3. The Gita stresses everywhere that the man who performs svadharma should give up the fruit. One must act, but one must also renounce the fruit. Water the tree, tend it with care, but do not desire to enjoy its shade or fruit or flower. This is karma yoga through the practice of svadharma. Karma-yoga does not mean merely the performance of karma. Action takes place all the time, everywhere in creation.  There is no need to tell it; but the karma that is the performance of svadharma - not mere action, but acting well and renouncing the fruit - this is easy to say and appears easy to understand, but it is very difficult to put into practice. 

For it is considered that the motive force behind any action is the desire for fruit. To act without the desire for fruit is to turn things upside down. It is the very opposite of the way the world proceeds. When a man works unremittingly, we say that the karma-yoga of the Gita fills his life. We say that the life of a man who works constantly is full of karma yoga, but this is an inaccurate use of language. All this is not karma-yoga as explained in the Gita. Among millions of people who perform action - not mere action, but even action in the form of svadharma - it is difficult to get a few who perform the karma-yoga of the Gita. A perfect karma-yogi - in the true and subtle meaning of the Gita perhaps we shall never find. To perform karma and yet to give up its fruit is a most uncommon thing. So far, the Gita has been making and maintaining just distinction.

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