Karma Yoga Bhakti Yoga

Author(s): Swami Vivekanand
Publisher: Ramkrishna Vivekananda Center of New York INC

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KARMA-YOGA
mind and body and everything for another being. When a man has reached that state he has attained to the perfection of Karma-Yoga. This is the highest result of good works. Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed, although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find that the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation. However much their systems of philosophy and religion may differ, all mankind stand in reverence and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others. Here, it is not at all any question of creed, or doctrine-even men who are very much opposed to all religious ideas, when they see one of these acts of complete self-sacrifice, feel that they must revere t. Have you not seen even a most bigoted Christian, when he reads Edwin Arnold's “Light of Asia," itand in reverence of Buddha, who preached no God, breached nothing but self-sacrifice? The only thing s that the bigot does not know that his own end ind aim in life is exactly the same as that of those rom whom he differs. The worshipper, by keeping onstantly before him the idea of God and a surround