Work and its secret by Swami Vivekananda

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Love and Love alone...

 

Here is a good article received from a different source. Enjoy it.

Love and Love alone... P. Gopi Krishna.

WORK AND ITS SECRET

Posted by: " Uttishthata " uttishthata

Tue Mar 27, 2007 7:47 pm (PST)

WORK AND ITS SECRET

(Delivered at Los Angeles, California, January 4, 1900)

 

Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it

will come back to you -- but do not think of that now, it will come

back multiplied a thousandfold -- but the attention must not be on

that. Yet have the power to give: give, and there it ends. Learn

that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to

give. So, give willingly. Sooner or later you will have to give up.

You come into life to accumulate. With clenched hands, you want to

take. But nature puts a hand on your throat and makes your hands

open. Whether you will it or not, you have to give. The moment you

say, " I will not " , the blow comes; you are hurt. None is there but

will be compelled, in the long run, to give up everything. And the

more one struggles against this law, the more miserable one feels.

It is because we dare not give, because we are not resigned enough

to accede to this grand demand of nature, that we are miserable. The

forest is gone, but we get heat in return. The sun is taking up

water from the ocean, to return it in showers. You are a machine for

taking and giving: you take, in order to give. Ask, therefore,

nothing in return; but the more you give, the more will come to you.

The quicker you can empty the air out of this room, the quicker it

will be filled up by the external air; and if you close all the

doors and every aperture, that which is within will remain, but that

which is outside will never come in, and that which is within will

stagnate, degenerate, and become poisoned. A river is continually

emptying itself into the ocean and is continually filling up again.

Bar not the exit into the ocean. The moment you do that, death

seizes you.

 

Be, therefore, not a beggar; be unattached. This is the most

terrible task of life! You do not calculate the dangers on the path.

Even by intellectually recognising the difficulties, we really do

not know them until we feel them. From a distance we may get a

general view of a park: well, what of that? We feel and really know

it when we are in it. Even if our every attempt is a failure, and we

bleed and are torn asunder, yet, through all this, we have to

preserve our heart -- we must assert our God-head in the midst of

all these difficulties. Nature wants us to react, to return blow for

blow, cheating for cheating, lie for lie, to hit back with all our

might. Then it requires a superdivine power not to hit back, to keep

control, to be unattached.

 

To be continued... .

 

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 2 [ Page : 4 ]

 

Gopi Krishna <gopi