When Love Must Leave: A Reflection on Karma Yoga and the Art of Letting Go

These past few months, I have been spending time in India, caring for my ninety-three-year-old father. During this period, my uncle also fell ill and passed on, and I found myself managing not only his care but also the many tasks that follow a loved one’s departure.

It has been a season of deep seva — love expressed through practical responsibility, quiet devotion, and sometimes, exhaustion. Now, as I prepare to return to my life and students in the United States, a subtle guilt arises — that familiar ache that surfaces when love cannot stay in one place.

But when I sit with this feeling through the lens of Karma Yoga, I see that it isn’t guilt at all. It is love. Guilt whispers, “I have done something wrong. I should have done more." Love whispers, “I wish I could still be there.” 

It is love’s mourning of its own limitation.

So I turn to God — what I call the Great Omniscient Dimension (G.O.D.) — the same all-pervading consciousness the Vedas name Ishwara: the Divine Intelligence, the sacred Order that moves through all beings and all actions. And I remind myself: it was never “I” who was caring. I remember, It was Ishwara — G.O.D — caring through me. And now, Ishwara will continue to care through others. The same divine hands that moved as mine will move as theirs.

This is Karma Yoga in practice — to know when one chapter of seva is complete and the next begins, and to trust that the yajna of care continues even when we step aside.

Before leaving, I will hug my father and silently say in my heart: “I entrust you to the same Ishwara who has never left either of us. My body may travel, but Ishwara remains.” And each morning across the ocean, when I light a lamp at my home altar, I will remember that the flame before me and the flame beside him are one and the same.

To love deeply yet not cling — this is the refinement Karma Yoga brings. It teaches us to act with full heart, then release with full trust.

As we study in the Bhagavad Gita (2.47):“Your right is to action alone, never to its fruits. Do not be attached to the fruits of action, nor to inaction.”

This verse reveals the essence of selflessness. Selfishness in seva (service) takes many forms. Sometimes it shows up as a wish to be needed, acknowledged, or remembered. But at other times — as in my own case — it can appear as the tender desire to grasp, to hold on, to not let love change form. Even this gentle attachment binds the heart.

Selfless seva, however, arises when we recognize that the “I” who serves is but an instrument in the hands of the Divine. When the ego bows and the heart opens, even the act of letting go becomes an offering. In this way, love becomes surrender — not to loss, but to the larger Order that holds us all.

Idam Na Mama — this too was never mine to hold on to.To serve, and then to let go, is itself the highest offering.

Om Tat Sat— Acharya Shunya

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