The Spirit of Offering

"What's one thing from your time in India that has stayed with you until this day?" a podcast interviewer asked me last week, for a show called India Calling, where they speak with yoga teachers who have spent time in India.

“The spirit of offering,” I answered without hesitation.

I first went to India to study yoga in 1995, returned the following year, then lived there from 1997 to 2001. When I left after nearly 4 years, this was one thing I dearly wanted to remember: the spirit of devotion that could infuse even the most ordinary activities — cleaning one’s office, preparing a meal, writing a report — with love, attention, and care.

I remember once being part of a crew cleaning a huge marble courtyard, scrubbing months of dirt from the stone. At some point, I stopped thinking about the enormity of the job before us and immersed myself in the scrubbing. It felt so much more enjoyable and lighter, not to mention satisfying, to place my effort entirely into the task in front of me, rather than thinking about finishing it. Letting go of my attachment to the result liberated me to focus fully on the work itself.

This was something I wanted to remember and carry back with me.

When I returned to the US, I placed a small candle on my desk. Every morning, before starting work, I would light it and say a little prayer. It was my way to bring the spirit of devotion into my day.

Acting without attachment to the fruits of one’s actions is the core insight of Karma Yoga as taught in the Bhagavad Gita. In one well-known verse, Krishna tells Arjuna:

You have the right to work, but never to the fruits of your work. - 2.47 (trans. Eknath Easwaran)

The Sanskrit word for right here is adhikara, which can also mean one’s domain or jurisdiction. Our sphere of influence, in other words, is the action itself, not the result. The focus falls squarely on what we do, rather than on a desired outcome.

When something is offered, it is given freely and without expectation. The scrubbing of the courtyard becomes its own act of care, the meal you prepare becomes an expression of love. In this way, the ordinary becomes sanctified, not because of the task itself, but because of the spirit with which you perform it.

This, the Gita teaches, is what makes our daily actions into yoga. And this is the heart of offering: the understanding that whatever you do can be dedicated to something larger than yourself – to life.

It's not indifference, quite the contrary. It means caring deeply about what you do, while releasing your grip on how things turn out.

You don’t need a candle or a ritual. Just the intention to bring a spirit of offering to whatever is right in front of you.

I'm returning to this understanding this week, as I begin a new cohort of teacher training. Truly, returning is the right word. This isn't a lesson I learned once, in a courtyard in India, twenty-five years ago. It's a practice that I come back to over and over - remembering that beneath the training manual, the syllabus, the first morning of a new group coming together, is the same prayer.

Tomorrow morning, I will light the candle again, with the prayer I’ve held for all these years: to offer my best, and to let what I do be my contribution to life, and to the highest in myself and in others.