Doctrine Of Karma

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

Page 78

DOCTRINE OF KARMA
which makes us slaves while it lasts. In our daily lives we discharge our many duties like bond-servants; yet we keep imagining that in doing them, we shall be happy through the satisfaction which will arise from the consciousness of having done them; but the next instant conditions change, our environment shifts, and we are confronted by another set of duties and a new feeling of ought. Nothing can make us free so long as we are fettered by this sense of duty. It is the greatest bondage of our lives. We may look upon it as eminently commendable to be perpetually constrained by the idea of ought and to force ourselves to do that which seems to us duty for the moment; but it is absolutely necessary for us to realize that this will never lead to happiness. We have only to go back in our own experience to find that although we have performed numberless duties, we have not gained any lasting happiness from their
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