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WorkSwami Vivekananda

Karma-Yoga

Free classes given in rented New York rooms, arguing that whoever helps the world is the one being helped.

by Swami Vivekananda96 passages held

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Original title
Karma Yoga
First published
(aged 33)
Original language
English

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Overview

Within five years of its publication in New York in February 1896, this small book of class talks had reached a fifth American edition, under the title Vedânta Philosophy: Eight Lectures on Karma Yoga. Swami Vivekananda gave the talks in the winter of 1895–96 as free classes in rented rooms on West 39th Street in Manhattan, and they survive because the Vedanta Society of New York had hired Josiah Goodwin, a court stenographer who answered a newspaper advertisement, to take them down. Karma means both work and the mark that work leaves on the person who does it, and the book's claim is that ordinary work, done without an eye on its rewards, is by itself a complete road to freedom. Vivekananda took aim at the moral common sense of his listeners. He recalls a sermon he once read which praised the world for giving us the chance to help others, and he calls that thought close to blasphemy: the world does not need our help, and whoever helps is the one helped. Duty, in his account, depends on where a person stands. He retells the story from the Mahabharata of a proud young monk sent to learn from a butcher in the market, who turns out to understand the soul better than the monk does. Work done for its fruits binds the worker; work given away, with nothing wanted back, frees him — which is how Vivekananda reads the Bhagavad Gita's teaching on action. By 1921 the book was in German, in Franz Hartmann's translation, issued by a Theosophical publishing house in Leipzig.

Key concepts

What does karma mean in this book?

Karma means work, any action at all, and also the effect that work leaves on the person who does it. Vivekananda says that everything we are, our weeping and laughing, our praise and blame, has been brought out by blows, and the sum of those blows is called karma. So we are responsible for what we are: whatever we want to become, our own work can make us.

What is a samskara?

A samskara is a tendency, the trace an action or thought leaves behind. Vivekananda pictures the mind as a lake: every wave that rises and subsides does not vanish entirely but leaves a mark and a possibility of rising again. Habits and character are made of these marks, which is why the way a person works matters as much as what the work achieves.

What does non-attachment mean, if it is not doing nothing?

It means working fully while not clinging to the work or its results. Vivekananda insists that intense activity is necessary and that we cannot live a minute without work. What is given up is the claim: the thought that the work is mine, that its fruits are owed to me, that the world must thank me. Work done that way stops binding the worker and starts freeing him.

Is there any duty that holds for everyone?

Only one, in Vivekananda's account. Duty in general cannot be defined objectively, because it differs between nations and stations in life, and we should see other people's duties through their eyes. But from the inside, any act that takes us godward is good and any that takes us downward is bad, and one rule is universal: do not injure any being.

What does karma yoga have to do with the Gita?

Vivekananda calls non-attachment the one central idea of the Bhagavad Gita: work incessantly, but be not attached to the work. He quotes Krishna's line that we have a right to work but not to its fruits. Good deeds and bad deeds both bind, he argues, since each brings its own effect back to the doer; the Gita's way out is to work without attaching oneself, so that the work leaves no hold.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Work Like a Master, Not a Slave

Almost everyone works hard, and almost everyone is bound by the work. Whether the same labour can free a person instead depends on a single change inside the worker.

Vivekananda starts from what work does to the worker: every act leaves a mark, as every wave leaves a trace on a lake, and the sum of the marks is character. Work done for fame, money or heaven binds, while work restrained from selfish motive builds an enormous will. The ideal is a person who works intensely in the middle of a crowded street with a mind as calm as in a cave. Only the Buddha, he says, carried work without any motive into perfect practice.

  • non-attachment
  • karma yoga
  • work
  • attachment
  • desire
  • freedom
  • liberation
  • self-control
  • renunciation
  • karma
  • action
  • character
  • habit
  • mind
  • motivation

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Each Great in His Own Place

Duty cannot be defined once for all people, and yet a person still has to know theirs. The question is how a teaching can be relative to circumstance without becoming an excuse.

There is no objective duty, Vivekananda argues; every nation and every station in life has its own, and any act that takes a person godward is good. He tells this through stories: a monk who flees a princess's garland and a bird family that feeds a guest with its own bodies, both great in their places, and a butcher who teaches a proud young monk that no duty is ugly. Even non-resistance depends on power: Arjuna's refusal to fight was weakness dressed up as love.

  • duty
  • ethics
  • morality
  • good and evil
  • nonviolence
  • narrative
  • religion
  • equality

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Whoever Helps Is the One Helped

Doing good is usually pictured as improving the world. If the world cannot be improved, the reason left for helping is a harder one, and it changes how the helper ought to feel.

Vivekananda tells his New York listeners that the world does not need their help: it is a dog's curly tail that springs back however long people straighten it, and raising a wave of happiness in one place digs a hollow somewhere else. People must help all the same, because helping trains the helper. The giver should thank the beggar, not wait for thanks. A golden mongoose, in the story he retells, finds a king's grand sacrifice worth less than a starving family's last flour given to a guest.

  • altruism
  • charity
  • selflessness
  • unselfishness
  • suffering
  • equanimity
  • moral psychology

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Within this work

passages held
96
distinct concepts
173
by passages held, corpus-wide
#508

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “karma yoga” and “non-attachment”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 23 pairings. 78 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
karma yoganon-attachment9
non-attachmentwork7
dutyrenunciation4
dutywork4
freedomkarma yoga4
freedomnon-attachment4
actionkarma yoga3
actionnon-attachment3
freedomwork3
non-attachmentrenunciation3
dutyfreedom2
dutynon-attachment2
dutyselflessness2
freedomrenunciation2
karma yogarenunciation2
karma yogaselflessness2
karma yogawork2
non-attachmentselflessness2
actionfreedom1
actionselflessness1
actionwork1
dutykarma yoga1
renunciationselflessness1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1896 Bhakti-Yoga (Bhakti Yoga)

    The devotional counterpart to Karma Yoga, worked out in the same New York winter of classes.

     EN
  2. 1896 Karma-Yoga (Karma Yoga) you are here EN
  3. 1896 Raja Yoga

    Among Vivekananda's four yoga books, this is the one built on a classical text: class lectures on the discipline of the mind, followed by his own translation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

     EN
  4. 1899 Jnana-Yoga (Jnana Yoga)

    Two lecture courses gathered under one title: the London talks of 1896 on maya and practical Vedanta, and seven New York lectures on Sankhya and Vedanta printed only after his death.

     EN
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