Every good work that 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.
Buddha was the one man who carried the teaching of Karma Yoga into perfect practice. ... He is the only prophet who said, "I do not care to know your various theories about God. What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul? Do good and be good. And this will take you to freedom and to whatever truth there is."
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 for work other than the inborn love of freedom. Be beyond the common worldly motives.
In spite of the incurable differences of pleasure and pain, there has also 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! 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 the human 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 their positions? 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 everywhere.
Think always, "I am ever-pure, ever-knowing, and ever-free. How can I do anything evil? Like ordinary people, can I ever be fooled with the insignificant charms of lust and wealth?" Strengthen the mind with such thoughts. This will surely bring real good.
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, but he will be hungry again. Every pleasure may be seen to be momentary. No one can permanently cure this ever-recurring fever of pleasure and pain.
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