How many ways?

| 1 | 2 | next ≫

A popular modern prakriya is that self–knowledge, which is moksha, can be gained in four different ways. Each way is called a ‘yoga’, different from the other three. One is jnana yoga, the second karma yoga, the third bhakti yoga and the fourth is hatha yoga. We are told that each yoga is meant for a different type of person. Obviously, jnana yoga is meant for the intellectual, while karma yoga is for the extrovert; bhakti yoga is for the emotional; and hatha yoga is for the one who is not any of these three. The absurdity of this prakriya becomes obvious when we inquire into the nature of self-knowledge.

When modern Vedanta talks about moksha it is thought that moksha can be gained by doing karma (action). What is not seen is that knowledge does not take place without an appropriate means of knowledge, and that knowledge is not the result of action.

The shastra presents two committed lifestyles (nishthas) for moksha. One is a life of sannyasa, a commitment to the pursuit of self–knowledge to the exclusion of any other purushartha. This is jnana yoga. A sannyasi does not have obligatory duties. The very Veda which enjoins obligatory duties releases a sannyasi from those duties and lets him pursue knowledge. The other lifestyle also involves a commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, but along with karma as yoga. A karma yogi is equally a mumukshu (one who seeks freedom); but he pursues knowledge along with his obligatory duties. Therefore, a karma yogi has obligatory duties, whereas a sannyasi does not.

If there is a third person called a bhakti yogi, does he have obligatory duties or not? If so, he is a karma yogi. Is there a karma yogi without bhakti? Is there even a sannyasi without bhakti? And what does a bhakti yogi do? If he does daily pujas, it is kayikam karma; if he does kirtana, that is vacikam karma; if he does meditation invoking the grace of the Lord, then it is manasam karma. In fact, he is only a karma yogi. Similarly, hatha yoga may be pursued as a discipline by a sannyasi as well as by a karma yogi, or even by one who is not a mumukshu. That is why Lord Krishna says in the third chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, “lokesmin dvividha nishtha — there are only two committed lifestyles for moksha.” One is jnana yoga, a life of sannyasa, and the other is karma yoga. Both the sannyasi and the karma yogi pursue knowledge.