they are able to engage in Karma Yoga without attachment. Right here, we're starting to really get a definition of karma yoga, and I'm going to just take that through to verse eight that we can discuss together. Action is superior to inaction, with inaction, even caring for the body would not be possible. Mm, Eberle, all actions bind when they are done selfishly, turning every action into a selfless offering frees us from personal attachment through the practice of karma yoga, fulfillment will be your constant companion. Let's discuss these verses.

Nischala Joy Devi: 2:48

I think it's fascinating, three, six. Because to me, it is. It's so multifaceted. Yes, they're talking about karma yoga. But what it's implying is that if the mind is not calm, if the thoughts are running hither and thither, meditation is not possible. And without meditation, without that that centeredness to make it in a very simple, simplistic way. How can we serve people? Because if the mind is busy, it's bringing in all the thoughts and prejudices also. So perhaps we're seeing a person who's homeless, and our natural inclination from our heart would be to go forward and help that person, but in the mind holds judgment. So we start thinking, Well, why didn't they do this? What happened to them? Maybe, if I knew their story this and that. So the purity of action of even handing them a sandwich or anything that you may need they may need is now tainted. The Karma Yoga is not pure, and this will not then help us get out of that wheel of birth and death, which is what we're really looking for here.

Kamala Rose: 4:27

Well, this is a good place to, you know, to take a look at the idea of unconscious bias. Everyone has ideas about people, right? This, I think, comes to that, that essential duality of self and other, right, anyone who is not me, right? We, every person, has unconscious bias due to our culture. Right? We live in a world today where, fortunately, a lot of these are being exposed, and we're able to we're able to acknowledge some of the effects of systemic misogyny, systemic racism, things like this, things that our culture has taught us things that the patriarchy has taught us about people who are other. And I think yoga wisdom gives us a really valuable insight to see ourselves as a part of nature in a way. And. And have a little space for investigation and inquiry that huh, if I see this person as other and differentiated from me in ways that are clear enough that I can hear in my own brain telling me why this person is deserving or not deserving, worthy of my time or not worthy of my time, worthy of my resources, worthy of my care, yeah, right, if we're able to hear those voices and recognize that, you know, even I as much of a serious practitioner, even I have unconscious bias, we can understand the human condition in this way, and the the subtle tools of separation that exist in all of Our hearts, and the kind of barriers to togetherness that everyone carries, that our culture taught us and we see. I think that's I think karma yoga helps us to see, gives us a ground of practice to unearth some of those unconscious biases, if we're willing to admit that they exist,

Nischala Joy Devi: 7:07

that's to even bring our attention to it in the beginning and remind us so the thing, the thing about karma yoga, which is so amazing, is if you take the time to observe your experience and your mind and your thoughts as you are moving into engaging in Karma Yoga, you get incredible insight. You start to see your biases. You start to see your fears. And what is a fear? It's just something that we don't understand. You walk up to a person who may have an odor, who may be dirty, and we start to project onto that. Instead, if we have really gotten to a place in meditation when we look at that person, instead of seeing the dirt, the filth and smell, we see a divine being just like us, because on the level that we get to in meditation, where we can experience that, that's that's the truth. That's truth at that point. So I think that that all these things that we're dissecting separately really have a unification. They can't be done, one with, without the other. It's, it's hand in glove. So the meditation helps us see what we what our actions are doing, and our actions help us be able to sit quietly. So we have this beautiful push me, pull me, but we're actually moving forward in the process. We're not just standing still and you, I think a lot of people come to me or come to teachers with this, this problem, they've managed to still the body, and a lot of it is through the asana, no doubt. And if they have a decent diet, they can still the body, but they notice when the body becomes still, the mind gets the energy, and the mind starts to then project all these things. Had a dear friend in the monastery. She was a fellow monk, and she would say, I sit down every day for meditation. I think about all the things I'm going to do that day, how I'm going to do them. I say, closing chance, and I get up and I do what I just thought of. And I think a lot of people have that, a lot of people that we call it meditation, because from the outside, it looks like people are sitting still, but in actuality, so much is going on. So what we're we're faced with here at three six, is the idea that it's saying to us while stilling the organs of action the mind, if the mind remains engaged with the sense objects, there is a lack of understanding of our true nature. And that's what you're, you're you're mentioning with all these prejudices that we have that we don't even know we have until we're faced with it. If you've never seen someone with green or purple hair and you suddenly see them, are you prejudiced? How do you respond to them? Do you respond to them that they are unusual, fun to look at? Or do you say, who? Who wants hair like that? Who? What hair shouldn't be that color, right?

Kamala Rose: 11:01

Once somebody said to me, I'm so glad you changed, because I didn't like people, like how you were.

Nischala Joy Devi: 11:07

Oh, that's really nice. Wow. Okay, all right, but that okay, you realize I did it just for you, right? That's the only question. So, yeah. So these things come out. And I even hear people come to me after years of practice, and they'll say to me, do I do that? I just noticed that when I talk to people, I do this, and I go, Aha, it's working. The introspection has now had its lens cleaned, and we can now see ourselves. It's funny, my mother used to always quote to me as a child, she I don't even know where it came from, but she had all these quotes, and she would always say to me, the greatest gift is to be able to see yourself as others see you. And I think this applies here. We really get that insight. Who are we? By sitting still and by observing, yeah. So, yeah, this is something that the body is easier to contain and the mind, the mind is very difficult, and at least get it in a groove somewhere that it can be in a positive rather than a negative. Yeah, amazing sloka. I think it's an amazing sloka,

Kamala Rose: 12:34

and it it really offers us so much. I think it's one of the shlokas, you know, for every yoga teacher, we should, we should know where three six is, and, you know, read different translations of it. This reading here from the Winthrop sergeant, the traditional is Krishna concludes and says, Don't be a hypocrite. Thank you, right, yeah. And he says, So, right, if, while stilling the organs of action, the karmendrias, right, our hands and our feet and our speech, right, our genitals, our elimination, our organs that we act on the world with. And you know, in a way he's talking about, he's taking a dig at monastics who sit in a ivory monastery on the hill while not doing the internal work to let go of those attachment to senses. He's building this case, that traditional renunciation the way it was known at this time, that's not going to cut it. You still have to do the mental work. You have to, you know, actually detach the mind from its craving and its aversion to the sense objects around it. And so there's a level of honesty with oneself that's required here. I think we're taking the skills from Chapter two that we built in buddhi yoga, being able to see with clarity, from the discernment, the wisdom faculty of the buddhi to have a level of self inquiry and honesty within one's own character as a yogi, but also not to think that leaving the world is the way out of that kind of attachment. Here we're talking, you know, he's saying, don't be a hypocrite. Don't talk the talk, but not walk the walk, right? This is what we talk about today as spiritual bypassing, right? Without doing the internal work. We're saying, Look at, look at how I how much I've given up. Look at how I've renounced X, Y and Z, you know? Oh no, I'm fasting today. Oh, no, I'm only, you know, I only eat things that fall from the trees my path and

Nischala Joy Devi: 15:08

but that's also what they would coin spiritual materialism. It you have the right Mala, you have the right shawl, you have the right pillow, and your altar is set up just right, but there's nothing there. There's nothing there. It's, I think we forget sometimes, because of all the promotion and talk of yoga as a physical discipline, and I. Action that we forget that most of yoga has nothing to do with the external. It's all about internal. That's why Sutras, the whole last part of it, the fourth book, is Antara yoga, the inner yoga. Yes, we have to get the outside calm enough. We have to make friends with our sisters. We have to get the physical purity before we can begin. But once we begin to draw inward, that's where the real practice is. Because, you know, we're good at saying things that are nice. Most of us can manage to say something nice. But what are we thinking? What are our thoughts? You know, I laugh sometimes when, when people when I'm talking about the yogic cities, and they're we talk about mind reading, and people say, Oh, I wish I could do that. I said, you actually don't you know. You don't want to know what's in someone else's mind. It's bad enough we know what's in our own mind, because we have to remember that these cities were developed or talked about when people's minds were pure. They didn't have all this clutter and prejudice and all this in it, I wouldn't hate someone 8000 miles away, because I would never know that there was someone 8000 miles away that did anything. But now, with this instantaneous it's almost harder to pull back and go into ourselves, because there's so much outside that being quiet has become a luxury that most people can't afford. So here we have it again,

Kamala Rose: 17:35

and so much of the way we engage with our senses now is on was electronically, and that has a very different effect on the senses than the real world does, right? Actually talking to an actual person, where you can read their body language and feel their energy right? Being outside, it's summertime, and I finally got back out to the garden, which is where my heart lives. And so that's been really, really lovely. But you know, so much of what we do is on Zoom, or you're listening to us on a podcast from your phone in the car, right? There's, you know, these are, it's almost very addictive, electronic and impression, isolating. Addictive, calculated Lee, addictive by, you know, we, how many of us have lost more than an hour down some rabbit hole on YouTube or Instagram. So today, we live in a different world. But the premise of this idea that this that our sense engagement with the world must be recognized and dealt with appropriately. You you can't, you can't have everything all the time. I mean, that's always going to be a problem, whether it's in the digital Anthropocene that we're in right now, or if this was, you know, in the, you know, in the way, way long ago, times of the Mahabharata War, you know, the basic human equipment remains the same in three seven, when one balances the SEV, the senses, the indriyas, then they are able to engage in Karma Yoga without attachment, right? So this idea of balancing the senses, right? One who is able to to hold the reins? Yeah, I mean coming back to the chariot metaphor, right? Holding the Manas, the reigns, over the senses, so that one is not dominant. You know, one is not you know, what you see is not going after what it wants. What you taste is not insisting more, right? We learn to balance the senses. So, you know, in these verses, we're really getting the the structure of karma yoga, beginning with the self inquiry, What's the motive? What's going on inside? What are the thoughts that are creating the action? Right? What's the motive and what is the means? Is being able to balance the senses and. And it really shows us, you know, a kind of a common way of understanding this is to be in the world, but not of the world. You know, where the world does not have control over you, where you are, and you don't necessarily have dominance over the world, right? We can coexist in in in a balance, in a way of being, and this is what Karma Yoga is all about.

Nischala Joy Devi: 21:10

Yeah, I agree. I agree with all of that. And it comes back to us. I think what has happened, especially in the Western countries, there's a me has come up, I would say more probably in the United States, a me has come up that has taken center stage and become capital letters. This is something that every single spiritual discipline talks about serving others, seeing yourself and others, etc, etc. Yet we seem to be perpetuating the opposite. We seem to be perpetuating that it's all about us, and I think this is why meditation is so difficult for people and even service the organizations that hold the container so that we can just slip in and serve somebody and then slip out without having to create it ourselves. Are really giving us something that they're talking about here in the Gita. They as an organization, we're hoping and at least the ones that you make sure that they're good. Have already gone through this process as an organization. Have decided, What is Karma Yoga, for instance, I'll just use one as an example that that I think is a really good one, Feeding America, right? It's a Christian based organization who happens to believe in the precepts of Christianity, right? They only take less than 5% of the money that you give, because everyone else is a volunteer. So in my mind, when I give to an organization like that, and in my heart that opens to give, I trust that they are in alignment with who I am when I give it to them, and that this money will actually buy food and be given to the people who need it. So I think that even if we're not doing it individually or personally, check just make sure who you're giving it to is in alignment with this, because they've done their due diligence on it. So if you're giving individually, like if you just pass someone on the street and you see that they need something, and you feel that your motives are not pure, bring in a mantra. Bring in a saying, if you're a Christian, bring in that Jesus fed everybody, or Jesus did this, if you're not a Christian, bring in that. You do it with joy. You do it with love. You do whatever it is, change the thoughts so that the action will be backed up by a positive instead of a judgment or a thought that's not clear that way, your act will not only help that person that you're you're working with, but it will help do what we've been talking about for how many sessions, it will purify your own karma, because you're in alignment with thought, with word and deed,

Kamala Rose: 25:05

and that's so important to remind us that that's that the yoga of karma yoga, the internal work of karma yoga, is really the most Important part how you're thinking about it, seizing the opportunity to reframe your own selfishness into into a service to what the Gita calls over and over again. Here in chapter three, we'll get to loka San Gran. Ha, a wish for the welfare of everyone everywhere. I think it's important to remember that this is at the base of the Gita. It's at the base of the yoga tradition, right? We don't always, I mean, it's, it's not spelled out like this in every single verse. The sincere wish for the welfare of all. But it is that, you know, it's the roots of the tree. Is the desire, the the need, the desire, the individual responsibility to contribute to the good of the whole, right? If, if one suffers, we all suffer. If society is imbalanced, we all suffer because of that. Therefore, the effort that we put into creating a just society also benefits us all. And so in terms of karma yoga, these are the verses that we're moving towards in eight. Krishna says that action is superior to inaction. With inaction, even caring for the body would be impossible, right? So, when to act, when to withhold action, this dialog, very important dialog in the area, in the in the this, this time of, you know, all of us investigating the motive behind our actions. I think you're again so right to bring up, you know, the organizations that we work with, where does your money go? Right for many of us, that is how or for the whole world, it's how we act by which causes we support, which products we buy. You know, where we take our time and energy that's converted into money to buy those goods. And so we ask ourselves, do I want to support a mission to Mars with my dollars, or do I want to go to book shop? Do I want to buy from an independent retailer instead? Right? We ask ourselves these questions because it comes down, am I withholding my action on purpose, or am I acting? Because I think this is a good idea that I want to get behind right here in eight. Krishna says that always acting is better than not acting, which you know for all of us this, this is another verse that should be like a mantra to us with inaction, even caring for the body is not possible. It's not possible to not act in reality, to remove oneself from the world, and to not contribute in any way. Again, we're we're talking a lot here about monasticism and people leaving the world. It's worth noting. And something in a verse like this, Krishna is the Gita is really specifically speaking to at the time many people were announcing the world to follow the Buddha into the early Sangha. And Krishna is Karma Yoga is a reaction to that. He's saying, don't leave the world. Participate in the world. Be a be be a positive footprint in the world, and do it with the integrity of knowing your thoughts, knowing your motives, yeah, that's how we can be unbound.

Nischala Joy Devi: 29:27

And I think the other thing is realizing that even meditation is an action, prayer is an action. So when we talk about being in the world. We also have to, and I think especially these days, we have to understand that there are some people that just can't be, whether they're physically, unable to mentally, emotionally, whatever it is. But we don't have to discount that they're all the people that are praying in these caves and monasteries and other places. They're really helping to uplift the level of consciousness in the world, and so not thinking of it just as a physical movement. But everything we do is action, except when we still the mind and body completely in meditation. That's the only time. Otherwise, we're always in action. There was a really funny movie, I believe it. Was made by Andy Warhol, many years ago, and he filmed a man sleeping, yeah, sleep, yeah. He put a man, a camera on a man for eight hours, and then he did a speed up. I forget what it's called. When they speed everything up. There was no rest in this man at all. He was moving from the right side to the left side, foot up, arm up. And so we think of sleep as being this restful time, but we also have it's also the time that we release. And meditation is a lot like that too. It's in a more subtle level, but you start to see a bubble come up. Maybe it's a bubble of annoyance at your neighbor, even it starts to come up in meditation. But because you're still, and because the organs of action are still, you watch it, and instead of holding on to it like you normally would, you watch the bubble come up and pop and it's gone. That's what the ability to be still does if you try to do that within the action of seeing your neighbor, it probably wouldn't work. So the truth here has to be understood in the in that so many different ways, not just holding on to our beliefs, not just letting go of our beliefs, but really seeing which ones serve us, which ones don't serve us. That's where the discrimination comes in. Very clearly, we have to learn that. So, yeah, we're sitting there. Action is superior to inaction, yeah,

Kamala Rose: 32:37

yeah, and we can't not act. And meditation is an action, and yoga practice is an action. It's a dharmic action, it's a skillful action, it's an action that is taken intentionally for the purpose of purifying the body and mind, right? If we look at yoga practice as really a means of tapas, a means of heating up the system, reducing the impurities that we could even see clearly, that we would be able to tell right? So when you know, when we set the timer to meditate and sit in one place for 20 minutes or longer, we're, you know, we're taking the action to sit down there and to do something about self understanding and self inquiry, understanding the way, the way I work. And in nine. Krishna says that all actions bind when they are done selfishly. Scary. The idea of selfish action, I think, is, you know, is coming from ego. Is coming from the sense of I the ahamkara. It's really a matter of who is, who is the agent here. Is it the Buddhi? Is it the wisdom faculty being the agent of You, know, seeing through your own patterns and unconscious bias? Or is it the ahamkara, the eye maker, the ego, the sense of individual self that says, I want this because I It helps me in the story. It helps me perpetuate the story of me. I look good in this light. You know? I get benefit from this action, right? It serves my personality. It serves the way people see me. I derive material and personal benefit from it, right? These are the kinds of actions that are done selfishly, and again, this calls us really to be honest about our motives, right? We live in the world. We can't avoid having to earn money, no, right? We can't avoid that. And something I'm learning every day, having to set up my set up my online business so I can teach some classes and interact with some of you out there, it's a lot of work. It takes a lot of hustle right from a certain part of oneself. That's identity, who am I? Who do I want to tell people I am, and all of those sort of things. And you know, this karma yoga is really asking us to just be able to. So, you know, we need, we need a sense of identity to live in the world, but it doesn't have to rule us, and it doesn't have to make all of the decisions, and we've got to keep that broader sense of what about all of us.

Nischala Joy Devi: 35:58

Yeah, you know, when I look at those three slokas together, I can't help thinking that there's a secret message embedded in them. And that secret message to me is, you need to change your life. You need to change the actions that you have been doing, repetitiously or unconsciously, or whatever you want to say. I think what happens we tend to want to change the practices to fit in with the meta, with our life, instead of changing our life to fit in with the practices if we're really looking to do to do things selflessly as opposed to selfishly, we need to slow down a little bit. We need to do one action and make sure it's done in that way that we want without before we move on to the next action. And I think the pace of today's life keeps us from really analyzing, is this a selfish act? Is this is selfless act? And I think somewhere within these scriptures that I remember learning a long time ago is that a selfless act is one that brings benefit to some and harm to no one. So you can't say, Well, I'm bringing some harm to this and but it benefits most people. That's not according to what we're really looking for, at least have it neutral for people. So when we're talking about karma yoga, every action that we do during the day can be transformed into that. The simplest thing you know, I remember years ago, someone on the somewhere in the east coast, where they have tollways that you have to pay to go to Drive, someone started it rush hour traffic. They paid for the person behind them, and then the person behind them, and then it turned out, it went on for three hours. People paying, they got so excited and so into it. And what fun it would be to see the expression on the person's face behind you in your rear view mirror when you the toll taker said, Oh, no, you've already been paid for something so simple like that can make a difference in someone's day, even their life, especially yours. You know, what did? It cost you very little in money, but it gave you a lot of joy. So this action, slow it down, make it something that really has an effect and really lasts. I'm sure people I'm still talking about it, and it was years ago. I'm sure other people have to, yeah,

Kamala Rose: 39:13

examples like that really illustrate, and I think, show us how important it is that we're we feel that there is a way we are contributing to to the welfare of all of us, yeah, right, a sense of purpose and belonging to the world, which, again, I think It's an, I think it's inherent in the Gita and the next shlokas that we'll talk about after this one, we're going to start talking about the Vedic worldview, that really is a story of an integrated whole, right, where everybody's a part of it. And, you know, I remember, you know, right after the 2016 election, I did a talk at the the Center for Ahimsa in Pomona on the the dharma of a yoga teacher. And as part of it, I had read a lot of what the Dalai Lama was had been saying about kind of how did this happen? How did, how did we end up with this? And he brought attention to the idea that everyone needs purpose, and if they don't have it right, if they feel directionless and like they're not, they don't have personal value. Value without purpose, and that's what drives people into nationalism, and drives people into ideas that they they feel like they can contribute and be a part of that in a way that their society has not given that to them. So in a way, he was trying to explain, how have we gotten here? And, you know, at the time, it was so impactful thinking about a sense of purpose and belonging to the world, and how, as yoga teachers, we, you know, we come to class and we're able to belong to our communities in a certain way, of really helping people impacting our communities by, you know, helping keep more people on their feet and out of the physical therapy offices. We're able to help people stay calmer in times of stress like this. We sometimes provide a sanctuary. But again, that idea of purpose and and finding ways that we can that our actions are actually uplifting, yeah, the welfare of everyone, right? So we say here that when we turn every action into a selfless offering, this is what frees us from our personal attachment. You know this? This is something we have to all frame for ourselves. How is it that we are contributing to our world? Right? You brought up a lot of examples of you know, how we can? We can contribute to charities. We can just do spontaneous acts of kindness, we can, most importantly investigate our motives in why we're doing what we're doing, making a selfless offering of our actions. I think we, I think is important that we're able to connect to the meaning of the tradition in serving not only our own practice, but serving our society through our actions, helping to make it a better place to uphold Dharma right, to fight corruption, by siding with Dharma, by teaching dharma. And for me, this is very meaningful, and it's certainly has saved me a lot of heartache in troubling times.

Nischala Joy Devi: 43:08

And I think you can really see, if you if you look the people who have really earnestly gone inside. And embraced the idea of karma yoga, have meditated and gotten their mind in a balanced place that they can perform it without all the extraneous emotion that drags us down, that you can actually go out and do a protest with peace in your heart, because if you don't bring peace to a protest, you're Lost.

Kamala Rose: 43:55

Yeah, that's a good thought to end on. I These, these shlokas. I I really think these are some of the ones that we should always have close by. These are some of the most practical verses in the Bhagavad Gita as yoga teachers. They'll, you know, they'll, they'll guide us through a lot, they'll give us the framework to navigate many, many situations. And so we hope that our dialogs are serving you, helping you to to navigate your life and be a better teacher. And we'd love to hear from you any questions. Please leave us in the comments, and thanks for making time for our dialog today. Namaste. Namaste.