Doctrine Of Karma

Author(s): Abhedananda Swami
Publisher: Ramkrishna Vedanta Math

Page 77

DUTY OR MOTIVE IN KARMA
official duties claim us; when we return home, we are met by household duties. Our whole existence is a series of occupations, each of which brings with it a feeling of ought; and this feeling is the sense of duty in us. There is no such thing as duty in an objective sense; we cannot get it from outside. It is purely subjective. When we perform certain acts under certain circumstances, and are conscious that we ought to do them, that feeling of obligation is duty. But who tells us that we should? Our own inner self. Impelled by natural tendencies and partial knowledge, we begin to think that under specific conditions we should perform these acts; and so long as we hold to this belief, we are forced to do them. The feeling which binds hes to these special acts of body and mind is the sense of duty. Duty creates a kind of bondage between the individual and his environment. If we do not have the sense of duty, we do not feel this bondage. It is, in fact, a condition
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