Brotherhood in Action Ranks above Meditation

Chris Bartzokas · Down to Earth Series · 9 pages

A compiled study resting on four lines of the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 12, given in Sanskrit and in English: knowledge is better than constant practice, meditation is superior to knowledge, renunciation of the fruit of action superior to meditation, and final emancipation results immediately from such renunciation. In Krishna's eyes, the file argues, brotherhood in action therefore ranks above meditation, knowledge and concentration — in that order, which is the reverse of the order most students assume.

The framework is then set out: that the path of action or karma yoga, the path of love or bhakti yoga, the path of meditation or dhyana yoga and the path of knowledge or jnana yoga are the four limbs of the buddhi-yoga of the Gita, which integrates them into an organic whole. Of the many meanings the word yoga carries there, the one taken as best encapsulating its import is that yoga is skill in the performance of actions — akin, the file notes, to the Greek praxis as against sankhya or theory. Blavatsky is quoted for the principle that in true philosophy every physical action has its moral and everlasting effect, since desire and action are metaphysically connected with perception.

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