My father is a farmer. He has been one his entire life.
One summer, my sister asked him a question that has stayed with me ever since. The fields were bare, no crop, no harvest, nothing to tend. The sun was punishing. And yet he had walked out to the farm and was quietly resting under a neem tree.
She asked: Why do you still go when there is nothing happening?
He said: The farm gives food to survive for all the 365 days of the year. How can I leave it alone when there is no crop? I would always like to spend time there, even when there is no crop.
I have thought about that answer a thousand times. It is the purest definition of karma yoga I have ever encountered, not from a scripture, not from a teacher, but from a man who has never stepped inside a yoga studio.
Karma yoga is not a philosophy. It is a way of being. Show up. Do your work. Let go of the result. My father has never read the Bhagavad Gita. But he lives every word of it.
When I sit with students in a Sudarshan Kriya session, when I hold space in a sound healing immersion, when I deliver a complex digital project, I try to bring that same quality of presence. To show up fully, regardless of outcome. To tend the field, even in summer.
He is my first teacher. My deepest teacher. I am grateful every single day.