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 that what is written in his book, the Koran, is his duty; the Hindu says that what is in the Vedas is his duty; and the Christian says that 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 to define clearly; we can only get an idea of it by knowing its practical operations and results. When certain things occur before us, we feel 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 was a notorious band 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 impossible. Yet one can define 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 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 it has been summed up in a Sanskrit aphorism thus: “Not injuring any living being is virtue; injuring any being is sin.”
The Bhagavad Gitā frequently alludes to duties as dependent upon birth and position in life. Birth and also position in life and 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 customs of his country is the best thing to do, and that whoever does not follow his customs 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 whoever 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 country1 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 a 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 dislike felt by powerful nations for weaker ones is caused by this kind of prejudice, which dries up their fellow-feeling for others. That very man who asked me in Chicago 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 different dress. Foreigners 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 would not do this if they saw the good, the kindly side 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; the world does not have to adjust itself 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 the 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—that is, 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 his duty in 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. Then work becomes worship—nay, something higher; then work is done for its own sake. We shall find that the goal of duty, either from the standpoint of ethics or of love, is the same as in all the other yogas, namely, to attenuate the lower self so that the Higher Self may shine forth, and to lessen the frittering away of energies on the lower plane of existence so that the soul may manifest them on the higher planes. This is accomplished by the constant denial of low desires, which duty rigorously requires. The whole organization of society has thus been developed consciously or unconsciously by means of action and experience. 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; otherwise it is a continuous friction. 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 alone in freedom. Yet is it freedom to be a slave to the senses, to anger, to jealousies, and to a hundred other petty things that 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 who are 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 all men except her own husband as her children and has the attitude of a mother towards them, can grow so great in the power of her purity that there will not 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, as he looks on 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, for 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 other forms of love 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; as soon as the latter are fledged, they do not recognize their parents. Blessed, indeed, is the man who can 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 grow is to do the duty near at hand, and thus go on gathering strength till the highest state is reached. A young sannyāsin went to a forest. There he meditated, worshipped, and practised yoga for a long time. After much 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! How dare you throw these dry leaves upon my head?” As with these words he angrily looked at them, a flash of fire went out—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 stood at a door and called out, “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 yet know my power.” While he was thinking thus the voice said 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 humbly said to her, “Mother, how did you know that?” She said: “My boy, I do not know your yoga or your other practices. I am a simple, ordinary woman. I made you wait because my husband is 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 practise. But by doing my duty I have become illumined; thus I could read your thoughts and know what you had done in the forest.” She further told him that if he wanted to know something higher, he should go to the market of a certain town, where he would find a vyādha2 who would tell him something that he would be very glad to learn. The sannyāsin thought, “Why should I go to that town, and to a vyādha?” But after what he had seen, his mind had opened a little; so he went. When he came to the town he found the market, and there saw, at a distance, a big fat vyādha cutting meat with a big knife, 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 the man looked up and said: “O Swami, did a lady send you here? Take a seat until I have done my business.” The sannyāsin thought, “What comes to me here?” He took a seat, however. The man went on with his work, and after he had finished he took his money and said to the sannyāsin, “Come, sir; come to my home.” On reaching home the vyādha gave him a seat, saying, “Wait here,” and went into the house. He then bathed his old father and mother, fed them, and did all he could to please them, after which he came to the sannyāsin and said: “Now, sir, you have come here to see me. What can I do for you?” The sannyāsin asked him a few questions about the soul and about God, and the vyādha gave him a lecture which forms a part of the Mahābhārata called the Vyādha Gitā. It contains one of the highest flights of Vedānta. When the vyādha finished his teaching the sannyāsin felt astonished. He said: “Why are you in that body? With such knowledge as yours, why are you in a vyādha’s body, and doing such filthy, ugly work?” “My son,” replied the vyādha, “no duty is ugly, no duty is impure. My birth placed me in these circumstances and this environment. In my boyhood I learnt the trade. I am unattached and I try to do my duty well as a householder; I do all I can to make my father and mother happy. I neither know your yoga, nor have become a sannyāsin, nor have I gone out of the world into a forest; nevertheless all that I know 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.3 He is a peculiar man; he will not teach anyone. If you ask him a question he will not answer. He hesitates 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 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. The vyādha and the woman in the story did their duty with cheerfulness and whole-heartedness; and the result was that they became illumined, thus clearly showing that the right performance of the duties of any station in life, without attachment to results, leads us to the realization of the perfection of the soul.
It is the worker attached to results who 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 failure. Let us work on, doing whatever happens to be our duty, and be ever ready to put our shoulders to the wheel. Then surely we shall see the Light.
1 The United States of America.
2 One belonging to the lowest class of people, who were hunters and butchers.
3 A reference to Pavhari Baba, whom Swami Vivekananda knew well. The Swami’s meeting with the saint is described on page 42 of Vivekananda: A Biography, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York, 1953.