There is No Yagna Without Yoga

First we give, then we receive

- Devdutt Pattanaik

In the Vedic world, to practice Dharma meant you give something to appease a deity who needs performing Yagna. Yagna was translated by nothing from you but your loyalty and obedience. In European orientalists as sacrifice. But in sacrifice, Yagna, you exchange. You give in order to receive

You feed a God and the God is obliged to feed you back. The assumption here is that the God is hungry. He needs praise and food. When he gets what he wants, he gives what you want.

Exchange is an indicator of humanity, for it shows empathy for the other’s hunger. This act of feeding others, and letting others feed you, is also Karma Yoga, the yoga of action, described in the famous Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita. For in Yagna, you have control on the giving, but no guarantee of receiving. You need to trust that those whom you feed will eventually reciprocate. More importantly, their failure to reciprocate will not shatter your faith in humanity.

The Bhagavad Gita is part of an epic, Mahabharata, where a hundred brothers with eleven armies fight five brothers with seven armies over property. The strong refuse to share their wealth with the weak, even though the weak are family members, even after the weak are willing to compromise. This leads to a war, which is called