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Reality can be divided into how things appear and how things really are. Things exist “deceptively” in that they appear differently from how they really are. It seems that things are “out there,” independently and objectively. But actually they are “empty.” Things do exist, but only as projections coming from us due to how we’ve treated others in the past. Humans see a cylinder as pen while a dog might see it as a chew toy due to different karma. Because things are ultimately empty of self-nature, everything is perfectible.

The real secret to obtaining true happiness is not just wanting it. We have to create the causes for it. Being happy is not a trivial goal. It is the precondition to being able to be compassionate toward others. And the only way to be happy is to worry about someone else’s happiness, and not obsess all the time about our own selfish desires.

We are living miraculous lives, but what are we doing with them? We are mostly taking them for granted instead of taking full advantage of our amazing opportunity. We have are living the lives that millions of traditional practitioners have prayed for, and should not just sleep walk through it.

Can we prove that our spiritual teacher or guru is an Enlightened Being? Do we really know for sure, somehow, that our teacher is not a Buddha? Our preconceptions about what an Enlightened Being should look like prevent us from seeing our teacher for who he or she really is. The process of “guru yoga” is learning to be the teacher. If you see the teacher as perfect, you will become that.

The spiritual path is meant to lead to “freedom,” liberation from suffering and unhappiness. But until we are enlightened, we don’t really know what true happiness would feel like. We are entrenched in suffering, no matter how materially comfortable our lives are. Recognizing our own unhappiness is a necessary precondition for starting on the path. We have to first get serious about the fact of suffering if we are going to be liberated from it.

The purpose of a spiritual path is to lead the practitioner to happiness. The authentic and time-tested traditions work – they deliver the goods. But the false religion of consumer capitalism cannot bring the happiness we seek in it, and we are living proof of that. We got everything the ideology promised and were not made happy as a result.

God can be understood to be a transcendent figure, outside of us, or as very close, right here in our lives. In the Bhagavad Gita, God is presented as Krishna, the guru and close friend of His devotee, Arjuna. We too can have an intimate relationship with the divine in the form of our religious teacher, but we must first must recognize the guru as our personal portal to the sacred and surrender ourselves to Him or Her.

Lama Marut discusses the three worldviews we use to explain how and why things happen to us in life. #1. Things happen for no reason. #2. God is micromanaging the Universe. Or #3. Everything is in the web of causality. We conveniently mix and match these worldviews to explain our circumstances, but a true believer of worldview #3 takes responsibility for everything that is happening in their world.

The Bhagavad Gita states, “No action in this world goes for naught, or brings about a contrary result.” Actions of selflessness and altruism toward others can bring nothing other than goodness to you, and actions of selfishness and harm to others can bring nothing other than harm. Although these laws do not always seem evident, if we fail to assume the basic principles of karma our whole moral code begins to crumble.

Lama Marut continues the delineation of the main obstacles to working hard, happily, for real and lasting happiness. “Attraction to things that are bad” or bad habits means, among other things, watching TV instead of spending time more profitably. And feeling discouraged, low self-esteem, or depression – which has increased in proportion to our own affluence and is due to thinking about ourselves all the time – is another major obstacle to our spiritual progress.

In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the classic texts in the history of religions, Lord Krishna teaches us three different but interrelated spiritual practices: the discipline of one’s actions (karma yoga), of wisdom (jnyana yoga), and of devotion (bhakti yoga). In this brief introduction to the text, Lama Marut reviews what each of these “yogas” entail and how we can begin to develop them in our own lives.

The Bhagavad Gita is linked to the early texts of the Indian Mahayana Buddhist traditions by its emphasis on the three “yogas” of devotion, compassionate action, wisdom, and devotion or bhakti. In Buddhism, the pan-Indian devotional movement found expression not only in the notion also found in Hinduism that the divine is imminent, familiar, and appears all around us, but also in the figure of the bodhisattva whose compassion for other beings is so overwhelming that he or she would do practically anything to get enlightened in order to help them. “Karma yoga” in the Gita means selfless action, action done without regard to “what’s in it for me,” reverberating with the Buddhist emphasis on compassion and loving-kindness. And the “yoga of wisdom” teaches us that there is a reality beyond that of mere appearances, a concept found in many, if not all, of the world’s religions.

Why aren’t we doing the things in life we know are the most important? What’s preventing us from developing the “joyful effort” we need to progress in our spiritual lives? The main obstacle to working hard, happily, for real and lasting happiness is laziness. Laziness can mean “just not feeling like it” – always procrastinating and putting off what we know we should do. But laziness can also involve keeping so busy with unimportant things that we don’t have the time and energy to dedicate to our spiritual lives. We must learn to “get unbusy” with things that don’t really matter in order to joyfully work hard for the things that do.

We can’t achieve the happiness we all are seeking if we continue to create the causes for suffering. We have to let go of the scissors with which we are cutting ourselves; we have to renounce the idea that our happiness (or unhappiness) comes from any place other than ourselves. No one can make us happy, and no one can make us unhappy. Our problems derive from our true and only enemies, the three main “mental afflictions” of desire, aversion and the ignorance that underlies them.

Because things are “empty” of self-nature, both the perception of ourselves and that of the world around us are infinitely perfectible. Our sense of ourselves (that little inner voice we are forced to listen to) and of the world around us are both filtered through our subjectivity. What’s crucial is to learn what causes us to interpret our reality the way we do so that we can change it for the better.

At the very foundation of what the Bhagavad Gita calls “karma yoga” is understanding the grossest level of karmic management: don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, etc. We must become masters of morality; we can’t practice more advanced forms of a spiritual life until we are firmly grounded in the basics. We must “yogify our karma”: restrain ourselves from hurting other beings and cleanse the bad karma we have already committed.