Karma Yoga

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

Page 23

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no man gets a title until he is dead; and that is a better way, after all, than with us. When a man does something very good there, they give a title of nobility to his father, who is dead, or to his grandfather. Some people work for that. Some of the followers of certain Mohammedan sects work all their lives to have a big tomb built for them when they die. I know sects among whom as soon as a child is born, the men begin to prepare for his tomb; that is among them the most important work a man has to do, and the bigger and the finer the tomb the better off is the man supposed to be. Others do good work as a penance; they do all sorts of wicked things, then erect a temple, 'or give something to the priests to buy them off and obtain from them a passport to heaven. They think that this kind of beneficence will clear them and that they will go scotfree in spite of their sinfulness. Such are some of the various motives for work.
Work for work's sake. There are some who are really the salt of the earth in every country and