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
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
will 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
organisation 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 recognise 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 gathering strength go on 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
lady
send you here? Take a seat until I have done my business." The
Sannyasin 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 Sannyasin, "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
Sannyasin and said, "Now, sir, you have come here to see me; what can
I do for you?" The Sannyasin 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-Gitâ. It contains one of the highest flights of
the Vedanta. When the Vyadha finished his teaching, the Sannyasin 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 Sannyasin, 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
position."
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 any one; 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
whole-heartedness; 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 realisation
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 ever satisfy him, and his whole life
is doomed to prove a 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!
