Karma Yoga

Author(s): Swami Vivekanand
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta

Page 21

[9]
And all this is determined by Karma, work. No one can get anything unless he earns it; this is an eternal law; we may sometimes think it is not so, but in the long run we become perforce convinced that it is so.. A man may struggle all his life to become rich; he may cheat thousands, but. he finds at last that he did not deserve to become rich and his life becomes a trouble and. a nuisance to him. We may go on accumulating things for our physical enjoyment, but only what we. really earn is ours. A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to read; and this deserving is produced by Karma. Our Karma. determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate. We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to become that we have the power to make of ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so