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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.
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