Swami Vivekananda: VEDANTA AS A FACTOR IN CIVILISATION :

Swami Vivekananda: VEDANTA AS A FACTOR IN CIVILISATION :: (Extract from an address delivered at Airlie Lodge, Ridgeway Gardens, England) People who are capable of seeing only the gross ext...

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Karma-Yoga : Ch-4. Part-6.

Chapter-4.

What is Duty?

Part-6.

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 kindliness of his nature died out as soon as he saw a man in a different dre…

Karma-Yoga : Ch-4. Part-8.

Chapter-4.

What is Duty?

Part-8.

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 …

Karma-Yoga : Ch-6. Part-22.

CHAPTER VI
NON-ATTACHMENT IS COMPLETE SELF-ABNEGATION
Part-22.

Then things will be made clearer to us by our own power of perception and thought, and we shall realise them in our own souls; and that realisation 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 mosque, church or temple.

Each one of our Yogas is fitted to make man perfect even without the help of the others, becau…

Swami Vivekananda

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