Eight Lectures on Karma Yoga

Description

The word Karma is derived from the Sanskrit “Kri,” to do; 

everything that is done is Karma. Technically, this word 

also means the effects of actions. In connection with 

metaphysics it sometimes means the effects of which our past 

actions were the causes. But in Karma Yoga we have simply 

to do with the word “Karma” as meaning work. The goal of 

all mankind is knowledge; that is the one ideal placed before 

us by the Eastern philosophy. Pleasure is not the goal of man, 

but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is 

the mistake of mankind to suppose that pleasure is the goal; 

the cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men 

foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal. After a time man finds 

that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is 

going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, that 

he learns as much from evil as from good. As pleasure and pain 

pass before his soul they leave upon it different pictures, and 

the result of these combined impressions is what is called man’s 

“character.” If you study the character of any man, what is it 

really but the tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind?