"Anything that
is secret and mysterious in these systems of Yoga should be at once rejected.
The best guide in life is strength. In religion as in all other matters,
discard anything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it. Mystery-mongering
weakens the human brain. It has well-nigh destroyed Yoga--one of the grandest
of sciences."
To Unique and Unusual
Esoteric Books!
KARMA YOGA
(Originally published by
President, Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, Pithoragarh, Himalayas)
KARMA
IN ITS EFFECT ON CHARACTER
THE word Karma is derived from the Sanskrit Kri, to do; all action
is Karma. Technically, this word also means the effects of actions. In
connection with metaphysics, it sometimes means the effects, of which our
past actions were the causes. But in Karma-Yoga we have simply to do with
the word Karma as meaning work. The goal of mankind is knowledge. That
is the one ideal placed before us by Eastern philosophy. Pleasure is not
the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end.
It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all
the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure
to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness,
but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain
are great teachers; and that he learns as much from evil as from good.
As pleasure and pain pass before his soul, they leave upon it different
pictures, and the result of these combined impressions is what is called
man's "character". If you take the character of any man, it really
is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind;
you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation
of that character. Good and evil have an equal share in molding character,
and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In studying
the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the vast majority
of cases it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness,
it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought
out their inner fire more than praise.
Now this knowledge, again, is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from
outside; it is all inside. What we say a man "knows", should,
in strict psychological language, be what he "discovers" or "unveils",
what a man "learns" is really what he "discovers",
by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting anywhere in a corner
waiting for him? It was in his own mind; the time came and he found it
out. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind;
the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external
world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your
own mind, but the object of your study is always your own mind. The falling
of an apple gave the suggestion to Newton, and he studied his own mind.
He rearranged all the previous links of thought in his mind and discovered
a new link among them, which we call the law of gravitation. It was not
in the apple nor in anything in the center of the earth. All knowledge,
therefore, secular or spiritual, is in the human mind. In many cases it
is not discovered but remains covered, and when the covering is being slowly
taken off we say, "We are learning", and the advance of knowledge
is made by the advance of this process of uncovering. The man from whom
this veil is being lifted is the more knowing man; the man upon whom it
lies thick is ignorant; and the man from whom it has entirely gone is all-knowing,
omniscient. There have been omniscient men, and, I believe, there will
be yet; and that there will be myriads of them in the cycles to come. Like
fire in a piece of flint, knowledge exists in the mind; suggestion is the
friction which brings it out. So with all our feelings and actions--our
tears and our smiles, our joys and our griefs, our weeping and our laughter,
our curses and our blessings, our praises and our blames--every one of
these we may find, if we calmly study our own selves, to have been brought
out from within ourselves by so many blows. The result is what we are.
All these blows taken together are called Karma--work, action. Every mental
and physical blow that is given to the soul, by which, as it were, fire
is struck from it, and by which its own power and knowledge are discovered,
is Karma, this word being used in its widest sense; thus we are all doing
Karma all the time. I am talking to you: that is Karma. You are listening:
that is Karma. We breathe: that is Karma. We walk: Karma. Everything we
do, physical or mental, is Karma, and it leaves its marks on us.
There are certain works which are, as it were, the aggregate, the sum
total, of a large number of smaller works. If we stand near the seashore
and hear the waves dashing against the shingle, we think it is such a great
noise; and yet we know that one wave is really composed of millions and
millions of minute waves. Each one of these is making a noise, and yet
we do not catch it; it is only when they become the big aggregate that
we hear. Similarly, every pulsation of the heart is work; certain kinds
of work we feel and they become tangible to us; they are, at the same time,
the aggregate of a number of small works. If you really want to judge of
the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool
may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common
actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character
of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to
some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose
character is great always, the same wherever he be.
Karma in its effect on character is the most tremendous power that
man has to deal with. Man is, as it were, a center, and is attracting all
the powers of the universe towards himself, and in this center is fusing
them all and again sending them off in a big current. Such a center is
the real man, the almighty, the omniscient, and he draws the whole universe
towards him. Good and bad, misery and happiness, all are running towards
him and clinging round him; and out of them he fashions the mighty stream
of tendency called character and throws it outwards. As he has the power
of drawing in anything, so has he the power of throwing it out.
All the actions that we see in the world, all the movements in human
society, all the works that we have around us, are simply the display of
thought, the manifestation of the will of man. Machines or instruments,
cities, ships or men-of-war, all these are simply the manifestation of
the will of man; and this will is caused by character and character is
manufactured by Karma. As is Karma, so is the manifestation of the will.
The men of mighty will the world has produced have all been tremendous
workers--gigantic souls with wills powerful enough to overturn worlds,
wills they got by persistent work through ages and ages. Such a gigantic
will as that of a Buddha or a Jesus could not be obtained in one life,
for we know who their fathers were. It is not known that their fathers
ever spoke a word for the good of mankind. Millions and millions of carpenters
like Joseph had gone; millions are still living. Millions and millions
of petty kings like Buddha's father had been in the world. If it was only
a case of hereditary transmission, how do you account for this petty prince
who was not, perhaps, obeyed by his own servants, producing this son whom
half a world worships? How do you explain the gulf between the carpenter
and his son whom millions of human beings worship as God? It cannot be
solved by the theory of heredity. The gigantic will which Buddha and Jesus
threw over the world, whence did it come? Whence came this accumulation
of power? It must have been there through ages and ages, continually growing
bigger and bigger, until it burst on society in a Buddha or a Jesus, even
rolling down to the present day.
All this is determined by Karma, work. No one can get anything unless
he earns it; this is an eternal law. We may sometimes think it is not so,
but in the long run we become convinced of it. A man may struggle all his
life for riches; he may cheat thousands, but he finds at last that he did
not deserve to become rich, and his life becomes a trouble and a nuisance
to him. We may go on accumulating things for our physical enjoyment, but
only what we earn is really ours. A fool may buy all the books in the world,
and they will be in his library, but he will be able to read only those
that he deserves to; and this deserving is produced by Karma. Our Karma
determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate. We are responsible
for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power
to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past
actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can
be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act. You
will say, "What is the use of learning how to work? Everyone works
in some way or other in this world." But there is such a thing as
frittering away our energies. With regard to Karma-Yoga, the Gita says
that it is doing work with cleverness and as a science: by knowing how
to work, one can obtain the greatest results. You must remember that all
work is simply to bring out the power of the mind which is already there,
to wake up the soul. The power is inside every man, so is knowledge; the
different works are like blows to bring them out to cause these giants
to wake up.
Man works with various motives; there cannot be work without motive.
Some people want to get fame, and they work for fame. Others want money,
and they work for money. Others want to have power, and they work for power.
Others want to get to heaven, and they work for the same. Others want to
leave a name when they die, as they do in China where no man gets a title
until he is dead; and that is a better way, after all, than with us. When
a man does something very good there, they give a title of nobility to
his father who is dead, or to his grandfather. Some people work for that.
Some of the followers of certain Mohammedan sects work all their lives
to have a big tomb built for them when they die. I know sects among whom,
as soon as a child is born, a tomb is prepared for it; that is among them
the most important work a man has to do, and the bigger and the finer the
tomb, the better off the man is supposed to be. Others work as a penance;
do all sorts of wicked things, then erect a temple, or give something to
the priests to buy them off and obtain from them a passport to heaven.
They think that this kind of beneficence will clear them and they will
go scot-free in spite of their sinfulness. Such are some of the various
motives for work.
Work for work's sake. There are some who are really the salt of the
earth in every country and who work for work's sake, who do not care for
name, or fame, or even to go to heaven. They work just because good will
come of it. There are others who do good to the poor and help mankind from
still higher motives, because they believe in doing good and love good.
The motive for name and fame seldom brings immediate results as a rule;
they come to us when we are old and have almost done with life. If a man
works without any selfish motive in view, does he not gain anything? Yes,
he gains the highest. Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not
the patience to practise it. It is more paying from the point of view of
health also. Love, truth, and unselfishness are not merely moral figures
of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a
manifestation of power. In the first place, a man who can work for five
days or even for five minutes without any selfish motive whatever, without
thinking of future, of heaven, of punishment, or anything of the kind,
has in him the capacity to become a powerful moral giant. It is hard to
do it, but in the heart of our hearts we know its value, and the good it
brings. It is the greatest manifestation of power--this tremendous restraint;
self-restraint is a manifestation of greater power than all outgoing action.
A carriage with four horses may rush down a hill unrestrained, or the coachman
may curb the horses. Which is the greater manifestation of power, to let
them go or to hold them? A cannon-ball flying through the air goes a long
distance and falls. Another is cut short in its flight by striking against
a wall, and the impact generates intense heat. All outgoing energy following
a selfish motive is frittered away; it will not cause power to return to
you; but if restrained, it will result in development of power. This self-control
will tend to produce a mighty will, a character which makes a Christ or
a Buddha. Foolish men do not know this secret; they nevertheless want to
rule mankind. Even a fool may rule the whole world if he works and waits.
Let him wait a few years, restrain that foolish idea of governing; and
when that idea is wholly gone, he will be a power in the world. The majority
of us cannot see beyond a few years, just as some animals cannot see beyond
a few steps. Just a little narrow circle--that is our world. We have not
the patience to look beyond, and thus become immoral and wicked. This is
our weakness, our powerlessness.
Even the lowest forms of work are not to be despised. Let the man who
knows no better, work for selfish ends, for name and fame; but everyone
should always try to get towards higher and higher motives and to understand
them. "To work we have the right, but not to the fruits thereof."
Leave the fruits alone. Why care for results? If you wish to help
a man, never think what that man's attitude should be towards you. If you
want to do a great or a good work, do not trouble to think what the result
will be.
There arises a difficult question in this ideal of work. Intense activity
is necessary; we must always work. We cannot live a minute without work.
What then becomes of rest? Here is one side of the life-struggle--work
in which we are whirled rapidly round. And here is the other that of calm,
retiring renunciation; everything is peaceful around, there is very little
of noise and show, only nature with her animals and flowers and mountains.
Neither of them is a perfect picture. A man used to solitude, if brought
in contact with the surging whirlpool of the world, will be crushed by
it; just as the fish that lives in the deep sea water, as soon as it is
brought to the surface, breaks into pieces, deprived of the weight of water
on it that had kept it together. Can a man who has been used to the turmoil
and the rush of life live at ease if he comes to a quiet place? He suffers
and perchance may lose his mind. The ideal man is he who in the midst of
the greatest silence and solitude finds the intensest activity, and in
the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the
desert. He has learnt the secret of restraint, he has controlled himself.
He goes through the streets of a big city with all its traffic, and his
mind is as calm as if he were in a cave where not a sound could reach him;
and he is intensely working all the time. That is the ideal of Karma-Yoga;
and if you have attained to that, you have really learnt the secret of
work.
But we have to begin from the beginning, to take up the works as they
come to us and slowly make ourselves more unselfish every day. We must
do the work and find out the motive power that prompts us; and, almost
without exception, in the first years we shall find that our motives are
always selfish; but gradually this selfishness will melt by persistence,
till at last will come the time when we shall be able to do really unselfish
work. We may all hope that some day or other, as we struggle through
the paths of life, there will come a time when we shall become perfectly
unselfish; and the moment we attain to that, all our powers will be concentrated,
and the knowledge which is ours will be manifest.
EACH
IS GREAT IN HIS OWN PLACE
According to the Sânkhya philosophy, nature is composed of three
forces called, in Sanskrit, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. These as manifested
in the physical world are what we may call equilibrium, activity, and inertness.
Tamas is typified as darkness or inactivity; Rajas is activity, expressed
as attraction or repulsion; and Sattva is the equilibrium of the two.
In every man there are these three forces. Sometimes Tamas prevails.
We become lazy, we cannot move, we are inactive, bound down by certain
ideas or by mere dullness. At other times activity prevails, and at still
other times that calm balancing of both. Again, in different men, one of
these forces is generally predominant. The characteristic of one man is
inactivity, dullness, and laziness; that of another activity, power, manifestation
of energy; and in still another we find the sweetness, calmness, and gentleness
which are due to the balancing of both action and inaction. So in all creation--in
animals, plants, and men--we find the more or less typical manifestation
of all these different forces.
Karma-Yoga has specially to deal with these three factors. By teaching
what they are and how to employ them, it helps us to do our work better.
Human society is a graded organization. We all know about morality, and
we all know about duty, but at the same time we find that in different
countries the significance of morality varies greatly. What is regarded
as moral in one country, may in another be considered perfectly immoral.
For instance, in one country cousins may marry; in another, it is thought
to be very immoral; in one, men may marry their sisters-in-law; in another,
it is regarded as immoral; in one country people may marry only once; in
another, many times; and so forth. Similarly, in all other departments
of morality, we find the standard varies greatly; yet we have the idea
that there must be a universal standard of morality.
So it is with duty. The idea of duty varies much among different nations.
In one country, if a man does not do certain things, people will say he
has acted wrongly; while if he does those very things in another country,
people will say that he did not act rightly--and yet we know that there
must be some universal idea of duty. In the same way, one class of society
thinks that certain things are among its duty, while another class thinks
quite the opposite and would be horrified if it had to do those things.
Two ways are left open to us--the way of the ignorant who think that there
is only one way to truth and that all the rest are wrong, and the way of
the wise who admit that, according to our mental constitution or the different
planes of existence in which we are, duty and morality may vary. The important
thing is to know that there are gradations of duty and of morality--that
the duty of one state of life, in one set of circumstances, will not and
cannot be that of another.
To illustrate: All great teachers have taught, "Resist not evil",
that non-resistance is the highest moral ideal. We all know that if a certain
number of us attempted to put that maxim fully into practice, the whole
social fabric would fall to pieces, the wicked would take possession of
our properties and our lives, and would do whatever they liked with us.
Even if for only one day such non-resistance were practiced, it would lead
to disaster. Yet, intuitively, in our heart of hearts we feel the truth
of the teaching, "Resist not evil". This seems to us to be the
highest ideal; yet to teach this doctrine only would be equivalent to condemning
a vast portion of mankind. Not only so, it would be making men feel that
they were always doing wrong and cause in them scruples of conscience in
all their actions; it would weaken them, and that constant self-disapproval
would breed more vice than any other weakness would. To the man who has
begun to hate himself the gate to degeneration has already opened; and
the same is true of a nation.
Our first duty is not to hate ourselves; because to advance we must
have faith in ourselves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself
can never have faith in God. Therefore the only alternative remaining to
us is to recognize that duty and morality vary under different circumstances;
not that the man who resists evil is doing what is always and in itself
wrong, but that in the different circumstances in which he is placed it
may become even his duty to resist evil.
In reading the Bhagavad-Gita, many of you in Western countries may
have felt astonished at the second chapter, wherein Shri Krishna calls
Arjuna a hypocrite and a coward because of his refusal to fight or offer
resistance on account of his adversaries being his friends and relatives,
making the plea that non-resistance was the highest ideal of love. This
is a great lesson for us all to learn, that in all matters the two extremes
are alike; the extreme positive and the extreme negative are always similar;
when the vibrations of light are too slow we do not see them, nor do we
see them when they are too rapid. So with sound; when very low in pitch
we do not hear it, when very high we do not hear it either. Of like nature
is the difference between resistance and non-resistance. One man does not
resist because he is weak, lazy, and cannot, not because he will not; the
other man knows that he can strike an irresistible blow if he likes; yet
he not only does not strike, but blesses his enemies. The one who from
weakness resists not commits a sin, and as such cannot receive any benefit
from the non-resistance; while the other would commit a sin by offering
resistance. Buddha gave up his throne and renounced his position; that
was true renunciation. But there cannot be any question of renunciation
in the case of a beggar who has nothing to renounce. So we must always
be careful about what we really mean when we speak of this non-resistance
and ideal love. We must first take care to understand whether we have the
power of resistance or not. Then, having the power, if we renounce it and
do not resist, we are doing a grand act of love; but if we cannot resist,
and yet, at the same time, try to deceive ourselves into the belief that
we are actuated by motives of the highest love, we are doing the exact
opposite. Arjuna became a coward at the sight of the mighty array against
him; his "love" made him forget his duty towards his country
and king. That is why Shri Krishna told him that he was a hypocrite: Thou
talkest like a wise man, but thy actions betray thee to be a coward; therefore
stand up and fight!
Such is the central idea of Karma-Yoga. The Karma-Yogi is the man who
understands that the highest ideal is non-resistance, and who also knows
that this non-resistance is the highest manifestation of power in actual
possession, and also what is called the resisting of evil is but a step
on the way towards the manifestation of this highest power, namely, non-resistance.
Before reaching this highest ideal, man's duty is to resist evil;
let him work, let him fight, let him strike straight from the shoulder.
Then only, when he has gained the power to resist, will non-resistance
be a virtue.
I once met a man in my country whom I had known before as a very stupid,
dull person, who knew nothing and had not the desire to know anything,
and was living the life of a brute. He asked me what he should do to know
God, how he was to get free. "Can you tell a lie?" I asked him.
"No," he replied. "Then you must learn to do so. It is better
to tell a lie than to be a brute or a log of wood. You are inactive; you
have not certainly reached the highest state, which is beyond all actions,
calm and serene; you are too dull even to do something wicked." That
was an extreme case, of course, and I was joking with him; but what I meant
was that a man must be active in order to pass through activity to perfect
calmness.
Inactivity should be avoided by all means. Activity always means
resistance. Resist all evils, mental and physical; and when you have succeeded
in resisting, then will calmness come. It is very easy to say,
"Hate nobody, resist not evil", but we know what that kind of
thing generally means in practice. When the eyes of society are turned
towards us, we may make a show of nonresistance, but in our hearts it is
canker all the time. We feel the utter want of the calm of nonresistance;
we feel that it would be better for us to resist. If you desire wealth,
and know at the same time that the whole world regards him who aims at
wealth as a very wicked man, you, perhaps, will not dare to plunge into
the struggle for wealth, yet your mind will be running day and night after
money. This is hypocrisy and will serve no purpose. Plunge into the
world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that
is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfill
your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled
the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very
little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have
passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state
of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender. These ideas of serenity and
renunciation have been preached for thousands of years; everybody has heard
of them from childhood, and yet we see very few in the world who have really
reached that stage. I do not know if I have seen twenty persons in my life
who are really calm and nonresisting, and I have traveled over half the
world.
Every man should take up his own ideal and endeavor to accomplish
it; that is a surer way of progress than taking up other men's ideals which
he can never hope to accomplish. For instance, we
take a child and at once give him the task of walking twenty miles. Either
the little one dies, or one in a thousand crawls the twenty miles to reach
the end exhausted and half-dead. That is like what we generally try to
do with the world. All the men and women in any society are not of
the same mind, capacity, or of the same power to do things;
they must have different ideals, and we have no right to sneer at any ideal.
Let everyone do the best he can for realizing his own ideal. Nor is it
right that I should be judged by your standard or you by mine. The apple
tree should not be judged by the standard of the oak, nor the oak by that
of the apple. To judge the apple tree you must take the apple
standard, and for the oak its own standard.
Unity in variety is the plan of creation. However men and women may
vary individually, there is unity in the background. The different individual
characters and classes of men and women are natural variations in creation.
Hence we ought not to judge them by the same standard or put the same ideal
before them. Such a course creates only an unnatural struggle, and the
result is that man begins to hate himself and is hindered from becoming
religious and good. Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle
to live up to his own highest ideal, and strive at the same time to make
the ideal as near as possible to the truth.
In the Hindu system of morality we find that this fact has been recognized
from very ancient times and in their scriptures and books on ethics different
rules are laid down for the different classes of men--the householder,
the Sannyâsin (the man who has renounced the world), and the student.
The life of every individual, according to the Hindu scriptures,
has its peculiar duties apart from what belongs in common to universal
humanity. The Hindu begins life as a student; then he marries and
becomes a householder; in old age he retires, and lastly he gives up the
world and becomes a Sannyâsin. To each of these stages of life certain
duties are attached. No one of these stages is intrinsically superior to
another. The life of the married man is quite as great as that of
the celibate who has devoted himself to religious work. The scavenger in
the street is quite as great and glorious as the king on his throne. Take
him off his throne, make him do the work of the scavenger, and see how
he fares. Take up the scavenger and see how he will rule. It is useless
to say that the man who lives out of the world is a greater man than he
who lives in the world; it is much more difficult to live in the
world and worship God than to give it up and live a free and easy life.
The four stages of life in India have in later times been reduced to two--that
of the householder and of the monk. The householder marries and carries
on his duties as a citizen, and the duty of the other is to devote his
energies wholly to religion, to preach and to worship God. I shall read
to you a few passages from the Mahâ-Nirvâna Tantra,
which treats of this subject, and you will see that it is a very
difficult task for a man to be a householder, and perform all his duties
perfectly.
The householder should be devoted to God; the knowledge of God should
be his goal of life. Yet he must work constantly, perform all his
duties; he must give up the fruits of his actions to God.
It is the most difficult thing in this world, to work and not
care for the result, to help a man and never think that he ought to be
grateful, to do some good work and at the same time never look to see whether
it brings you name or fame, or nothing at all. Even the most arrant
coward becomes brave when the world praises him. A fool can do heroic deeds
when the approbation of society is upon him, but for a man to constantly
do good without caring for the approbation of his fellowmen is indeed the
highest sacrifice man can perform. The great duty of the householder
is to earn a living, but he must take care that he does not do it by telling
lies, or by cheating or by robbing others; and he must remember that his
life is for the service of God and the poor.
Knowing that mother and father are the visible representatives of God,
the householder, always and by all means, must please them. If the mother
is pleased, and the father, God is pleased with the man. That child is
really a good child who never speaks harsh words to his parents.
Before parents one must not utter jokes, must not show restlessness,
must not show anger or temper before mother or father, a child must bow
down low, and stand up in their presence, and must not take a seat until
they order him to sit.
If the householder has food and drink and clothes without first seeing
that his mother and his father, his children, his wife, and the poor are
supplied, he is committing a sin. The mother and the father are the causes
of this body, so a man must undergo a thousand troubles in order to do
good to them.
Even so is, his duty to his wife; no man should scold his wife,
and he must always maintain her as if she were his own mother. And even
when he is in the greatest difficulties and troubles, he
must not show anger to his wife.
He who thinks of another woman besides his wife, if he touches her
even with his mind--that man goes to dark hell.
Before women he must not talk improper language, and never brag of
his powers. He must not say, "I have done this, and I have done that."
The householder must always please his wife with money, clothes, love,
faith, and words like nectar, and never do anything to disturb her. That
man who has succeeded in getting the love of a chaste wife has succeeded
in his religion and has all the virtues.
The following are duties towards children:
A son should be lovingly reared up to his fourth year; he should be
educated till he is sixteen. When he is twenty years of age he should be
employed in some work; he should then be treated affectionately by his
father as his equal. Exactly in the same manner the daughter should be
brought up, and should be educated with the greatest care. And when she
marries, the father ought to give her jewels and wealth.
Then the duty of the man is towards his brothers and sisters, and towards
the children of his brothers and sisters, if they are poor, and towards
his other relatives, his friends, and his servants. Then his duties are
towards the people of the same village, and the poor, and anyone that comes
to him for help. Having sufficient means, if the householder does not take
care to give to his relatives and to the poor, know him to be only a brute;
he is not a human being.
Excessive attachment to food, clothes, and the tending of the
body, and dressing of the hair should he avoided. The householder
must be pure in heart and clean in body, always active and always ready
for work.
To his enemies the householder must be a hero. Them he must resist.
That is the duty of the householder. He must not sit down in a corner and
weep, and talk nonsense about nonresistance. If he does not show
himself a hero to his enemies he has not done his duty. And to his friends
and relatives he must be as gentle as a lamb.
It is the duty of the householder not to pay reverence to the
wicked; because, if he reverences the wicked people of the world, he patronizes
wickedness; and it will be a great mistake if he disregards those who are
worthy of respect, the good people. He must not be gushing in his
friendship; he must not go out of the way making friends everywhere; he
must watch the actions of the men he wants to make friends with, and their
dealings with other men, reason upon them, and then make friends.
These three things be must not talk of. He must not talk in public
of his own fame; he must not preach his own name or his own powers; he
must not talk of his wealth, or of anything that has been told to him privately.
A man must not say he is poor, or that he is wealthy--he must not brag
of his wealth. Let him keep his own counsel; this is his religious duty.
This is not mere worldly wisdom; if a man does not do so, he may be held
to be immoral.
The householder is the basis, the prop of the whole society;
he is the principal earner. The poor, the weak, the children, and
the women who do not work--all live upon the householder; so there must
be certain duties that he has to perform, and these duties must make him
feel strong to perform them, and not make him think that he is doing things
beneath his ideal. Therefore, if he has done something weak or has made
some mistake, he must not say so in public; and if he is engaged in some
enterprise and knows he is sure to fail in it, he must not speak of it.
Such self-exposure is not only uncalled for, but also unnerves the man
and makes him unfit for the performance of his legitimate duties in life.
At the same time, he must struggle hard to acquire these things--first,
knowledge, and secondly, wealth. It is his duty; and if he does not do
his duty, he is nobody. A householder who does not struggle to get wealth
is immoral. If he is lazy and content to lead an idle life, he is immoral,
because upon him depend hundreds. If he gets riches, hundreds of others
will be thereby supported.
If there were not in this city hundreds who had striven to become rich,
and who had acquired wealth, where would all this civilization, and these
alms-houses and great houses be?
Going after wealth in such a case is not bad, because that wealth
is for distribution. The householder is the center of life and society.
It is a worship for him to acquire and spend wealth nobly, for the householder
who struggles to become rich by good means and for good purposes is doing
practically the same thing for the attainment of salvation as the anchorite
does in his cell when he is praying, for in them we see only the different
aspects of the same virtue of self-surrender and self-sacrifice prompted
by the feeling of devotion to God and to all that is His.
He must struggle to acquire a good name by all means. He must not gamble,
he must not move in the company of the wicked, he must not tell lies, and
must not be the cause of trouble to others.
Often people enter into things they have not the means to accomplish,
with the result that they cheat others to attain their own ends. Then there
is in all things the time factor to be taken into consideration; what at
one time might be a failure, would perhaps at another time be a very great
success.
The householder must speak the truth and speak gently, using words
which people like, which will do good to others; nor should he talk of
the business of other men.
The householder by digging tanks, by planting trees on the roadsides,
by establishing rest-houses for men and animals, by making roads and building
bridges, goes towards the same goal as the greatest Yogi.
This is one part of the doctrine of Karma-Yoga--activity, the duty
of the householder. There is a passage later on, where it says that "if
the householder dies in battle fighting for his country or his religion,
he comes to the same goal as the Yogi by meditation," showing thereby
that what is duty for one is not duty for another. At the same time,
it does not say that this duty is lowering and the other elevating. Each
duty has its own place, and according to the circumstances
in which we are placed, must we perform our duties.
One idea comes out of all this, the condemnation of all weakness.
This is a particular idea in all our teachings which I like, either in
philosophy, or in religion, or in work. If you read the Vedas, you
will find this word always repeated--"fearlessness"--fear nothing.
Fear is a sign of weakness. A man must go about his duties without
taking notice of the sneers and the ridicule of the world.
If a man retires from the world to worship God, he must not think that
those who live in the world and work for the good of the world are not
worshipping God; neither must those who live in the world for wife and
children think that those who give up the world are low vagabonds. Each
is great in his own place. This thought I will illustrate by a story.
A certain king used to inquire of all the Sannyâsins that came
to his country, "Which is the greater man--he who gives up the world
and becomes a Sannyâsin, or he who lives in the world and performs
his duties as a householder?" Many wise men sought to solve the problem.
Some asserted that the Sannyâsin was the greater, upon which the
king demanded that they should prove their assertion. When they could not,
he ordered them to marry and become householders. Then others came and
said, "The householder who performs his duties is the greater man."
Of them, too, the king demanded proofs. When they could not give them,
he made them also settle down as householders.
At last there came a young Sannyâsin, and the king similarly
inquired of him also. He answered, "Each, O king, is equally great
in his place." "Prove this to me," asked the king. "I
will prove it to you," said the Sannyâsin, "but you must
first come and live as I do for a few days, that I may be able to prove
to you what I say." The king consented and followed the Sannyâsin
out of his own territory and passed through many other countries until
they came to a great kingdom. In the capital of that kingdom a great ceremony
was going on. The king and the Sannyâsin heard the noise of drums
and music, and heard also the criers; the people were assembled in the
streets in gala dress, and a great proclamation was being made. The king
and the Sannyâsin stood there to see what was going on. The crier
was proclaiming loudly that the princess, daughter of the king of that
country, was about to choose a husband from among those assembled before
her.
It was an old custom in India for princesses to choose husbands in
this way. Each princess had certain ideas of the sort of man she wanted
for a husband; some would have the handsomest man; others would have only
the most learned; others again the richest, and so on. All the princes
of the neighborhood put on their bravest attire and presented themselves
before her. Sometimes they too had their own criers to enumerate their
advantages and the reasons why they hoped the princess would choose them.
The princess was taken round on a throne in the most splendid array and
looked at and heard about them. If she was not pleased with what she saw
and heard, she said to her bearers, "Move on," and no more notice
was taken of the rejected suitors. If, however, the princess was pleased
with any one of them, she threw a garland of flowers over him, and he became
her husband.
The princess of the country to which our king and the Sannyâsin
had come was having one of these interesting ceremonies. She was the most
beautiful princess in the world, and the husband of the princess would
be ruler of the kingdom after her father's death. The idea of this princess
was to marry the handsomest man, but she could not find the right one to
please her. Several times these meetings had taken place, but the princess
could not select a husband. This meeting was the most splendid of all;
more people than ever had come to it. The princess came in on a throne,
and the bearers carried her from place to place. She did not seem to care
for anyone, and everyone became disappointed that this meeting also was
going to be a failure. Just then came a young man, a Sannyâsin, handsome
as if the sun had come down to the earth, and stood in one corner of the
assembly watching what was going on. The throne with the princess came
near him, and as soon as she saw the beautiful Sannyâsin, she stopped
and threw the garland over him. The young Sannyâsin seized the garland
and threw it off, exclaiming, "What nonsense is this? I am a Sannyâsin.
What is marriage to me?" The king of that country thought that perhaps
this man was poor and so dared not marry the princess, and said to him,
"With my daughter goes half my kingdom now, and the whole kingdom
after my death!" and put the garland again on the Sannyâsin.
The young man threw it off once more, saying, "Nonsense ! I do not
want to marry," and walked quickly away from the assembly.
Now the princess had fallen so much in love with this young man that
she said, "I must marry this man or I shall die." And she went
after him to bring him back. Then our other Sannyâsin, who had brought
the king there said to him, "King, let us follow this pair."
So they walked after them but at a good distance behind. The young Sannyâsin
who had refused to marry the princess walked out into the country for several
miles. When he came to a forest and entered into it, the princess followed
him, and the other two followed them. Now this young Sannyâsin was
well acquainted with that forest and knew all the intricate paths in it.
He suddenly passed into one of these and disappeared, and the princess
could not discover him. After trying for a long time to find him, she sat
down under a tree and began to weep, for she did not know the way out.
Then our king and the other Sannyâsin came up to her and said, "Do
not weep; we will show you the way out of this forest, but it is too dark
for us to find it now. Here is a big tree; let us rest under it, and in
the morning we will go early and show you the road."
Now a little bird and his wife and their three little ones lived on
that tree in a nest. This little bird looked down and saw the three people
under the tree and said to his wife, "My dear, what shall we do? Here
are some guests in the house, and it is winter, and we have no fire."
So he flew away and got a bit of burning firewood in his beak and dropped
it before the guests, to which they added fuel and made a blazing fire.
But the little bird was not satisfied. He said again to his wife, "My
dear, what shall we do? There is nothing to give these people to eat, and
they are hungry. We are householders; it is our duty to feed anyone who
comes to the house. I must do what I can, I will give them my body."
So he plunged into the midst of the fire and perished. The guests saw him
falling and tried to save him, but he was too quick for them.
The little bird's wife saw what her husband did, and she said, "Here
are three persons and only one little bird for them to eat. It is not enough;
it is my duty as a wife not to let my husband's effort go in vain; let
them have my body also." Then she fell into the fire and was burned
to death.
Then the three baby-birds, when they saw what was done and that there
was still not enough food for the three guests, said, "Our parents
have done what they could and still it is not enough. It is our duty to
carry on the work of our parents; let our bodies go too." And they
all dashed down into the fire also.
Amazed at what they saw, the three people could not of course eat these
birds. They passed the night without food, and in the morning the king
and the Sannyâsin showed the princess the way, and she went back
to her father.
Then the Sannyâsin said to the king, "King, you have seen
that each is great in his own place. If you want to live in the world,
live like those birds, ready at any moment to sacrifice yourself for others.
If you want to renounce the world, be like that young man to whom the most
beautiful woman and a kingdom were as nothing. If you want to be householder,
hold your life a sacrifice for the welfare of others; and if you choose
the life of renunciation, do not even look at beauty, and money, and power.
Each is great in his own place, but the duty of the one is not the
duty of the other."
THE
SECRET OF WORK
Helping others physically, by removing their physical needs, is indeed
great; but the help is greater according as the need is greater and according
as the help is far-reaching. If a man's wants can be removed for an hour,
it is helping him indeed; if his wants can be removed for a year, it will
be more help to him; but if his wants can be removed for ever, it is surely
the greatest help that can be given him. Spiritual knowledge is the
only thing that can destroy our miseries for ever; any other knowledge
satisfies wants only for a time. It is only with the knowledge
of the spirit that the faculty of want is annihilated for ever; so helping
man spiritually is the highest help that can be given him. He who
gives man spiritual knowledge is the greatest benefactor of mankind, and
as such we always find that those were the most powerful of men who helped
man in his spiritual needs, because spirituality is the true basis of all
our activities in life. A spiritually strong and sound man will be strong
in every other respect, if he so wishes; until there is spiritual strength
in man even physical needs cannot be well satisfied. Next to spiritual
comes intellectual help; the gift of knowledge is a far higher
gift than that of food and clothes: it is even higher than giving life
to a man, because the real life of man consists of knowledge. Ignorance
is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it
is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery. Next
in order comes, of course, helping a man physically. Therefore,
in considering the question of helping others, we must always strive not
to commit the mistake of thinking that physical help is the only help that
can be given. It is not only the last but the least, because it cannot
bring about permanent satisfaction. The misery that I feel when I am hungry
is satisfied by eating, but hunger returns; my misery can cease only when
I am satisfied beyond all want. Then hunger will not make me miserable;
no distress, no sorrow will be able to move me. So that help which
tends to make us strong spiritually is the highest, next to it comes intellectual
help, and after that physical help.
The miseries of the world cannot be cured by physical help only. Until
man's nature changes, these physical needs will always arise, and miseries
will always be felt, and no amount of physical help will cure them completely.
The only solution of this problem is to make mankind pure. Ignorance is
the mother of all the evil and all the misery we see. Let men have light,
let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery
cease in the world, not before. We may convert every house in the country
into a charity asylum; we may fill the land with hospitals, but the
misery of man will still continue to exist until man's character changes.
We read in the Bhagavad-Gita again and again that we must all work
incessantly. All work is by nature composed of good and evil. We cannot
do any work which will not do some good somewhere; there cannot be any
work which will not cause some harm somewhere. Every work must necessarily
be a mixture of good and evil; yet we are commanded to work incessantly.
Good and evil will both have their results, will produce their Karma. Good
action will entail upon us good effect; bad action, bad. But good and bad
are both bondages of the soul. The solution reached in the Gita in regard
to this bondage-producing nature of work is, that if we do not attach
ourselves to the work we do, it will not have any binding
effect on our soul. We shall try to understand what is meant by
this "non-attachment" to work.
This is the one central idea in the Gita: Work incessantly, but
be not attached to it. "Samskâra"
can be translated very nearly by inherent tendency. Using the simile
of a lake for the mind. every ripple, every wave that rises in the mind,
when it subsides, does not die out entirely, but leaves a mark and a future
possibility of that wave coming out again. This mark, with the possibility
of the wave reappearing, is what is called Samskâra. Every work that
we do, every movement of the body, every thought that we think, leaves
such an impression on the mind-stuff, and even when such impressions are
not obvious on the surface, they are sufficiently strong to work beneath
the surface subconsciously. What we are every moment is determined by the
sum total of these impressions on the mind. What I am just at this moment
is the effect of the sum total of all the impressions of my past life.
This is really what is meant by character; each man's character is
determined by the sum total of these impressions. If good impressions
prevail, the character becomes good; if bad, it becomes bad. If a man continuously
hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does bad actions, his mind will be
full of bad impressions; and they will influence his thought and work without
his being conscious of the fact. In fact, these bad impressions are always
working, and their resultant must be evil; and that man will be a bad man,
he cannot help it. The sum total of these impressions in
him will create the strong motive power for doing bad actions. He
will be like a machine in the hands of his impressions, and they
will force him to do evil. Similarly, if a man thinks good thoughts and
does good works, the sum total of these impressions will be good; and they,
in a similar manner, will force him to do good even in spite of himself.
When a man has done so much good work and thought so many good thoughts
that there is an irresistible tendency in him to do good, in spite of himself
and even if he wishes to do evil, his mind, as the sum total of his
tendencies, will not allow him to do so; the tendencies will turn him back;
he is completely under the influence of the good tendencies. When
such is the case, a man's good character is said to be established.
As the tortoise tucks its feet and head inside the shell, and you may
kill it and break it in pieces, and yet it will not come out, even so the
character of that man who has control over his motives-and organs is unchangeably
established. He controls his own inner forces, and nothing can draw
them out against his will. By this continuous reflex of good thoughts,
good impressions moving over the surface of the mind, the tendency for
doing good becomes strong, and as the result we feel able to control the
Indriyas (the sense-organs, the nerve-centers). Thus alone will character
be established, then alone a man gets to truth. Such a man is safe
for ever; he cannot do any evil. You may place him in any company,
there will be no danger for him. There is a still higher state than having
this good tendency, and that is the desire for liberation. You must remember
that freedom of the soul is the goal of all Yogas, and each one equally
leads to the same result. By work alone men may get to where Buddha
got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer. Buddha was a working Jnani
[one who attains liberation through intellectual realization];
Christ was a Bhakta [one who achieves liberation
through faith and devotion]. But the same goal was
reached by both of them. The difficulty is here. Liberation
means entire freedom--freedom from the bondage of good, as well as from
the bondage of evil. A golden chain is as much a chain as an iron
one. There is a thorn in my finger, and I use another to take the first
one out; and when I have taken it out, I throw both of them aside; I have
no necessity for keeping the second thorn, because both are thorns after
all. So the had tendencies are to be counteracted by the good ones, and
the bad impressions on the mind should be removed by the fresh waves of
good ones, until all that is evil almost disappears, or is subdued and
held in control in a corner of the mind; but after that, the good
tendencies have also to be conquered. Thus the "attached" becomes
the "unattached". Work, but let not the action or the
thought produce a deep impression on the mind; let the ripples come and
go; let huge actions proceed from the muscles and The whole gist of this
teaching is that you should work like a master and not as a slave;
work incessantly, but do not do slave's work. Do you not see how everybody
works? Nobody can be altogether at rest; ninety-nine per cent of mankind
work like slaves, and the result is misery; it is all selfish work. Work
through freedom! Work through love! The word "love" is
very difficult to understand; love never comes until there is freedom.
There is no true love possible in the slave. If you buy a slave
and tie him down in chains and make him work for you, he will work like
a drudge, but there will be no love in him. So when we ourselves work for
the things of the world as slaves, there can be no love in us, and our
work is not true work. This is true of work done for relatives and friends,
and is true of work done for our own selves. Selfish work is slave's work;
and here is a test. Every act of love brings happiness; there is
no act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as its reaction.
Real existence, real knowledge, and real love are eternally connected
with one another, the three in one: where one of them is, the others also
must be; they are the three aspects of the One without a second--the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss
[Tat, Tvam, Asi]. When that existence becomes relative,
we see it as the world; that knowledge becomes in its turn modified into
the knowledge of the things of the world; and that bliss forms the foundation
of all true love known to the heart of man. Therefore true love can
never react so as to cause pain either to the lover or to the beloved.
Suppose a man loves a woman; he wishes to have her all to himself
and feels extremely jealous about her every movement; he wants her to sit
near him, to stand near him, and to eat and move at his bidding. He is
a slave to her and wishes to have her as his slave. That is not love; it
is a kind of morbid affection of the slave, insinuating itself as love.
It cannot be love, because it is painful; if she does not do what
he wants, it brings him pain. With love there is no painful reaction; love
only brings a reaction of bliss; if it does not, it is not love; it is
mistaking something else for love. When you have succeeded in loving your
husband, your wife, your children, the whole world, the universe in
such a manner that there is no reaction of pain or jealousy, no selfish
feeling, then you are in a fit state to be unattached.
Krishna says, "Look at Me, Arjuna! If I stop from work for one
moment, the whole universe will die. I have nothing to gain from work;
I am the one Lord, but why do I work? Because I love the world." God
is unattached because He loves; that real love makes us unattached. Wherever
there is attachment, the clinging to the things of the world, you must
know that it is all physical attraction between sets of particles of matter;
something that attracts two bodies nearer and nearer all the time and,
if they cannot get near enough, produces pain; but where there is real
love, it does not rest on physical attachment at all. Such lovers may be
a thousand miles away from one another, but their love will be all the
same; it does not die, and will never produce any painful reaction.
To attain this non-attachment is almost a lifework. But
as soon as we have reached this point, we have attained the goal of love
and become free; the bondage of nature falls from us, and we see nature
as she is; she forges no more chains for us; we stand entirely free
and take not the results of work into consideration; who then cares for
what the results may be?
Do you ask anything from your children in return for what you have
given them? It is your duty to work for them, and there the matter ends.
In whatever you do for a particular person, a city, or a state, assume
the same attitude towards it as you have towards your children--expect
nothing in return. If you can invariably take the position of a
giver, in which everything given by you is a free offering to the world
without any thought of return, then will your work bring you no attachment.
Attachment comes only where we expect a return.
If working like slaves results in selfishness and attachment, working
as masters of our own mind gives rise to the bliss of non-attachment. We
often talk of right and justice, but we find that in the world right and
justice are mere baby's talk. There are two things which guide the conduct
of men: might and mercy. The exercise of might is invariably the
exercise of selfishness. All men and women try to make the most
of whatever power or advantage they have. Mercy is heaven itself;
to be good we have all to be merciful. Even justice and right should
stand on mercy. All thought of obtaining return for the work we do
hinders our spiritual progress; nay, in the end it brings misery. There
is another way in which this idea of mercy and selfless charity can be
put into practice; that is, by looking upon work as "worship"
in case we believe in a Personal God. Here we give up all the fruits
of our work unto the Lord, and worshipping Him thus, we have no
right to expect anything from mankind for the work we do. The Lord Himself
works incessantly and is ever without attachment. Just as water cannot
wet the lotus leaf, so work cannot bind the unselfish man by giving rise
to attachment to results. The selfless and unattached man may live
in the very heart of a crowded and sinful city; he will not be touched
by sin.
This idea of complete self-sacrifice is illustrated in the following
story: After the battle of Kurukshetra the five Pândava brothers
performed a great sacrifice and made very large gifts to the poor. All
people expressed amazement at the greatness and richness of the sacrifice,
and said that such a sacrifice the world had never seen before. But, after
the ceremony, there came a little mongoose; half his body was golden, and
the other half was brown; and he began to roll on the floor of the sacrificial
hall. He said to those around, "You are all liars; this is no sacrifice."
"What!" they exclaimed, "you say this is no sacrifice; do
you not know how money and jewels were poured out to the poor and everyone
became rich and happy? This was the most wonderful sacrifice any man ever
performed." But the mongoose said, "There was once a little village,
and in it there dwelt a poor Brahmin with his wife, his son, and his son's
wife. They were very poor and lived on small gifts made to them for preaching
and teaching. There came in that land a three years' famine, and the poor
Brahmin suffered more than ever. At last when the family had starved for
days, the father brought home one morning a little barley flour, which
he had been fortunate enough to obtain, and he divided it into four parts,
one for each member of the family. They prepared it for their meal, and
just as they were about to eat there was a knock at the door. The father
opened it, and there stood a guest. Now in India a guest is a sacred person;
he is as a god for the time being, and must be treated as such. So the
poor Brahmin said, 'Come in, sir, you are welcome.' He set before the guest
his own portion of the food, which the guest quickly ate and said, 'Oh,
sir, you have killed me; I have been starving for ten days, and this little
bit has but increased my hunger.' Then the wife said to her husband, 'Give
him my share'; but the husband said, 'Not so.' The wife however insisted,
saying, 'Here is a poor man, and it is our duty as householders to see
that he is fed, and it is my duty as a wife to give him my portion, seeing
that you have no more to offer him.' Then she gave her share to the guest,
which he ate, and said he was still burning with hunger. So the son said,
'Take my portion also; it is the duty of a son to help his father to fulfill
his obligations.' The guest ate that, but remained still unsatisfied; so
the son's wife gave him her portion also. That was sufficient, and the
guest departed, blessing them. That night those four people died of starvation.
A few granules of that flour had fallen on the floor, and when I rolled
my body on them, half of it became golden, as you see. Since then I have
been traveling all over the world, hoping to find another sacrifice like
that, but nowhere have I found one; nowhere else has the other half of
my body been turned into gold. That is why I say this is no sacrifice."
This idea of charity is going out of India; great men are becoming
fewer and fewer. When I was first learning English, I read an English story
book in which there was a story about a dutiful boy who had gone out to
work and had given some of his money to his old mother; and this was praised
in three or four pages. What was that? No Hindu boy can ever understand
the moral of that story. Now I understand it when I hear the Western idea--every
man for himself. And some men take everything for themselves, and fathers
and mothers and wives and children go to the wall. That should never and
nowhere be the ideal of the householder.
Now you see what Karma-Yoga means; even at the point of death
to help anyone, without asking questions. Be cheated millions of times
and never ask a question, and never think of what you are doing. Never
vaunt of your gifts to the poor or expect their gratitude, but rather be
grateful to them for giving you the occasion of practicing charity to them.
Thus it is plain that to be an ideal householder is a much more difficult
task than to be an ideal Sannyâsin; the true life of work is indeed
as hard as, if not harder than, the equally true life of renunciation.
WHAT
IS DUTY?
It is necessary in the study of Karma-Yoga to know what duty is. If
I have to do something I must first know that it is my duty, and then I
can do it. The idea of duty, again, is different in different nations.
The Mohammedan says what is written in his book, the Koran, is his duty;
the Hindu says what is in the Vedas is his duty; and the Christian says
what is in the Bible is his duty. We find that there are varied ideas of
duty, differing according to different states in life, different historical
periods and different nations. The term "duty" like every other
universal abstract term, is impossible clearly to define; we can only get
an idea of it by knowing its practical operations and results. When certain
things occur before us we have all a natural or trained impulse to act
in a certain manner towards them; when this impulse comes, the mind begins
to think about the situation. Sometimes it thinks that it is good to act
in a particular manner under the given conditions, at other times it thinks
that it is wrong to act in the same manner even in the very same circumstances.
The ordinary idea of duty everywhere is that every good man follows the
dictates of his conscience. But what is it that makes an act a duty? If
a Christian finds a piece of beef before him and does not eat it to save
his own life or will not give it to save the life of another man, he is
sure to feel that he has not done his duty. But if a Hindu dares to eat
that piece of beef or to give it to another Hindu, he is equally sure to
feel that he too has not done his duty; the Hindu's training and education
make him feel that way. In the last century there were notorious bands
of robbers in India called thugs; they thought it their duty to kill any
man they could and take away his money; the larger the number of men they
killed, the better they thought they were. Ordinarily if a man goes out
into the street and shoots down another man, he is apt to feel sorry for
it, thinking that he has done wrong. But if the very same man, as a soldier
in his regiment, kills not one but twenty, he is certain to feel glad and
think that he has done his duty remarkably well. Therefore we see that
it is not the thing done that defines a duty. To give an objective definition
of duty is thus entirely impossible. Yet there is duty from the subjective
side. Any action that makes us go Godward is a good action, and is our
duty; any action that makes us go downward is evil and is not our duty.
From the subjective standpoint we may see that certain acts have a tendency
to exalt and ennoble us, while certain other acts have a tendency to degrade
and to brutalize us. But it is not possible to make out with certainty
which acts have which kind of tendency in relation to all persons of all
sorts and conditions. There is, however, only one idea of duty which has
been universally accepted by all mankind of all ages and sects and countries,
and that has been summed up in a Sanskrit aphorism thus: "Do
not injure any being; not injuring any being is virtue, injuring
any being is sin."
The Bhagavad-Gita frequently alludes to duties dependent upon birth
and position in life. Birth and position in life and in society largely
determine the mental and moral attitude of individuals towards the various
activities of life. It is therefore our duty to do that work which
will exalt and ennoble us in accordance with the ideals and activities
of the society in which we are born. But it
must be particularly remembered that the same ideals and activities do
not prevail in all societies and countries; our ignorance of this is the
main cause of much of the hatred of one nation towards another.
An American thinks that whatever an American does in accordance with the
custom of his country is the best thing to do, and that whoever does not
follow his custom must be a very wicked man. A Hindu thinks that his customs
are the only right ones and are the best in the world, and that whosoever
does not obey them must be the most wicked man living. This is quite a
natural mistake which all of us are apt to make. But it is very harmful;
it is the cause of half the uncharitableness found in the world. When
I came to this country and was going through the Chicago Fair, a man from
behind pulled at my turban. I looked back and saw that he was a very gentlemanly-looking
man, neatly dressed. I spoke to him, and when he found that I knew English,
he became very much abashed. On another occasion in the same Fair another
man gave me a push. When I asked him the reason, he also was ashamed and
stammered out an apology saying, "Why do you dress that way!"
The sympathies of these men were limited within the range of their own
language and their own fashion of dress. Much of the oppression of
powerful nations on weaker ones is caused by this prejudice. It dries up
their fellow-feeling for fellow-men. That very man who asked me
why I did not dress as he did and wanted to ill-treat me because of my
dress, may have been a very good man, a good father, and a good citizen;
but the kindness of his nature died out as soon as he saw a man in a different
dress. Strangers are exploited in all countries, because they do not know
how to defend themselves; thus they carry home false impressions of the
peoples they have seen. Sailors, soldiers, and traders behave in foreign
lands in very queer ways, although they would not dream of doing so in
their own country; perhaps this is why the Chinese call Europeans and Americans
"foreign devils". They could not have done this if they had met
the good, the kindly sides of Western life.
Therefore the one point we ought to remember is that we should
always try to see the duty of others through their own eyes and never judge
the customs of other peoples by our own standard.
I am not the standard of the universe. I have to accommodate myself
to the world, and not the world to me. So we see that environments
change the nature of our duties, and doing the duty which is ours at any
particular time is the best thing we can do in this world. Let us do that
duty which is ours by birth; and when we have done that, let us do the
duty which is ours by our position in life and in society. There is, however,
one great danger in human nature, viz. that man never examines himself.
He thinks he is quite as fit to be on the throne as the king. Even if he
is, he must first show that he has done the duty of his own position;
and then higher duties will come to him. When we begin to work
earnestly in the world, nature gives us blows right and left and soon enables
us to find out our position. No man can long occupy satisfactorily
a position for which he is not fit. There is no use in grumbling
against nature's adjustment. He who does the lower work is not therefore
a lower man. No man is to be judged by the mere nature of his duties,
but all should be judged by the manner and the spirit in which they perform
them.
Later on we shall find that even this idea of duty undergoes change,
and that the greatest work is done only when there is no selfish
motive to prompt it. Yet it is work through the sense of duty that
leads us to work without any idea of duty; when work will become worship--nay,
something higher--then avid work be done for its own sake. We shall find
that the philosophy of duty, whether it be in the form of ethics or of
love, is the same as in every other Yoga--the object being the attenuating
of the lower self so that the real higher Self may shine forth, the lessening
of the frittering away of energies on the lower plane of
existence so that the soul may manifest itself on the higher ones.
This is accomplished by the continuous denial of low desires, which duty
rigorously requires. The whole organization of society has thus been developed
consciously or unconsciously in the realms of action and experience where,
by limiting selfishness, we open the way to an unlimited expansion of the
real nature of man.
Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels
that it runs smoothly; it is a continuous friction otherwise. How
else could parents do their duties to their children, husbands to their
wives and vice versa? Do we not meet with cases of friction every day in
our lives? Duty is sweet only through love, and love shines in freedom
alone. Yet is it freedom to be a slave to the senses, to anger,
to jealousies, and a hundred other petty things that must occur every day
in human life? In all these little roughnesses that we meet with in life,
the highest expression of freedom is to forbear. Women, slaves
to their own irritable, jealous tempers, are apt to blame their husbands
and assert their own "freedom", as they think, not knowing that
thereby they only prove that they are slaves. So it is with husbands who
eternally find fault with their wives.
Chastity is the first virtue in man or woman, and the man who,
however he may have strayed away, cannot be brought to the right path by
a gentle and loving and chaste wife, is indeed very rare.
The world is not yet as bad as that. We hear much about brutal
husbands all over the world and about the impurity of men, but is it not
true that there are quite as many brutal and impure women as men? If all
women were as good and pure as their own constant assertions would lead
one to believe, I am perfectly satisfied that there would not be one impure
man in the world. What brutality is there which purity and chastity cannot
conquer? A good, chaste wife, who thinks of every other man except her
own husband as her child and has the attitude of a mother towards all men,
will grow so great in the power of her purity that there cannot be a single
man, however brutal, who will not breathe an atmosphere of holiness in
her presence. Similarly every husband must look upon all women, except
his own wife, in the light of his own mother or daughter or sister. That
man, again, who wants to be a teacher of religion must look upon every
woman as his mother and always behave towards her as such. The
position of the mother is the highest in the world, as it is the one place
in which to learn and exercise the greatest unselfishness. The love
of God is the only love that is higher than a mother's love; all others
are lower. It is the duty of the mother to think of her children
first and then of herself. But, instead of that, if the parents are always
thinking of themselves first, the result is that the relation between parents
and children becomes the same as that between birds and their offspring
which, as soon as they are fledged, do not recognize any parents.
Blessed indeed is the man who is able to look upon woman as the representative
of the motherhood of God. Blessed indeed is the woman to whom man represents
the fatherhood of God. Blessed are the children who look upon their parents
as Divinity manifested on earth.
The only way to rise is by doing the duty next to us, and thus we go
on gathering strength until we reach the highest state. A young Sannyâsin
went to a forest; there he meditated, worshipped, and practiced Yoga for
a long time. After years of hard work and practice, he was one day sitting
under a tree, when some dry leaves fell upon his head. He looked up and
saw a crow and a crane fighting on the top of the tree, which made him
very angry. He said, "What! Dare you throw these dry leaves upon my
head!" As with these words he angrily glanced at them, a flash of
fire went out of his head--such was the Yogi's power--and burnt the birds
to ashes. He was very glad, almost overjoyed at this development of power--he
could burn the crow and the crane by a look. After a time he had to go
to the town to beg his bread. He went, stood at a door, and said, "Mother,
give me food." A voice came from inside the house: "Wait a little,
my son." The young man thought: "You wretched woman how dare
you make me wait! You do not know my power yet." While he was thinking
thus the voice came again: "Boy, don't be thinking too much of yourself.
Here is neither crow nor crane." He was astonished, still he had to
wait. At last (the) woman came, and he fell at her feet and said, "Mother,
how did you know that?" She said, "My boy, I do not know your
Yoga or your practices. I am a common everyday woman. I made you wait because
my husband was ill, and I was nursing him. All my life I have struggled
to do my duty. When I was unmarried, I did my duty to my parents; now that
I am married, I do my duty to my husband; that is all the Yoga I practice.
But by doing my duty I have become illumined; thus I could read your thoughts
and know what you had done in the forest. If you want to know something
higher than this, go to the market of such and such a town where you will
find a Vyadha* who will tell you something that you will be very
glad to learn." The Sannyâsin thought:
*The lowest
class of people in India, who used to live as hunters and butchers.
"Why should I go to that town and to a Vyadha!" But after
what he had seen, his mind opened a little, so he went. When he came near
the town, he found that market and there saw at a distance a big fat Vyadha
cutting meat with big knives, talking and bargaining with different people.
The young man said, "Lord help me! Is this the man from whom I am
going to learn? He is the incarnation of a demon, if he is anything."
In the meantime this man looked up and said, "O Swami, did that lady
send you here? Take a seat until I have done my business." The Sannyâsin
thought, "What comes to me here?" He took his seat; the man went
on with his work, and after he had finished, he took his money and said
to the Sannyâsin, "Come, sir, come to my home." On reaching
home the Vyadha gave him a seat, saying "Wait here," and went
into the house. He then washed his old father and mother, fed them, and
did all he could to please them, after which he came to the Sannyâsin
and said, "Now, sir, you have come here to see me; what can I do for
you?" The Sannyâsin asked him a few questions about soul and
about God, and the Vyadha gave him a lecture which forms a part of the
Mahâbhârata, called the Vyâdha-Gita. It
contains one of the highest flights of the Vedanta. When the Vyadha
finished his teaching, the Sannyâsin felt astonished. He said, "Why
are you in that body? With such knowledge as yours why are you in a Vyadha's
body, and doing such filthy, ugly work?" "My son," replied
the Vyadha, "no duty is ugly, no duty is impure. My birth placed me
in these circumstances and environments. In my boyhood I learnt the trade;
I am unattached and I try to do my duty well. I try to do my duty as a
householder, and I try to do all I can to make my father and mother happy.
I neither know your Yoga, nor have I become a Sannyâsin, nor did
I go out of the world into a forest; nevertheless, all that you have heard
and seen has come to me through the unattached doing of the duty which
belongs to my positions
There is a sage in India, a great Yogi, one of the most wonderful men
I have ever seen in my life. He is a peculiar man, he will not teach anyone;
if you ask him a question he will not answer. It is too much for him to
take up the position of a teacher, he will not do it. If you ask a question,
and wait for some days, in the course of conversation he will bring up
the subject, and wonderful light will he throw on it. He told me once the
secret of work, "Let the end and the means be joined into one."
When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond. Do it as
worship, as the highest worship, and devote your whole life to it for the
time being. Thus, in the story, the Vyadha and the woman did their
duty with cheerfulness and wholeheartedness; and the result was that they
became illuminated; clearly showing that the right performance of
the duties of any station in life, without attachment to results, leads
us to the highest realization of the Perfection of the soul.
It is the worker who is attached to results that grumbles about
the nature of the duty which has fallen to his lot; to the unattached
worker all duties are equally good and form efficient instruments
with which selfishness and sensuality may be killed and the freedom of
the soul secured. We are all apt to think too highly of ourselves.
Our duties are determined by our deserts to a much larger extent than we
are willing to grant. Competition rouses envy, and it kills the kindliness
of the heart. To the grumbler all duties are distasteful, nothing
will satisfy him, and his whole life is doomed to failure. Let us work
on, doing as we go whatever happens to be our duty and being ever ready
to put our shoulders to the wheel. Then surely shall we see the Light!
WE
HELP OURSELVES, NOT THE WORLD
Before considering further how devotion to duty helps us in our spiritual
progress, let me place before you in a brief compass another aspect of
what we in India mean by Karma. In every religion there are three
parts: philosophy, mythology, and ritual. Philosophy of course
is the essence of every religion; mythology explains and illustrates it
by means of the more or less legendary lives of great men, stories, and
fables of wonderful things and so on; ritual gives to that philosophy a
still more concrete form so that everyone may grasp it--ritual is, in fact,
concretized philosophy. This ritual is Karma; it is necessary in every
religion, because most of us cannot understand abstract spiritual things
until we grow much spiritually. It is easy for men to think that they can
understand anything, but when it comes to practical experience, they find
that abstract ideas are often very hard to comprehend. Therefore symbols
are of great help, and we cannot dispense with the symbolical method of
putting things before us. From time immemorial symbols have been used by
all kinds of religions. In one sense we cannot think but in symbols; words
themselves are symbols of thought. In another sense everything in
the universe may be looked upon as a symbol. The whole universe
is a symbol, and God is the essence behind. This kind of symbology
is not simply the creation of man; it is not that certain people belonging
to a religion sit down together and think out certain symbols, and bring
them into existence out of their own minds. The symbols of religion have
a natural growth. Otherwise, why is it that certain symbols are associated
with certain ideas in the mind of almost everyone? Certain symbols
are universally prevalent. Many of you may think that the cross
first came into existence as a symbol in connection with the Christian
religion; but as a matter of fact, it existed before Christianity was,
before Moses was born, before the Vedas were given out, before there was
any human record of human things. The cross may be found to have been in
existence among the Aztecs and the Phoenicians: every race seems to have
had the cross. Again, the symbol of the crucified Savior, of a man crucified
upon a cross, appears to have been known to almost every nation. The circle
has been a great symbol throughout the world. Then there is the most universal
of all symbols, the Swasti
ka. At one time
it was thought that the Buddhists carried it all over the world with them,
but it has been found out that ages before Buddhism it was used among nations.
In old Babylon and in Egypt it was to be found. What does this show? All
these symbols could not have been purely conventional. There must be some
reason for them, some natural association between them and the human mind.
Language is not the result of convention; it is not that people ever agreed
to represent certain ideas by certain words; there never was an idea without
a corresponding word or a word without a corresponding idea; ideas and
words are in their nature inseparable. The symbols to represent ideas may
be sound symbols or color symbols. Deaf and dumb people have to think with
other than sound symbols. Every thought in the mind has a form as its counterpart.
This is called in Sanskrit philosophy Nâma-Rupa--name and
form. It is as impossible to create by convention a system of symbols as
it is to create a language. In the world's ritualistic symbols we have
an expression of the religious thought of humanity. It is easy to say that
there is no use of rituals and temples and all such paraphernalia; every
baby says that in modern times. But it must be easy for all to see that
those who worship inside a temple are in many respects different from those
who will not worship there. Therefore the association of particular temples,
rituals, and other concrete forms with particular religions has a tendency
to bring into the mind of the followers of those religions the thoughts
for which those concrete things stand as symbols; and it is not wise to
ignore rituals and symbology altogether. The study and practice of these
things form naturally a part of Karma-Yoga.
There are many other aspects of this science of work. One among
them is to know the relation between thought and word and what can be achieved
by the power of the word. In every religion the power of the word
is recognized, so much so that in some of them creation itself is said
to have come out of the word. The external aspect of the thought
of God is the word, and as God thought and willed before He created, creation
came out of the word. In this stress and hurry of our materialistic
life our nerves lose sensibility and become hardened. The older we grow,
the longer we are knocked about in the world, the more callous we become;
and we are apt to neglect things that even happen persistently and prominently
around us. Human nature, however, asserts itself sometimes, and we are
led to inquire into and wonder at some of these common occurrences; wondering
thus is the first step in the acquisition of light. Apart from the higher
philosophic and religious value of the word, we may see that sound symbols
play a prominent part in the drama of human life. I am talking to you.
I am not touching you; the pulsations of the air caused by my speaking
go into your ear, they touch your nerves and produce effects in your minds.
You cannot resist this. What can be more wonderful than this? One man calls
another a fool, and at this the other stands up and clenches his fist and
lands a blow on his nose. Look at the power of the word! There is a woman
weeping and miserable; another woman comes along and speaks to her a few
gentle words; the doubled up frame of the weeping woman becomes straightened
at once, her sorrow is gone and she already begins to smile. Think of the
power of words! They are a great force in higher philosophy as well as
in common life. Day and night we manipulate this force without thought
and without inquiry. To know the nature of this force and to use it well
is also a part of Karma-Yoga.
Our duty to others means helping others, doing good to the world. Why
should we do good to the world? Apparently to help the world, but
really to help ourselves. We should always try to help the world, that
should be the highest motive in us; but if we consider well, we find that
the world does not require our help at all. This world was not
made that you or I should come and help it. I once read a sermon in which
it was said: "All this beautiful world is very good, because it gives
us time and opportunity to help others." Apparently this is a very
beautiful sentiment, but is it not a blasphemy to say that the world needs
our help? We cannot deny that there is much misery in it; to go out and
help others is, therefore, the best thing we can do, although in the long
run we shall find that helping others is only helping ourselves.
As a boy I had some white mice. They were kept in a little box in which
there were little wheels, and when the mice tried to cross the wheels,
the wheels turned and turned, and the mice never got anywhere. So
it is with the world and our helping it. The only help is that we get moral
exercise. This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures
a world for himself. If a blind man begins to think of the world, it is
either as soft or hard, or as cold or hot. We are a mass of happiness or
misery; we have seen that hundreds of times in our lives. As a rule the
young are optimistic and the old pessimistic. The young have life before
them; the old complain their day is gone; hundreds of desires, which they
cannot fulfill, struggle in their hearts. Both are foolish nevertheless.
Life is good or evil according to the state of mind in which we look at
it, it is neither by itself. Fire, by itself, is neither good nor evil.
When it keeps us warm, we say "How beautiful is fire!" When it
burns our fingers, we blame it. Still, in itself it is neither good nor
bad. According as we use it, it produces in us the feeling of good or bad;
so also is this world. It is perfect. By perfection is meant that
it is perfectly fitted to meet its ends. We may all be perfectly sure that
it will go on beautifully well without us, and we need not bother our heads
wishing to help it.
Yet we must do good; the desire to do good is the highest
motive power we have, if we know all the time that it is a privilege to
help others. Do not stand on a high pedestal and take five cents in your
hand and say, "Here, my poor man," but be grateful that
the poor man is there so that by making a gift to him you are able to help
yourself. It is not the receiver that is blessed, but it is the giver.
Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence
and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and perfect. All good
acts tend to make us pure and perfect. What can we do at best?
Build a hospital, make roads, or erect charity asylums! We may organize
a charity and collect two or three millions of dollars, build a hospital
with one million, with the second give balls and drink champagne, and of
the third let the officers steal half, and leave the rest finally to reach
the poor; but what are all these? One mighty wind in five minutes can break
all your buildings up. What shall we do then? One volcanic eruption may
sweep away all our roads and hospitals and cities and buildings. Let us
give up all this foolish talk of doing good to the world. It is not waiting
for your or my help; yet we must work and constantly do good, because it
is a blessing to ourselves. That is the only way we can become perfect.
No beggar whom we have helped has ever owed a single cent to us; we owe
everything to him, because he has allowed us to exercise our charity on
him. It is entirely wrong to think that we have done or can do
good to the world, or to think that we have helped such and such people.
It is a foolish thought, and all foolish thoughts bring misery. We think
that we have helped some man and expect him to thank us; and because he
does not, unhappiness comes to us. Why should we expect anything
in return for what we do? Be grateful to the man you help, think
of him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God
by helping our fellow-men? If we were really unattached, we should escape
all this pain of vain expectation, and could cheerfully do good work in
the world. Never will unhappiness or misery come through work done without
attachment. The world will go on with its happiness and misery through
eternity.
There was a poor man who wanted some money; and somehow he had heard
that if he could get hold of a ghost, he might command him to bring money
or anything else he liked; so he was very anxious to get hold of a ghost.
He went about searching for a man who would give him a ghost; and at last
he found a sage, with great powers, and besought his help. The sage asked
him what he would do with a ghost. "I want a ghost to work for me;
teach me how to get hold of one, sir; I desire it very much," replied
the man. But the sage said, "Don't disturb yourself, go home."
The next day the man went again to the sage and began to weep and pray,
"Give me a ghost; I must have a ghost, sir, to help me." At last
the sage was disgusted, and said, "Take this charm, repeat this magic
word, and a ghost will come, and whatever you say to him he will do. But
beware; they are terrible beings, and must be kept continually busy. If
you fail to give him work, he will take your life." The man replied,
"That is easy; I can give him work for all his life." Then he
went to a forest; and after long repetition of the magic word, a huge ghost
appeared before him, and said, "I am a ghost. I have been conquered
by your magic; but you must keep me constantly employed. The moment you
fail to give me work I will kill you." The man said, "Build me
a palace," and the ghost said, "It is done; the palace is built."
"Bring me money," said the man. "Here is your money,"
said the ghost. "Cut this forest down, and build a city in its place."
"That is done," said the ghost, "anything more?" Now
the man began to be frightened and thought, "I can give him nothing
more to do; he does everything in a trice." The ghost said, "Give
me something to do or I will eat you up." The poor man could find
no further occupation for him and was frightened. So he ran and ran and
at last reached the sage and said, "O sir, protect my life!"
The sage asked him what the matter was, and the man replied, "I have
nothing to give the ghost to do. Everything I tell him to do he does in
a moment, and he threatens to eat me up if I do not give him work."
Just then the ghost arrived, saying, "Ill eat you up." And he
would have swallowed the man. The man began to shake and begged the sage
to save his life. The sage said, "I will find you a way out. Look
at that dog with a curly tail. Draw your sword quickly and cut the tail
off and give it to the ghost to straighten out." The man cut off the
dog's tail and gave it to the ghost saying, "Straighten that out for
me." The ghost took it and slowly and carefully straightened it out,
but as soon as he let it go, it instantly curled up again. Once more he
laboriously straightened it out, only to find it again curled up as soon
as he attempted to let go of it. Again he patiently straightened it out,
but as soon as he let it go, it curled up again. So he went on for days
and days, until he was exhausted and said, "I was never in such trouble
before in my life. I am an old veteran ghost, but never before was I in
such trouble." "I will make a compromise with you," he said
to the man, "you let me off, and I will let you keep all I have given
you and will promise not to harm you." The man was much pleased and
accepted the offer gladly.
This world is like a dog's curly tail, and people have been striving
to straighten it out for hundreds of years; but when they let it go, it
has curled up again. How could it be otherwise? One must first
know how to work without attachment, then one will not be a fanatic. When
we know that this world is like a dog's curly tail and will never get straightened,
we shall not become fanatics. If there were no fanaticism in the
world, it would make much more progress than it does now. It is a mistake
to think that fanaticism can make for the progress of mankind. On the contrary,
it is a retarding element creating hatred and anger, and causing people
to fight each other, and making them unsympathetic. We think that whatever
we do or possess is the best in the world, and what we do not do or possess
is of no value. So always remember the instance of the curly tail of the
dog whenever you have a tendency to become a fanatic. You need not worry
or make yourself sleepless about the world; it will go on without you.
When you have avoided fanaticism, then alone will you work well.
It is the level-headed man, the calm man, of good judgment and cool
nerves, of great sympathy and love, who does good work and so does good
to himself. The fanatic is foolish and has no sympathy; he can never straighten
the world nor himself become pure and perfect.
To recapitulate the chief points in today's lecture: First, we have
to bear in mind that we are all debtors to the world, and the world
does not owe us anything. It is a great privilege for all
of us to be allowed to do anything for the world. In helping the world
we really help ourselves. The second point is that there
is a God in this universe. It is not true that this universe is drifting
and stands in need of help from you and me. God is ever present
therein. He is undying and eternally active and infinitely watchful. When
the whole universe sleeps, He sleeps not; He is working incessantly; all
the changes and manifestations of the world are His. Thirdly, we
ought not to hate anyone. This world will always continue to be
a mixture of good and evil. Our duty is to sympathize with the weak and
to love even the wrong-doer. The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein
we have all to take exercise so as to become stronger and stronger spiritually.
Fourthly, we ought not to be fanatics of any kind, because fanaticism
is opposed to love. You hear fanatics glibly saying, "I do
not hate the sinner, I hate the sin"; but I am prepared to go any
distance to see the face of that man who can really make a distinction
between the sin and the sinner. It is easy to say so. If we can distinguish
well between quality and substance, we may become perfect men. It is not
easy to do this. And further, the calmer we are and the less disturbed
our nerves, the more shall we love and the better will our work lie.
NON-ATTACHMENT
IS COMPLETE SELF-ABNEGATION
Just as every action that emanates from us comes back to us as
reaction, even so our actions may act on other people and theirs on us.
Perhaps all of you have observed it as a fact that when persons do evil
actions, they become more and more evil, and when they begin to do good,
they become stronger and stronger and learn to do good at all times. This
intensification of the influence of action cannot be explained on any other
ground than that we can act and react upon each other. To take an illustration
from physical science, when I am doing a certain action, my mind may be
said to be in a certain state of vibration; all minds which are in similar
circumstances will have the tendency to be affected by my mind. If there
are different musical instruments tuned alike in one room, all of you may
have noticed that when one is struck, the others have the tendency to vibrate
so as to give the same note. So all minds that have the same tension,
so to say, will be equally affected by the same thought.
Of course this influence of thought on mind will vary according to distance
and other causes, but the mind is always open to affection. Suppose I am
doing an evil act, my mind is in a certain state of vibration, and all
minds in the universe, which are in a similar state, have the possibility
of being affected by the vibration of my mind. So when I am doing a good
action, my mind is in another state of vibration; and all minds similarly
strung have the possibility of being affected by my mind; and this power
of mind upon mind is more or less according as the force of the tension
is greater or less. Following this simile further, it is quite possible
that, just as light waves may travel for millions of years before they
reach any object, so thought waves may also travel hundreds of years before
they meet an object with which they vibrate in unison. It is quite
possible, therefore, that this atmosphere of ours is full of such thought
pulsations, both good and evil. Every thought projected from every brain
goes on pulsating, as it were, until it meets a fit object that will receive
it. Any mind which is open to receive some of these impulses will take
them immediately. So when a man is doing evil actions, he has brought
his mind to a certain state of tension, and all the waves which correspond
to that state of tension and which may be said to be already in the atmosphere,
will struggle to enter into his mind. That is why an evil-doer generally
goes on doing more and more evil. His actions become intensified. Such
also will be the case with the doer of good; he will open himself to all
the good waves that are in the atmosphere, and his good actions also will
become intensified. We run, therefore, a twofold danger in doing
evil: first, we open ourselves to all the evil influences surrounding us;
secondly, we create evil which affects others, maybe hundreds of years
hence. In doing evil we injure ourselves and others also. In doing good
we do good to ourselves and to others as well; and like all other forces
in man, these forces of good and evil also gather strength from outside.
According to Karma-Yoga, the action one has done cannot be destroyed
until it has borne its fruit; no power in nature can stop
it from yielding its results. If I do an evil action, I must suffer
for it; there is no power in this universe to stop or stay it. Similarly
if I do a good action, there is no power in the universe which can stop
its bearing good results. The cause must have its effect; nothing can prevent
or restrain this. Now comes a very fine and serious question about Karma-Yoga--namely,
that these actions of ours, both good and evil, are intimately connected
with each other. We cannot put a line of demarcation, and say this
action is entirely good and this entirely evil. There is no action which
does not bear good and evil fruits at the same time. To take the
nearest example: I am talking to you, and some of you, perhaps, think I
am doing good and at the same time I am, perhaps, killing thousands of
microbes in the atmosphere; I am thus doing evil to something else. When
it is very near to us and affects those we know, we say that it is very
good action if it affects them in a good manner. For instance, you may
call my speaking to you very good, but the microbes will not; the microbes
you do not see, but yourselves you do see. The way in which my talk affects
you is obvious to you, but how it affects the microbes is not so obvious.
And so, if we analyze our evil actions also, we may find that some good
possibly results from them somewhere. He who in good action sees
that there is something evil in it, and in the midst of evil sees that
there is something good in it somewhere--has known the secret of work.
But what follows from it? That, howsoever we may try, there cannot
be any action which is perfectly pure or any which is perfectly impure,
taking purity and impurity in the sense of injury and non-injury. We
cannot breathe or live without injuring others, and every bit of the food
we eat is taken away from another's mouth. Our very lives are crowding
out other lives. It may be men or animals or small microbes, but some one
or other of these we have to crowd out. That being the case, it naturally
follows that perfection can never be attained by work. We may work
through all eternity, but there will be no way out of this intricate maze;
you may work on, and on, and on; there will be no end to this inevitable
association of good and evil in the results of work.
The second point to consider is, what is the end of work?
We find the vast majority of people in every country believing that there
will be a time when this world will become perfect, when there will be
no disease, nor death nor unhappiness nor wickedness. That is a very good
idea, a very good motive power to inspire and uplift the ignorant; but
if we think for a moment, we shall find on the very face of it that it
cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good and evil are the obverse
and reverse of the same coin? How can you have good without evil at the
same time? What is meant by perfection? A perfect life is a contradiction
in terms. Life itself is a state of continuous struggle between ourselves
and everything outside. Every moment we are fighting actually with
external nature, and if we are defeated, our life has to go. It is, for
instance, a continuous struggle for food and air. If food or air fails,
we die. Life is not a simple and smoothly flowing thing, but it is a compound
effect. This complex struggle between something inside and the external
world is what we call life. So it is clear that when this struggle ceases,
there will be an end of life.
What is meant by ideal happiness is the cessation of this struggle.
But then life will cease, for the struggle can only cease when life itself
has ceased. We have seen already that in helping the world we help ourselves.
The main effect of work done for others is to purify ourselves. By
means of the constant effort to do good to others we are trying to forget
ourselves; this forgetfulness of self is the one great lesson we have to
learn in life. Man thinks foolishly that he can make himself happy,
and after years of struggle finds out at last that true happiness
consists in killing selfishness and that no one can make him happy except
himself. Every act of charity, every thought of sympathy, every
action of help, every good deed, is taking so much of self-importance away
from our little selves and making us think of ourselves as the lowest and
the least; and, therefore, it is all good. Here we find that Jnana,
Bhakti, and Karma all come to one point. The highest ideal is eternal and
entire self-abnegation, where there is no "If, but all is
"Thou"; and whether he is conscious or unconscious of it, Karma-Yoga
leads man to that end. A religious preacher may become horrified at the
idea of an Impersonal God; he may insist on a Personal God and wish to
keep up his own identity and individuality, whatever he may mean by that.
But his ideas of ethics, if they are really good cannot but be based
on the highest self-abnegation. It is the basis of all morality; you may
extend it to men or animals or angels, it is the one basic idea, the one
fundamental principle running through all ethical systems.
You will find various classes of men in this world. First, there
are the God-men whose self-abnegation is complete and who do only good
to others even at the sacrifice of their own lives. These are the highest
of men. If there are a hundred of such in any country, that country
need never despair. But they are unfortunately too few. Then there
are the good men who do good to others so long as it does not injure themselves.
And there is a third class who, to do good to themselves, injure
others. It is said by a Sanskrit poet that there is a fourth
unnamable class of people who injure others merely for injury's sake.
Just as there are at one pole of existence the highest good men who do
good for the sake of doing good, so at the other pole, there are others
who injure others just for the sake of the injury. They do not gain anything
thereby, but it is their nature to do evil.
Here are two Sanskrit words. The one is Pravritti which
means revolving towards, and the other is Nivritti
which means revolving away. The "revolving towards"
is what we call the world, the "I and mine"; it includes all
those things which are always enriching that "me" by wealth and
money and power, and name and fame, and which are of a grasping nature,
always tending to accumulate everything in one center, that center being
"myself". That is the Pravritti, the natural tendency of
every human being; taking everything from everywhere and heaping it around
one center, that center being man's own sweet self. When this tendency
begins to break, when it is Nivritti or going away from, then begin
morality and religion. Both Pravritti and Nivritti are of the nature
of work; the former is evil work, and the latter is good work. This Nivritti
is the fundamental basis of all morality and all religion, and the very
perfection of it is entire self-abnegation, readiness to sacrifice mind
and body and everything for another being. When a man has reached
that state, he has attained to the perfection of Karma-Yoga. This
is the highest result of good works. Although a man has not studied a single
system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God and never
has believed, although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if
the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where
he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived
at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers
and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find
that the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point,
that one point being self-abnegation. However much their systems
of philosophy and religion may differ, all mankind stand in reverence and
awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others. Here it
is not at all any question of creed or doctrine--even men who are very
much opposed to all religious ideas, when they see one of these acts of
complete self-sacrifice, feel that they must revere it. Have you
not seen even a most bigoted Christian, when he reads Edwin Arnold's Light
of Asia, stand in reverence of Buddha who preached no God, preached nothing
but self-sacrifice? The only thing is that the bigot does
not know that his own end and aim in life is exactly the same as that of
those from whom he differs. The worshipper, by keeping constantly
before him the idea of God and a surrounding of good, comes to the same
point at last and says, "Thy will be done", and keeps nothing
to himself. That is self-abnegation. The philosopher, with his knowledge,
sees that the seeming self is a delusion and easily gives it up. It is
self-abnegation. So Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana all meet here; and this is
what was meant by all the great preachers of ancient times when they taught
that God is not the world. There is one thing which is the world and another
which is God; and this distinction is very true; what they mean by
world is selfishness. Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne
in a golden palace and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another
may live in a hut and wear rags and have nothing in the world; yet, if
he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world.
To come back to one of our main points, we say that we cannot do good
without at the same time doing some evil, or do evil without doing some
good. Knowing this, how can we work? There have, therefore, been sects
in this world who have in an astoundingly preposterous way preached slow
suicide as the only means to get out of the world because, if a man lives,
he has to kill poor little animals and plants or do injury to something
or some one. So, according to them, the only way out of the world is to
die. The Jainas have preached this doctrine as their highest ideal. This
teaching seems to be very logical. But the true solution is found in the
Gita. It is the theory of non-attachment, to be attached to nothing
while doing our work of life. Know that you are separated entirely
from the world though you are in the world, and that whatever you may be
doing in it, you are not doing that for your own sake. Any action
that you do for yourself will bring its effect to bear upon you.
If it is a good action, you will have to take the good effect, and
if bad, you will have to take the bad effect; but any action that is not
done for your own sake, whatever it be, will have no effect on you.
There is to be found a very expressive sentence in our scriptures embodying
this idea: "Even if he kill the whole universe (or be himself
killed), he is neither the killer nor the killed, when he knows that he
is not acting for himself at all" Therefore Karma-Yoga teaches,
"Do not give up the world; live in the world, imbibe its influences
as much as you can; but if it be for your own enjoyment's sake, work not
at all." Enjoyment should not be the goal. First kill your self and
then take the whole world as yourself; as the old Christians used to say,
"The old man must die." This old man is the selfish idea
that the whole world is made for our enjoyment. Foolish parents
teach their children to pray, "O Lord, Thou hast created this sun
for me and this moon for me," as if the Lord has had nothing else
to do than to create everything for these babies. Do not teach your children
such nonsense. Then again, there are people who are foolish in another
way; they teach us that all these animals were created for us to kill and
eat, and that this universe is for the enjoyment of men. That is
all foolishness. A tiger may say, "Man was created for me,"
and pray "O Lord, how wicked are these men who do not come and place
themselves before me to be eaten; they are breaking Your law."
If the world is created for us, we are also created for the world. That
this world is created for our enjoyment is the most wicked idea that holds
us down. This world is not for our sake. Millions pass out
of it every year; the world does not feel it; millions of others are supplied
in their place. Just as much as the world is for us, so we also are
for the world.
To work properly, therefore, you have first to give up the idea
of attachment. Secondly, do not mix in the fray, hold yourself as a witness
and go on working. My Master used to say, "Look upon your
children as a nurse does." The nurse will take your baby and fondle
it and play with it and behave towards it as gently as if it were her own
child; but as soon as you give her notice to quit, she is ready to start
off bag and baggage from the house. Everything in the shape of attachment
is forgotten; it will not give the ordinary nurse the least pang to leave
your children and take up other children. Even so are you to be with all
that you consider your own. You are the nurse, and if you believe
in God, believe that all these things which you consider yours are really
His. The greatest weakness often insinuates itself as the greatest
good and strength. It is a weakness to think that anyone is dependent on
me, and that I can do good to another. This belief is the mother of all
our attachment, and through this attachment comes all our pain. We must
inform our minds that no one in this universe depends upon us; not one
beggar depends on our charity; not one soul on our kindness; not one living
thing on our help. All are helped on by nature, and will be so helped even
though millions of us were not here. The course of nature will not stop
for such as you and me; it is, as already pointed out, only a blessed
privilege to you and to me that we are allowed, in the way of helping others,
to educate ourselves. This is a great lesson to learn
in life; and when we have learnt it fully, we shall never be unhappy; we
can go and mix without harm in society anywhere and everywhere. You may
have wives and husbands, and regiments of servants, and kingdoms to govern;
if only you act on the principle that the world is not for you and does
not inevitably need you, they can do you no harm.
This very year some of your friends may have died. Is the world waiting
without going on for them to come again? Is its current stopped? No, it
goes on. So drive out of your mind the idea that you have to do something
for the world; the world does not require any help from you. It is
sheer nonsense on the part of any man to think that he is born to help
the world; it is simply pride, it is selfishness insinuating itself
in the form of virtue. When you have trained your mind and your
nerves to realize this idea of the world's non-dependence on you or on
anybody, there will then be no reaction in the form of pain resulting from
work. When you give something to a man and expect nothing--do not
even expect the man to be grateful--his ingratitude will not tell upon
you, because you never expected anything, never thought you had any right
to anything in the way of a return; you gave him what he deserved; his
own Karma got it for him; your Karma made you the carrier
thereof. Why sh
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Karma-Yoga
Karma
in Its Effect on Character