The premise of Kriya yoga is derived from the Bhagvad Gita and mainly from karma yoga, jnana yoga and bhakti yoga. The commonality between all of the above is that they eventually aim at a detachment from the fruits of action. Karma yoga deals with the inner activity of the mind, jnana yoga deals with spiritual knowledge and wisdom and bhakti yoga talks about unconditional love. All of these are very interesting because they seem to be the exact opposite of what we have come to expect in life. We start out in Kindergarten and are taught how much our grades matter for our promotion to the 1st standard. When we play in the school basketball team we feel the pain when we lose to another team. When we don't make it to the top colleges in the country we cry about our future. When we don't get interviews out of job applications we get anxious and worried. However, the premise of practicing any of the yoga's above is that we should learn to detach ourselves from the fruit of our actions and concentrate on our actions alone. While working, I often thought about how enjoyable work would be if I only had to worry about doing something really really well and not meeting targets or sending out a certain number of emails just so I could be better than someone else.
This is why I made up my mind to learn more about Kriya Yoga. "Kri" - actions are all results of an indwelling soul- "ya." Kriya yoga emphasizes the relationship between the breath and the mind. There is a guide to getting started that I won't bore you with. But it is very exciting to know that I can enjoy the fruit of my labour without worrying about the result but just by enjoying the moment. I read once that we endure pain in this life because we inflicted pain on someone else in some other life and are now repaying our karmic debt. Kriya yoga is way to even out that debt in this lifetime by making sure our actions don't hurt anybody. Brownie points for those actions that help somebody -- I guess! OK time to run to my class to discipline my body with vinyasas.
