Do you ask anything from your children in return for what you have given them? It is your duty to work for them, and there the matter ends. In whatever you do for a particular person, a city, or a state, assume the same attitude towards it as you have towards your children--expect nothing in return.
If you can invariably take the position of a giver, in which everything given by you is a free offering to the world, without any thought of return, then will your work bring you no attachment. Attachment comes only when we expect a return.
Class on Karma Yoga. New York, December 20, 1895. Complete Works, 1:59.
Hindus do stand in need of social reform. At times great men would evolve new ideas of progress, and kings would give them the sanction of law. Thus social improvements had been made in India in the past. To effect such progressive reforms in modern times, we will have first to build up such an authoritative power. Kings having gone, the power is the people's. We have, therefore, to wait till the people are educated, till they understand their needs and are ready and able to solve their problems. The tyranny of the minority is the worst tyranny in the world. Therefore, instead of frittering away our energies on ideal reforms, which will never become practical, we had better go to the root of the evil and make a legislative body, that is to say, educate our people, so that they may be able to solve their own problems. Until that is done, all these old reforms will remain ideals only. The new order of things is the salvation of the people by the people, and it takes time to make it workable, especially in India, which has always in the past been governed by kings.
Interview in The Hindu. Chennai, 1896. Complete Works, 5: 215-16.
Just as every action that emanates from us comes back to us as reaction, even so our actions may act on other people and theirs on us. Perhaps all of you have observed it as a fact that when people do evil actions, they become more and more evil, and when they begin to do good, they become stronger and stronger and learn to do good all the time. This intensification of the influence of action cannot be explained on any other ground than that we can act and react upon each other.
Class on Karma Yoga. New York, January 3, 1896. Complete Works, 1:81.
Religion is not in doctrines, in dogmas, nor in intellectual argumentation. It is being and becoming. Religion is realization.
Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 2.43.
The goal of all nature is freedom, and freedom is to be attained only by perfect unselfishness.
Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 1.110.
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