"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."
(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."
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.
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 Swastika. 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 o