Vedic Karma Yoga
Vedic Karma Yoga is a term created by Edward Mark Vero to highlight the origins of a tradition spanning from ancient to modern, east to west.
Vedic-Based Karma Yoga & Vedic Karma Yoga
It’s important to highlight origins, and pass on authority and credit to the traditional holders of ancient knowledge, as it continues to interact with the modern world.
If we think of the traditional, ancient Vedic knowledge of India as a trunk of a tree, over millennia it has branched into innumerable different philosophies and traditions. Each branch, leading to the next branch, and to the next branch.
If you follow the very last branch, you can lead back all the way to the trunk of the tree. Following the roots of each philosophy and it’s target audience and context.
Vedic karma yoga is just one unique path, that is so unique it had no specific name.
In order to have a name to refer to this unique branch, (in which Ed Vero was initiated into by his teachers) Ed called it Vedic Karma Yoga.
But, as Ed is not an orthodox member of the Sanatan Dharma tradition from which this termed ‘Vedic Karma Yoga’ has it’s origins, and has was not born into the culture from which it was originated, he calls his own perspectives on the tradition ‘Vedic-Based’ Karma Yoga. This maintains a place for masters and upcoming teachers within the orthodox Indian tradition without another culture appropriating its authority, yet at the same time, allows the tools, ideas, techniques and perspectives of ‘Vedic-Based Karma Yoga’ to flow freely and benefit people in all cultures, in every corner of the globe.
Difficult Conversations
For people who can maintain complexity
Traditional Sanatan Dharma, and Vedic traditions, are directly related to caste, a structuring of society into classes.
Whether this caste system was well-intentioned, and simply misunderstood over the millenia or not, isn’t an way to avoid the conversation around it.
A part of responsibly interacting with ancient knowledge, and its culture of origin, is to recognize where people have suffered in those cultures, and most importantly, not to brush these things aside and claim a position on the top of a hierarchy, where you gain authority and recognition.
Traditionally, as a philosophy specifically for people in everyday life, Vedic Karma Yoga is open to all castes, but it still follows Vedic injunctions related to caste. Meaning it avoids knowledge that has been reserved specifically for the priestly caste ‘Brahmins’, and avoids claiming that role for itself.
This is why Ed has not claimed the role of a teacher of Vedic Karma Yoga, he was not born into that culture, and even if the caste system was originally well intentioned, he does not agree with it’s current outcome.
This is why Ed founded the philosophy of Vedic-Based Karma Yoga – it enlivens and highlights the incredibly powerful, deep, and most importantly relevant, knowledge for everyday people that is the foundation of Vedic Karma Yoga.
Yet does not attempt to claim authority over the tradition of Vedic Karma Yoga itself. Those who do claim this authority, by proxy, also agree with the outcome of the Vedic doctrine of caste.
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