KARMA YOGA 11

The work is cut out, the task is set, liberation is the goal and the method is KARMA YOGA. We have to hew our way through the network of Nature, through the meshes of Maya. We are in the cosmic ocean and we have to swim ashore. The water may drown us by its current or it may save us by its buoyancy. But that depends on us, how we execute our strokes. Sink or swim to safety, this is the twin proposition before us. And the choice depends not so much on our desire to live as on our capacity to do so, our skill in warding off the waves, in riding the water and cruising home.

This then is the universal ocean we have to cross, a sea of thought waves stretching from the alpha to the omega of relative existence, causal and chaotic, rigorous and fluid. Thoughts will have to be organised, programmed, refined and transcended and the tool for this stupendous task must be the mind itself which then is both the subject and the object of the study. This makes the study especially difficult and the subject becomes the area of specialisation of the Raja Yogi. However, all these propositions face the Karma Yogi as well for the problems of Maya spare not any.

The question then arises that in the daily intercourse of living, in the thoroughfare of life, the work that we do, can such work take us to freedom overcoming this ocean of Maya? Is not mundane living diametrically opposed to the pursuit of freedom? Can day-to-day activity be the tool for liberation? Is there a bridge somewhere that integrates secular life and life sacred? Can the ordinary mortal aspire to immortality by learning how to conduct his earthly affairs in the spiritual way? Is there a way out then of the grinding Wheel of Work simply by learning how to work one's way in to the centre of the wheel where it turns not?

It seems there is, and, inordinate has been the wait, my friends, for knowing the solution to this riddle of existence. But the fruit of expectation is sweet when the quest is for Truth and the following discussions shall shed light on this problem of universal significance. Till then may we not take our first steps towards the detached performance of action? Ask not why. Just begin and you will be readier for the lesson of the morrow---KARMA YOGA!