"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 of God and a surrounding of good, comes to the
same point at last and says, "Thy will be done", and keeps nothing to himself.
That is self-abnegation. The philosopher, with his knowledge, sees that the
seeming self is a delusion and easily gives it up. It is self-abnegation. So
Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana all meet here; and this is what was meant by all the
great preachers of ancient times when they taught that God is not the world.
There is one thing which is the world and another which is God; and this
distinction is very true; what they mean by world is selfishness.
Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne in a golden palace and
be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and
wear rags and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is
intensely merged in the world.
To come back to one of our main
points, we say that we cannot do good without at the same time doing some
evil, or do evil without doing some good. Knowing this, how can we work? There
have, therefore, been sects in this world who have in an astoundingly
preposterous way preached slow suicide as the only means to get out of the
world because, if a man lives, he has to kill poor little animals and plants
or do injury to something or some one. So, according to them, the only way out
of the world is to die. The Jainas have preached this doctrine as their
highest ideal. This teaching seems to be very logical. But the true solution
is found in the Gita. It is the theory of non-attachment, to be attached
to nothing while doing our work of life. Know that you are separated
entirely from the world though you are in the world, and that whatever you may
be doing in it, you are not doing that for your own sake. Any action
that you do for yourself will bring its effect to bear upon you. If it
is a good action, you will have to take the good effect, and if bad, you
will have to take the bad effect; but any action that is not done for your own
sake, whatever it be, will have no effect on you. There is to be found
a very expressive sentence in our scriptures embodying this idea: "Even
if he kill the whole universe (or be himself killed), he is neither the killer
nor the killed, when he knows that he is not acting for himself at all"
Therefore Karma-Yoga teaches, "Do not give up the world; live in the
world, imbibe its influences as much as you can; but if it be for your own
enjoyment's sake, work not at all." Enjoyment should not be the goal. First
kill your self and then take the whole world as yourself; as the old
Christians used to say, "The old man must die." This old man is the
selfish idea that the whole world is made for our enjoyment. Foolish
parents teach their children to pray, "O Lord, Thou hast created this sun for
me and this moon for me," as if the Lord has had nothing else to do than to
create everything for these babies. Do not teach your children such nonsense.
Then again, there are people who are foolish in another way; they teach us
that all these animals were created for us to kill and eat, and that this
universe is for the enjoyment of men. That is all foolishness. A
tiger may say, "Man was created for me," and pray "O Lord, how wicked are
these men who do not come and place themselves before me to be eaten; they are
breaking Your law." If the world is created for us, we are also created
for the world. That this world is created for our enjoyment is the
most wicked idea that holds us down. This world is not for our
sake. Millions pass out of it every year; the world does not feel it;
millions of others are supplied in their place. Just as much as the
world is for us, so we also are for the world.
To work properly,
therefore, you have first to give up the idea of attachment. Secondly, do not
mix in the fray, hold yourself as a witness and go on working. My
Master used to say, "Look upon your children as a nurse does." The nurse will
take your baby and fondle it and play with it and behave towards it as gently
as if it were her own child; but as soon as you give her notice to quit, she
is ready to start off bag and baggage from the house. Everything in the shape
of attachment is forgotten; it will not give the ordinary nurse the least pang
to leave your children and take up other children. Even so are you to be with
all that you consider your own. You are the nurse, and if you believe in
God, believe that all these things which you consider yours are really
His. The greatest weakness often insinuates itself as the greatest
good and strength. It is a weakness to think that anyone is dependent on me,
and that I can do good to another. This belief is the mother of all our
attachment, and through this attachment comes all our pain. We must inform our
minds that no one in this universe depends upon us; not one beggar depends on
our charity; not one soul on our kindness; not one living thing on our help.
All are helped on by nature, and will be so helped even though millions of us
were not here. The course of nature will not stop for such as you and me; it
is, as already pointed out, only a blessed privilege to you and to me
that we are allowed, in the way of helping others, to educate
ourselves. This is a great lesson to learn in life; and when we
have learnt it fully, we shall never be unhappy; we can go and mix without
harm in society anywhere and everywhere. You may have wives and husbands, and
regiments of servants, and kingdoms to govern; if only you act on the
principle that the world is not for you and does not inevitably need
you, they can do you no harm. This very year some of your
friends may have died. Is the world waiting without going on for them to come
again? Is its current stopped? No, it goes on. So drive out of your mind the
idea that you have to do something for the world; the world does not require
any help from you. It is sheer nonsense on the part of any man to think
that he is born to help the world; it is simply pride, it is selfishness
insinuating itself in the form of virtue. When you have
trained your mind and your nerves to realize this idea of the world's
non-dependence on you or on anybody, there will then be no reaction in the
form of pain resulting from work. When you give something to a man and
expect nothing--do not even expect the man to be grateful--his ingratitude
will not tell upon you, because you never expected anything, never thought you
had any right to anything in the way of a return; you gave him what he
deserved; his own Karma got it for him; your Karma made you the
carrier thereof. Why should you be proud of having given away
something? You are the porter that carried the money or other kind of gift,
and the world deserved it by its own Karma. Where is then the reason for pride
in you? There is nothing very great in what you give to the world. When you
have acquired the feeling of non-attachment, there will then be neither good
nor evil for you. It is only selfishness that causes the difference between
good and evil. It is a very hard thing to understand, but you will come to
learn in time that nothing in the universe has power over you until you allow
it to exercise such a power. Nothing has power over the Self of man,
until the Self becomes a fool and loses independence. So by
non-attachment you overcome and deny the power of anything to act upon
you. It is very easy to say that nothing has the right to act upon you
until you allow it to do so; but what is the true sign of the man who really
does not allow anything to work upon him, who is neither happy nor unhappy
when acted upon by the external world? The sign is that good or ill
fortune causes no change in his mind; in all conditions he continues to remain
the same. There was a great sage in India called Vyâsa. This Vyâsa is
known as the author of the Vedanta aphorisms, and was a holy man. His father
had tried to become a very perfect man and had failed. His grandfather had
also tried and failed. His great-grandfather had similarly tried and failed.
He himself did not succeed perfectly, but his son, Shuka, was born perfect.
Vyâsa taught his son wisdom; and after teaching him the knowledge of truth
himself, he sent him to the court of King Janaka. He was a great king and was
called Janaka Videha. Videha means "without a body." Although a king, he had
entirely forgotten that he was a body; he felt that he was a spirit all the
time. This boy Shuka was sent to be taught by him. The king knew that Vyâsa's
son was coming to him to learn wisdom; so he made certain arrangements
beforehand; and when the boy presented himself at the gates of the palace, the
guards took no notice of him whatsoever. They only gave him a seat, and he sat
there for three days and nights, nobody speaking to him, nobody asking him who
he was or whence he was. He was the son of a very great sage; his father was
honored by the whole country, and he himself was a most respectable person;
yet the low, vulgar guards of the palace would take no notice of him. After
that, suddenly, the ministers of the king and all the big officials came there
and received him with the greatest honors. They conducted him in and showed
him into splendid rooms, gave him the most fragrant baths and wonderful
dresses, and for eight days they kept him there in all kinds of luxury. That
solemnly serene face of Shuka did not change even to the smallest extent by
the change in the treatment accorded to him; he was the same in the
midst of this luxury as when waiting at the door. Then he was brought
before the king. The king was on his throne, music was playing, and dancing
and other amusements were going on. The king then gave him a cup of milk, full
to the brim, and asked him to go seven times round the hall without spilling
even a drop. The boy took the cup and proceeded in the midst of the music and
the attraction of the beautiful faces. As desired by the king, seven times did
he go round, and not a drop of the milk was spilt. The boy's mind could
not be attracted by anything in the world, unless he allowed it to
affect him. And when he brought the cup to the king, the king said to him,
"What your father has taught you and what you have learnt yourself, I can only
repeat; you have known the truth; go home."
Thus the man that has practiced
control over himself cannot be acted upon by anything outside; there is no
more slavery for him. His mind has become free; such a man alone
is fit to live well in the world. We generally find men holding two opinions
regarding the world. Some are pessimists and say, "How horrible this world is,
how wicked!" Some others are optimists and say, "How beautiful this world is,
how wonderful!" To those who have not controlled their own minds, the world is
either full of evil or at best a mixture of good and evil. This very
world will become to us an optimistic world when we become masters of our own
minds. Nothing will then work upon us as good or evil; we shall find
everything to be in its proper place, to be harmonious. Some men, who
begin by saying that the world is a hell, often end by saying that it is a
heaven when they succeed in the practice of
self-control. If we are genuine Karma-Yogis and wish to train
ourselves to the attainment of this state, wherever we may begin we are sure
to end in perfect self-abnegation; and as soon as this seeming self has gone,
the whole world, which at first appears to us to be filled with evil, will
appear to be heaven itself and full of blessedness. Its very atmosphere will
be blessed; every human face there will be good. Such is the end and aim
of Karma-Yoga, and such is its perfection in practical life.
Our various Yogas do not conflict
with each other; each of them leads us to the same goal and
makes us perfect; only each has to be strenuously practiced. The whole
secret is in practicing. First you have to hear, then think, and then
practice. This is true of every Yoga. You have first to hear about it and
understand what it is; and many things which you do not understand will be
made clear to you by constant hearing and thinking. It is hard to understand
everything at once. The explanation of everything is after all in
yourself. No one was ever really taught by another; each of us has to
teach himself. The external teacher offers only the
suggestion which rouses the internal teacher to work to understand
things. Then things will be made clearer to us by our own power of
perception and thought, and we shall realize them in our own souls; and that
realization will grow into the intense power of will. First it is feeling,
then it becomes willing, and out of that willing comes the tremendous force
for work that will go through every vein and nerve and muscle, until the whole
mass of your body is changed into an instrument of the unselfish Yoga of work,
and the desired result of perfect self-abnegation and utter unselfishness is
duly attained. This attainment does not depend on any dogma or doctrine
or belief. Whether one is Christian or Jew or Gentile, it does not
matter. Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be
perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single
church or temple. Each one of our Yogas is fitted to make man perfect even
without the help of the others, because they have all the same goal in
view. The Yogas of work, of wisdom, and of devotion are all capable of
serving as direct and independent means for the attainment of Moksha
[liberation]. "Fools alone say that work and philosophy
are different, not the learned." The learned know that, though apparently
different from each other, they at last lead to the same goal of human
perfection.
In addition to meaning work, we
have stated that psychologically the word Karma also implies causation.
Any work, any action, any thought that produces an effect is called a
Karma. Thus the law of Karma means the law of causation, of inevitable
cause and sequence. Wheresoever there is a cause, there an effect must
be produced; this necessity cannot be resisted, and this law of Karma,
according to our philosophy, is true throughout the whole universe. Whatever
we see or feel or do, whatever action there is anywhere in the universe, while
being the effect of past work on the one hand, becomes, on the other, a cause
in its turn and produces its own effect. It is necessary, together with this,
to consider what is meant by the word "law". By law is meant the
tendency of a series to repeat itself. When we see one event followed
by another, or sometimes happening simultaneously with another, we expect this
sequence or co-existence to recur. Our old logicians and philosophers of the
Nyaya school call this law by the name of Vyâpti. According to them all our
ideas of law are due to association. A series of phenomena becomes associated
with things in our mind in a sort of invariable order, so that whatever we
perceive at any time is immediately referred to other facts in the mind.
Any one idea or, according to our psychology, any one wave that is produced in
the mind-stuff, Chitta, must always give rise to many similar waves. This is
the psychological idea of association, and causation is only an aspect of this
grand, pervasive principle of association. This pervasiveness of
association is what is called, in Sanskrit, Vyâpti. In the external world the
idea of law is the same as in the internal--the expectation that a particular
phenomenon will be followed by another, and that the series will repeat
itself. Really speaking, therefore, law does not exist in nature. Practically
it is an error to say that gravitation exists in the earth, or that there is
any law existing objectively anywhere in nature. Law is the method, the
manner in which our mind grasps a series of phenomena; it is all in the mind.
Certain phenomena, happening one after another or together, and followed by
the conviction of the regularity of their recurrence, thus enabling our minds
to grasp the method of the whole series, constitute what we call law.
The next question for
consideration is what we mean by law being universal. Our universe is that
portion of existence which is characterized by what the Sanskrit psychologists
call Desha-Kâla-Nimitta, or what is known to European psychology as space,
time, and causation. This universe is only a part of infinite existence
thrown into a peculiar mold, composed of space, time, and causation. It
necessarily follows that law is possible only within this conditioned
universe; beyond it there cannot be any law. When we speak of the
universe, we only mean that portion of existence which is limited by our
mind--the universe of the senses, which we can see, feel, touch, hear, think
of, imagine. This alone is under law; but beyond it, existence cannot be
subject to law, because causation does not extend beyond the
world of our minds. Anything beyond the range of our mind and our
senses is not bound by the law of causation, as there is no mental association
of things in the region beyond the senses, and no causation without
association of ideas. It is only when "being" or existence gets molded
into name and form that it obeys the law of causation and is said to be under
law, because all law has its essence in causation. Therefore we see at
once that there cannot be any such thing as free will; the very
words are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that
we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is molded
by the conditions of space, time, and causation. Everything that we know, or
can possibly know, must be subject to causation, and that which obeys the law
of causation cannot be free. It is acted upon by other agents and becomes a
cause in its turn. But that which has become converted into the
will, which was not the will before, but which, when it fell into this
mold of space, time, and causation; became converted into the human
will, is free; and when this will gets out of this mold of space,
time, and causation, it will be free again. From freedom it comes and becomes
molded into this bondage, and it gets out and goes back to freedom again.
The question has been raised as
to from whom this universe comes, in whom it rests, and to whom it goes; and
the answer has been given that from freedom it comes, in bondage it
rests, and goes back into that freedom again. So when we speak of man
as no other than that infinite being which is manifesting itself, we mean that
only one very small part thereof is man; this body and this mind which we see
are only one part of the whole, only one spot of the infinite being.
This whole universe is only one speck of the infinite being; and
all our laws, our bondages, our joys and our sorrows, our happinesses and our
expectations, are only within this small universe; all our progression and
digression are within its small compass. So you see how childish it is
to expect a continuation of this universe--the creation of our minds--and to
expect to go to heaven, which after all must mean only a repetition of this
world that we know. You see at once that it is an impossible and childish
desire to make the whole of infinite existence conform to the
limited and conditioned existence which we know. When a man says
that he will have again and again this same thing which he is having now, or,
as I sometimes put it, when he asks for a comfortable religion, you may
know that he has become so degenerate that he cannot think of anything
higher than what he is now; he is just his little present surroundings and
nothing more. He has forgotten his infinite nature, and
his whole idea is confined to these little joys and sorrows and
heart-jealousies of the moment. He thinks that this finite thing is the
infinite; and not only so, he will not let this foolishness go. He clings on
desperately unto Trishnâ, the thirst after life, what the Buddhists call Tanhâ
and Trissâ. There may be millions of kinds of happiness and beings and laws
and progress and causation, all acting outside the little universe that we
know, and, after all, the whole of this comprises but one section of our
infinite nature.
To acquire freedom we have
to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found
here. Perfect equilibrium, or what the Christians call the peace that
passeth all understanding, cannot be had in this universe, nor in heaven, nor
in any place where our mind and thoughts can go, where the senses can feel, or
which the imagination can conceive. No such place can give us that freedom,
because all such places would be within our universe, and it is limited by
space, time, and causation. There may be places that are more ethereal
than this earth of ours, where enjoyments may be keener, but
even those places must be in the universe and, therefore, in bondage to law;
so we have to go beyond, and real religion begins where this little universe
ends. These little joys and sorrows and knowledge of things end there, and the
reality begins. Until we give up the thirst after life, the strong attachment
to this our transient, conditioned existence, we have no hope of catching even
a glimpse of that infinite freedom beyond. It stands to reason then
that there is only one way to attain to the freedom which is the goal of all
the noblest aspirations of mankind, and that is by giving up this little life,
giving up this little universe, giving up this earth, giving up heaven, giving
up the body, giving up the mind, giving up everything that is limited and
conditioned. If we give up our attachment to this little universe of the
senses or of the mind, we shall be free immediately. The only way to come out
of bondage is to go beyond the limitations of law, to go beyond
causation.
But it is a most difficult thing
to give up the clinging to this universe; few ever attain to that. These are
two ways to do that, mentioned in our books. One is called the "Neti,
Neti" (not this, not this), the other is called the "Iti" (this); the former
is the negative, and the latter is the positive way. The negative way
is the most difficult. It is only possible to the men of the very highest,
exceptional minds and gigantic wills who simply stand up and say, "No, I will
not have this", and the mind and body obey their will, and they come out
successful. But such people are very rare. The vast majority of mankind choose
the positive way, the way through the world, making use of all the bondages
themselves to break those very bondages. This is also a kind of giving up;
only it is done slowly and gradually, by knowing things, enjoying things, and
thus obtaining experience, and knowing the nature of things until the mind
lets them all go at last and becomes unattached. The former way of
obtaining non-attachment is by reasoning, and the latter way is through work
and experience. The first is the path of Jnana-Yoga and is characterized by
the refusal to do any work; the second is that of Karma-Yoga in which there is
no cessation from work. Everyone must work in the universe. Only
those who are perfectly satisfied with the Self, whose desires do not go
beyond the Self, whose mind never strays out of the Self, to whom the Self is
all in all, only those do not work. The rest must work. A current
rushing down of its own nature falls into a hollow and makes a whirlpool, and
after running a little in that whirlpool, it emerges again in the form of the
free current to go on unchecked. Each human life is like that current. It gets
into the whirl, gets involved in this world of space, time, and causation,
whirls round a little, crying out "my father, my brother, my name, my fame,"
and so on, and at last emerges out of it and regains its original
freedom. The whole universe is doing that. Whether we know it or not,
whether we are conscious or unconscious of it, we are all working to get
out of the dream of the world of work. Man's experience in the world is to
enable him to get out of its whirlpool.
What is Karma-Yoga? The
knowledge of the secret of work. We see that the whole universe is
working. For what? For salvation, for liberty; from the atom to the highest
being working for the one end--liberty for the mind, for the body for
the spirit. All things are always trying to get freedom, flying away
from bondage. The sun, the moon, the earth, the planets, all are trying to fly
away from bondage. The centrifugal and the centripetal forces of nature are
indeed typical of our universe. Instead of being knocked about in this
universe, and after long delay and thrashing, getting to know things as they
are, we learn from Karma-Yoga the secret of work, the method of work, the
organizing power of work. A vast mass of energy may be spent in vain if we do
not know how to utilize it. Karma-Yoga makes a science of work; you
learn by it how best to utilize all the workings of this world. Work
is inevitable, it must be so; but we should work to the highest purpose.
Karma-Yoga makes us admit that this world is a world of five minutes; that it
is a something we have to pass through; and that freedom is not here, but is
only to be found beyond. To find the way out of the bondages of the
world we have to go through it slowly and surely. There may be those
exceptional persons about whom I just spoke, those who can stand aside and
give up the world as a snake casts off its skin and stands aside and looks at
it There are no doubt these exceptional beings; but the rest of mankind have
to go slowly through the world of work. Karma-Yoga shows the process, the
secret, and the method of doing it to the best advantage.
What does it say? "Work
incessantly, but give up all attachment to work." [Also: "Kill
out all ambition, but work like those do who are ambitious."] Do not
identify yourself with anything. Hold your mind free. All this that you see,
the pains and the miseries, are but the necessary conditions if this world;
poverty and wealth and happiness are but momentary; they do not belong
to our real nature at all. Our nature is far beyond misery and
happiness, beyond every object of the senses, beyond the imagination; and yet
we must go on working all the time. "Misery comes through
attachment, not through work." As soon as we identify ourselves with the work
we do, we feel miserable; but if we do not identify ourselves with it, we do
not feel that misery. If a beautiful picture belonging to another is burnt, a
man does not generally become miserable, but when his own picture is burnt,
how miserable he feels! Why? Both were beautiful pictures, perhaps copies of
the same original; but in one case very much more misery is felt than in the
other. It is because in one case he identifies himself with the picture, and
not in the other. This "I and mine" causes the whole misery. With the sense of
possession comes selfishness, and selfishness, brings on misery. Every act of
selfishness or thought of selfishness makes us attached to something, and
immediately we are made slaves. Each wave in the Chitta that says "I and mine"
immediately puts a chain round us and makes us slaves; and the more we say "I
and mine," the more slavery grows, the more misery increases. Therefore
Karma-Yoga tells us to enjoy the beauty of all the pictures in the world, but
not to identify ourselves with any of them. Never say "mine". Whenever we say
a thing is mine, misery will immediately come. Do not even say "my
child" in your mind. Possess the child, but do not say "mine." If you do, then
will come the misery. Do not say "my house," do not say "my body." The whole
difficulty is there. The body is neither yours nor mine, nor anybody's.
These bodies are coming and going by the laws of nature, but we are free,
standing as witness. This body is no more free than a picture or a
wall. Why should we be attached so much to a body? If somebody paints a
picture, he does it and passes on. Do not project that tentacle of
selfishness, "I must possess it." As soon as that is projected, misery will
begin.
So Karma-Yoga says, first
destroy the tendency to project this tentacle of selfishness; and when
you have the power of checking it, hold it in and do not allow the mind to get
into the ways of selfishness. Then you may go out into the world and work as
much you can. Mix everywhere, go where you please; you will never be
contaminated with evil. There is the lotus leaf in the water; the water
cannot touch and adhere to it; so will you be in the world. This is
called Vairâgya, dispassion or non-attachment. I believe I have
told you that without non-attachment there cannot be any kind of
Yoga. Non-attachment is the basis of all the Yogas. The man who
gives up living in houses, wearing fine clothes, and eating good food, and
goes into the desert, may be a most attached person. His only
possession, his own body, may become everything to him; and as he lives he
will be simply struggling for the sake of his body. Non-attachment does
not mean anything that we may do in relation to our external body, it is all
in the mind. The binding link of "I and mine" is in the mind. If we
have not this link with the body and with the things of the senses, we are
non-attached, wherever and whatever we may be. A man may be on a throne and
perfectly non-attached; another man may be in rags and still very much
attached. First we have to attain this state of non-attachment, and then to
work incessantly. Karma-Yoga gives us the method that will help us in giving
up all attachment, though it is indeed very hard.
Here are the two ways of
giving up all attachment. The one is for those who do not believe in
God, or in any outside help. They are left to their own devices; they have
simply to work with their own will, with the powers of their mind and
discrimination, saying, "I must be non-attached." For those who believe in God
there is another way, which is much less difficult. They give up the fruits of
work unto the Lord, they work and are never attached to the results. Whatever
they see, feel, hear, or do, is for Him. For whatever good work we may do, let
us not claim any praise or benefit. It is the Lord's; give up the fruits unto
Him. Let us stand aside and think that we are only servants obeying the Lord,
our Master, and that every impulse for action comes from Him every moment.
Whatever thou worshippest, whatever thou perceivest, whatever thou doest, give
up all unto Him and be at rest. Let us be at peace, perfect peace, with
ourselves, and give up our whole body and mind and everything as an eternal
sacrifice unto the Lord. Instead of the sacrifice of pouring oblations into
the fire, perform this one great sacrifice day and night--the sacrifice of
your little self. "In search of wealth in this world, Thou art the only wealth
I have found; I sacrifice myself unto Thee. In search of some one to be loved,
Thou art the only one beloved I have found; I sacrifice myself unto Thee." Let
us repeat this day and night, and say, "Nothing for me; no matter whether the
thing is good, bad or indifferent; I do not care for it; I sacrifice all unto
Thee." Day and night let us renounce our seeming self until it becomes a
habit with us to do so, until it gets into the blood, the nerves, and
the brain, and the whole body is every moment obedient to this idea of
self-renunciation. Go then into the midst of the battlefield, with the roaring
cannon and the din of war, and you will find yourself to be free and at peace.