Aspiring sAdhakas may be confronted by some doubts regarding the importance of duties and obligations as a householder, and how to balance those with sAdhanA. Sometimes a confusion may arise whether sAdhanA has any place in gRhasthAshrama. This relates to the central question of action (karma). Actions alone do not lead to liberation, but actions performed with the proper mental attitude serve to purify the mind. Such a purified mind responds more readily to sAdhanA that then leads to the first glimpse of Self-knowledge, which in turn eventually leads to liberation. When the true Self is known, the 'myth of agency' becomes clear: in other words, it becomes clear that there is no doer or agent in all actions, but these are merely the guNas playing with the guNas. The myth of agency is the principal cause of attachment that then leads to misery. Once the myth of agency is revealed, then consequently the attachment to fruits of the actions also falls off in due course of time. However, even after the dawn of Self-realization it takes time for constant awareness to be established. At any rate, the recommended mental attitude for performing actions prior to realization is therefore an attitude of non-attachment to the fruits of the actions. The idea is that by imitating the behavior of a realized person, something will rub off. Even the jazz great Clark Terry has famously said 'Imitate, assimilate and innovate!" While in sAdhanA there is nothing to innovate once the Truth has been assimilated, the first two steps are valid and give a useful analogy. Just as a musician imitates the greats, so too by performing karma yoga prior to attaining Self-knowledge, a sAdhaka imitates a jnAni. Since doing away with the mere self "I" is productive of Self-knowledge, one can see that BhagavAn ShrI RamaNa MaharRshi's approach of Self-enquiry (who is this I?) is the direct path to Self-realization. In fact, it is often said that Self-realization is immediately obtained if one can do away with ahamkAra (or the ego, I) instantaneously. Of course this is easier said than done! All paths differ only in their explanation of what remains after the mere self "I" is done away with. Given that whatever remains after the "I" is removed is beyond the mind (and hence beyond mentation, thought, sense perception etc), this is a trick question since all answers given in the state of the mind are going to be erroneous, and yet it also opens the possibility to several answers that may point in the right direction. The Buddhists say nothing remains (so nihilism, anAtman), the advaitins say Brahman remains (hence non-dualism) and the dvaitins say a Personal God remains (hence, Shiva, Vishnu, Shakti, Allah, and the Judaeo-Christian God concept). There is no substitute for direct experience in this regard. Using that basis for what remains, each path then constructs a description of the levels of (un)reality that are perceived, and of these I find the Vedic description to be the most accurate.
Returning to the matter of cultivating the attitude of a karma yogi (non-attachment to fruits of the action), given that every human birth starts from a state of spiritual ignorance, this attitude is quite difficult to cultivate and maintain. The Vedic concept of structuring life along 4 Ashramas (brahmacarya, gRhastha, vAnaprastha and sannyAsa) was to provide a structure within which humans (being naturally spiritually ignorant) could go about their life enacting a highly ritualized sequence of actions, each of which was to serve as a constant reminder of the Eternal Truth (reinforcing the absence of agency, non-doership, non-attachment, etc). These ritual actions - properly called karmas, and that is what is meant by the word karma in the source texts- were of three types- nitya karma (in this context daily actions such as samdhyAvandanam, agnihotra, aupAsanam, etc), naimittika karma (obligatory actions such as pitR tarpanam), and kAmya karma (performed for desire of progeny, wealth, heaven and so forth). In time the significance of these ritual actions has been lost and all that remains are a bunch of post-it notes written in a language that few understand and even fewer can explain the significance of (case in point being the upanayanam and yajnopavIta example I gave in class). It is conceivable that at some point in history, probably around the time of Sri Adi ShankarAcArya or before, the Ashrama dharma could be faithfully followed by brahmachAris who had attained kuNdalini awakening at the time of their upanayanam ceremony. The oft-cited example is that of Janaka who was a brahmajnAni and a householder who followed his Ashrama dharmas. But the key point to note is that following the Ashrama dharma is not by itself productive of brahma jnAnam- there are many examples from our grandparents' generation of householders who devoutly performed agnihotra and aupAsanam and vaisvedevA sacrifices every day and yet did not attain Self-knowledge. Action (ritual or otherwise) without Self-knowledge did not produce the result. On the other hand, confirmed "sinners" such as ArunagirinAthar attained Self-knowledge without following prescribed actions in the Ashrama dharma.
The concept of karma has changed in time because none of the actions we perform these days would come under the classification of Vedic brahminical or kshatriya karma. The accumulation of wealth that all householders are now engaged in is distinctly a vaishya activity and the pursuit of pleasure is a shUdra activity. So in my opinion, to fall back on the Vedic notion of karma in a literalist sense is irrelevant in today's context. However, the one useful thing that is nowadays conveniently omitted from the Vedic karmas is the nitya karma- the essence of this practice is that one has a daily obligation to try and realize one's true Self. This is most effectively implemented as a daily 20 minute sAdhanA- whether it be yoga, japa, or pUja. It is the essence of the samdhyAvandanam that becomes samdhyA dhyAnam when one abstracts the essential mental practice from the ritual action. When that is combined with a karma yogic attitude to the performance of whatever actions our previous samskAras have led us into, that can then be productive of the desired result.