THE
IDEAL OF KARMA-YOGA
The
grandest idea in the religion of the Vedanta is that we may reach the same
goal by different paths; and these paths I have generalised into four, viz
those of work, love, psychology, and knowledge. But you must, at the same
time, remember that these divisions are not very marked and quite
exclusive of each other. Each blends into the other. But according to the
type which prevails, we name the divisions. It is not that you can find
men who have no other faculty than that of work, nor that you can find men
who are no more than devoted worshippers only, nor that there are men who
have no more than mere knowledge. These divisions are made in accordance
with the type or the tendency that may be seen to prevail in a man. We
have found that, in the end, all these four paths converge and become one.
All religions and all methods of work and worship lead us to one and the
same goal.
I have already tried
to point out that goal. It is freedom as I understand it. Everything that
we perceive around us is struggling towards freedom, from the atom to the
man, from the insentient, lifeless particle of matter to the highest
existence on earth, the human soul. The whole universe is in fact the
result of this struggle for freedom. In all combinations every particle is
trying to go on its own way, to fly from the other particles; but the
others are holding it in check. Our earth is trying to fly away from the
sun, and the moon from the earth. Everything has a tendency to infinite
dispersion. All that we see in the universe has for its basis this one
struggle towards freedom; it is under the impulse of this tendency that
the saint prays and the robber robs. When the line of action taken is not
a proper one, we call it evil; and when the
manifestation
of it is proper and high, we call it good. But the impulse is the same,
the struggle towards freedom. The saint is oppressed with the knowledge of
his condition of bondage, and he wants to get rid of it; so he worships
God. The thief is oppressed with the idea that he does not possess certain
things, and he tries to get rid of that want, to obtain freedom from it;
so he steals. Freedom is the one goal of all nature, sentient or
insentient; and consciously or unconsciously, everything is struggling
towards that goal. The freedom which the saint seeks is very different
from that which the robber seeks; the freedom loved by the saint leads him
to the enjoyment of infinite, unspeakable bliss, while that on which the
robber has set his heart only forges other bonds for his soul.
There is to be found
in every religion the manifestation of this struggle towards freedom. It
is the groundwork of all morality, of unselfishness, which means getting
rid of the idea that men are the same as their little body. When we see a
man doing good work, helping others, it means that he cannot be confined
within the limited circle of "me and mine". There is no limit to
this getting out of selfishness. All the great systems of ethics preach
absolute unselfishness as the goal. Supposing this absolute unselfishness
can be reached by a man, what becomes of him? He is no more the little Mr.
So-and-so; he has acquired infinite expansion. The little personality
which he had before is now lost to him for ever; he has become infinite,
and the attainment of this infinite expansion is indeed the goal of all
religions and of all moral and philosophical teachings. The personalist,
when he hears this idea philosophically put, gets frightened. At the same
time, if he preaches morality, he after all teaches the very same idea
himself. He puts no limit to the unselfishness of man. Suppose a man
becomes perfectly unselfish under the personalistic system, how are we to
distinguish him from the perfected ones in other system? He has
become
one with the universe and to become that is the goal of all; only the poor
personalist has not the courage to follow out his own reasoning to its
right conclusion. Karma-Yoga is the attaining through unselfish work of
that freedom which is the goal of all human nature. Every selfish action,
therefore, retards our reaching the goal, and every unselfish action takes
us towards the goal; that is why the only definition that can be given of
morality is this: That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is
unselfish is moral.
But, if you come to
details, the matter will not be seen to be quite so simple. For instance,
environment often makes the details different as I have already mentioned.
The same action under one set of circumstances may be unselfish, and under
another set quite selfish. So we can give only a general definition, and
leave the details to be worked out by taking into consideration the
differences in time, place, and circumstances. In one country one kind of
conduct is considered moral, and in another the very same is immoral,
because the circumstances differ. The goal of all nature is freedom, and
freedom is to be attained only by perfect unselfishness; every thought,
word, or deed that is unselfish takes us towards the goal, and, as such,
is called moral. That definition, you will find, holds good in every
religion and every system of ethics. In some systems of thought morality
is derived from a Superior Being — God. If you ask why a man ought to do
this and not that, their answer is: "Because such is the command of
God." But whatever be the source from which it is derived, their code
of ethics also has the same central idea — not to think of self but to
give up self. And yet some persons, in spite of this high ethical idea,
are frightened at the thought of having to give up their little
personalities. We may ask the man who clings to the idea of little
personalities to consider the case of a person who has become perfectly
unselfish, who has no thought for himself,
who
does no deed for himself, who speaks no word for himself, and then say
where his "himself" is. That "himself" is known to him
only so long as he thinks, acts, or speaks for himself. If he is only
conscious of others, of the universe, and of the all, where is his
"himself"? It is gone for ever.
Karma-Yoga,
therefore, is a system of ethics and religion intended to attain freedom
through unselfishness, and by good works. The Karma-Yogi need not believe
in any doctrine whatever. He may not believe even in God, may not ask what
his soul is, nor think of any metaphysical speculation. He has got his own
special aim of realising selflessness; and he has to work it out himself.
Every moment of his life must be realisation, because he has to solve by
mere work, without the help of doctrine or theory, the very same problem
to which the Jnâni applies his reason and inspiration and the Bhakta his
love.
Now comes the next
question: What is this work? What is this doing good to the world? Can we
do good to the world? In an absolute sense, no; in a relative sense, yes.
No permanent or everlasting good can be done to the world; if it could be
done, the world would not be this world. We may satisfy the hunger of a
man for five minutes, but he will be hungry again. Every pleasure with
which we supply a man may be seen to be momentary. No one can permanently
cure this ever-recurring fever of pleasure and pain. Can any permanent
happiness be given to the world? In the ocean we cannot raise a wave
without causing a hollow somewhere else. The sum total of the good things
in the world has been the same throughout in its relation to man's need
and greed. It cannot be increased or decreased. Take the history of the
human race as we know it today. Do we not find the same miseries and the
same happiness, the same pleasures and pains, the same differences in
position? Are not some rich, some poor, some high, some low, some healthy,
some
unhealthy? All this was just the same with the Egyptians, the Greeks, and
the Romans in ancient times as it is with the Americans today. So far as
history is known, it has always been the same; yet at the same time we
find that, running along with all these incurable differences of pleasure
and pain, there has ever been the struggle to alleviate them. Every period
of history has given birth to thousands of men and women who have worked
hard to smooth the passage of life for others. And how far have they
succeeded? We can only play at driving the ball from one place to another.
We take away pain from the physical plane, and it goes to the mental one.
It is like that picture in Dante's hell where the misers were given a mass
of gold to roll up a hill. Every time they rolled it up a little, it again
rolled down. All our talks about the millennium are very nice as
school-boys' stories, but they are no better than that. All nations that
dream of the millennium also think that, of all peoples in the world, they
will have the best of it then for themselves. This is the wonderfully
unselfish idea of the millennium!
We cannot add
happiness to this world; similarly, we cannot add pain to it either. The
sum total of the energies of pleasure and pain displayed here on earth
will be the same throughout. We just push it from this side to the other
side, and from that side to this, but it will remain the same, because to
remain so is its very nature. This ebb and flow, this rising and falling,
is in the world's very nature; it would be as logical to hold otherwise as
to say that we may have life without death. This is complete nonsense,
because the very idea of life implies death and the very idea of pleasure
implies pain. The lamp is constantly burning out, and that is its life. If
you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death
are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different
standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the
two form one
whole.
One looks at the "fall" side and becomes a pessimist another
looks at the "rise" side and becomes an optimist. When a boy is
going to school and his father and mother are taking care of him,
everything seems blessed to him; his wants are simple, he is a great
optimist. But the old man, with his varied experience, becomes calmer and
is sure to have his warmth considerably cooled down. So, old nations, with
signs of decay all around them, are apt to be less hopeful than new
nations. There is a proverb in India: "A thousand years a city, and a
thousand years a forest." This change of city into forest and vice
versa is going on everywhere, and it makes people optimists or pessimists
according to the side they see of it.
The next idea we
take up is the idea of equality. These millennium ideas have been great
motive powers to work. Many religions preach this as an element in them
— that God is coming to rule the universe, and that then there will be
no difference at all in conditions. The people who preach this doctrine
are mere fanatics, and fanatics are indeed the sincerest of mankind.
Christianity was preached just on the basis of the fascination of this
fanaticism, and that is what made it so attractive to the Greek and the
Roman slaves. They believed that under the millennial religion there would
be no more slavery, that there would be plenty to eat and drink; and,
therefore, they flocked round the Christian standard. Those who preached
the idea first were of course ignorant fanatics, but very sincere. In
modern times this millennial aspiration takes the form of equality — of
liberty, equality, and fraternity. This is also fanaticism. True equality
has never been and never can be on earth. How can we all be equal here?
This impossible kind of equality implies total death. What makes this
world what it is? Lost balance. In the primal state, which is called
chaos, there is perfect balance. How do all the formative forces of the
universe
come then? By struggling, competition, conflict. Suppose that all the
particles of matter were held in equilibrium, would there be then any
process of creation? We know from science that it is impossible. Disturb a
sheet of water, and there you find every particle of the water trying to
become calm again, one rushing against the other; and in the same way all
the phenomena which we call the universe — all things therein — are
struggling to get back to the state of perfect balance. Again a
disturbance comes, and again we have combination and creation. Inequality
is the very basis of creation. At the same time the forces struggling to
obtain equality are as much a necessity of creation as those which destroy
it.
Absolute equality,
that which means a perfect balance of all the struggling forces in all the
planes, can never be in this world. Before you attain that state, the
world will have become quite unfit for any kind of life, and no one will
be there. We find, therefore, that all these ideas of the millennium and
of absolute equality are not only impossible but also that, if we try to
carry them out, they will lead us surely enough to the day of destruction.
What makes the difference between man and man? It is largely the
difference in the brain. Nowadays no one but a lunatic will say that we
are all born with the same brain power. We come into the world with
unequal endowments; we come as greater men or as lesser men, and there is
no getting away from that pre-natally determined condition. The American
Indians were in this country for thousands of years, and a few handfuls of
your ancestors came to their land. What difference they have caused in the
appearance of the country! Why did not the Indians make improvements and
build cities, if all were equal? With your ancestors a different sort of
brain power came into the land, different bundles of past impressions
came, and they worked out and manifested themselves. Absolute
non-differentiation is death. So long as this world lasts,
differentiation
there will and must be, and the millennium of perfect equality will come
only when a cycle of creation comes to its end. Before that, equality
cannot be. Yet this idea of realising the millennium is a great motive
power. Just as inequality is necessary for creation itself, so the
struggle to limit it is also necessary. If there were no struggle to
become free and get back to God, there would be no creation either. It is
the difference between these two forces that determines the nature of the
motives of men. There will always be these motives to work, some tending
towards bondage and others towards freedom.
This world's wheel
within wheel is a terrible mechanism; if we put our hands in it, as soon
as we are caught we are gone. We all think that when we have done a
certain duty, we shall be at rest; but before we have done a part of that
duty, another is already in waiting. We are all being dragged along by
this mighty, complex world-machine. There are only two ways out of it; one
is to give up all concerns with the machine, to let it go and stand aside,
to give up our desires. That is very easy to say, but is almost impossible
to do. I do not know whether in twenty millions of men one can do that.
The other way is to plunge into the world and learn the secret of work,
and that is the way of Karma-Yoga. Do not fly away from the wheels of the
world-machine, but stand inside it and learn the secret of work. Through
proper work done inside, it is also possible to come out. Through this
machinery itself is the way out.
We have now seen
what work is. It is a part of natures foundation, and goes on always.
Those that believe in God understand this better, because they know that
God is not such an incapable being as will need our help. Although this
universe will go on always, our goal is freedom, our goal is
unselfishness; and according to Karma-Yoga, that goal is to be reached
through work. All
ideas
of making the world perfectly happy may be good as motive powers for
fanatics; but we must know that fanaticism brings forth as much evil as
good. The Karma-Yogi asks why you require any motive to work other than
the inborn love of freedom. Be beyond the common worldly motives. "To
work you have the right, but not to the fruits thereof." Man can
train himself to know and to practice that, says the Karma-Yogi. When the
idea of doing good becomes a part of his very being, then he will not seek
for any motive outside. Let us do good because it is good to do good; he
who does good work even in order to get to heaven binds himself down, says
the Karma-Yogi. Any work that is done with any the least selfish motive,
instead of making us free, forges one more chain for our feet.
So the only way is
to give up all the fruits of work, to be unattached to them. Know that
this world is not we, nor are we this world; that we are really not the
body; that we really do not work. We are the Self, eternally at rest and
at peace. Why should we be bound by anything? It is very good to say that
we should be perfectly non-attached, but what is the way to do it? Every
good work we do without any ulterior motive, instead of forging a new
chain, will break one of the links in the existing chains. Every good
thought that we send to the world without thinking of any return, will be
stored up there and break one link in the chain, and make us purer and
purer, until we become the purest of mortals. Yet all this may seem to be
rather quixotic and too philosophical, more theoretical than practical. I
have read many arguments against the Bhagavad-Gita, and many have said
that without motives you cannot work. They have never seen unselfish work
except under the influence of fanaticism, and, therefore, they speak in
that way.
Let
me tell you in conclusion a few words about one man who actually carried
this teaching of Karma-Yoga
