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The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gitā [ch. the Gitā is that duties should be performed, and it is this obligatoriness of the performance of duties that in the Gitā is understood by karma-yoga. But, if such duties are performed from motivos of self-interest or gain or pleasure, the performance could not lead to any higher end. It is advised, therefore, that they should be performed without any motive of gain or pleasure. So the proper way in which a man should perform his duties, and at the same time keep himself clean and untarnished by the good and bad results, the pleasures and sorrows, the praise and blame proceeding out of his own deeds, is to make himself detached from all desires for the fruits of actions. To keep oneself detached from the desires for the fruits of actions is therefore the real art (kaušala) of performing one's duties; for it is only in this way that a man can make himself fit for the higher union with God or his own higher self. Here, then, we have a definition of yoga as the art of performing one's duties (yogaḥ karmasu kausalam -11. 50). The art of performing one's duties, e.g. the art of keeping oneself unattached, cannot however be called yoga on its own account; it is probably so-called only because it is the indispensable step towards the attainment of the real yoga, or union with God. It is clear, therefore, that the word yoga has a gradual evolution to a higher and higher meaning, based no doubt on the primary root-meaning of "association."
It is important to note in this connection that the process of prānāyāma, regarded as indispensable in Patañjali's Yoga, is not considered so necessary either for karma-yoga, buddhi-yoga, or for the higher kind of yoga, e.g. communion with God. It has already been mentioned that the reference to prāņāyāma is found only in connection with some kinds of substitution-meditations which have nothing to do with the main concept of yoga in the Gitā. The expression samādhi is used thrice in the noun form in the Gitā, in II. 44, 53 and 54, and three times in the verb form, in vi. 7, XII. 9 and XVII. 11; but the verb forms are not used in the technical sense of Patañjali, but in the simple root-meaning of sam + ā+dhā, "to give” or “to place” (arpaņa or sthāpana). In two cases (11. 44 and 53) where the word samādhi is used as a noun it has been interpreted by both Sankara and Śrīdhara as meaning the object in which the mind is placed or to which it is directed for communion, viz. God?. The author of the Gītā is well aware of
1 In 11. 44, however, Sankara considers this object of mind to be antahkarana
