ON
KARMA*
Action be Man’s
God
Whom shall men worship ? The high Gods ? But they
Suffer fate’s masteries,
enjoy and rue.
Whom shall men worship ?
Fate’s stern godhead ? Nay,
Fate is no godhead. Many
fruits or few
Their actions bring to men, — that settled price
She but deals out, a steward dumb, precise.
Let action be man’s God, o’er whom even Fate
Can rule not, nor his puissance abrogate.
The Might of
Works
Bow ye to Karma who with
puissant hand
Like a vast potter all the
universe planned,
Shut the Creator in and bade
him work
In the dim-glinting womb and
luminous murk;
By whom impelled high Vishnu
hurled to earth
Travels his tenfold depths
and whorls of birth;
Who leading mighty Rudra by
the hand
Compels to wander strange
from land to land, —
A vagrant begging with a
skull for bowl
And suppliant palms, who is
yet the world’s high Soul.
Lo, through the skies for
ever this great Sun
Wheels circling round and
round by Karma spun.
*There is a distinction, not always strictly
observed, between Fate and Karma. Karma is the principle of Action in
the universe with its stream of cause and infallible effect, and for man
the sum of his past actions whose results reveal themselves not at once,
but in the dispensation of Time, partly in this life, mostly in lives
to come. Fate seems a more mysterious power imposing itself on men,
despite all their will and endeavour, from outside them and above—
daivam, a power from the Gods.
Page– 199
Karma
It is not beauty’s charm nor lineage high,
It is not virtue, wisdom, industry,
Service, nor careful arduous toil that can
Bring forth the fruits of his desire to man;
Old merit mind’s strong asceticism had stored
Returns to him with blessing or a sword,
His own past deeds that flower soon or late
Each in its season on the tree of Fate.
Protection from behind the Veil
Safe is the man good deeds forgotten claim,
In pathless deserts or in dangerous war
Or by armed foes enringed; sea and fierce
flame
May threaten, death’s door waiting swing
ajar;
Slumbering
or careless though his foemen find,
Yea,
though they seize him, though they smite or bind,
On
ocean wild or on the cliff’s edge sheer
His
deeds walk by his side and guard from fear;
Through death
and birth they bore him and are here.
The Strength of Simple Goodness
Toiler
ascetic, who with passionate breath
Swellest huge holinesses, — vain thy faith!
Good
act adore, the simple goddess plain,
Who
gives the fruit thou seekest with such pain.
Her
touch can turn the lewd man into a saint,
Inimitably
her quiet magic lent
Change
fools to sages and hidden mysteries show
Beyond
eye’s reach or brain’s attempt to know,
Fierce
enemies become friends and poisons ill
Transform
in a moment to nectar at her will.
Page– 200
Foresight and Violence
Good be the act or faulty, its result
The wise man painfully forecasting first
Then does; who in mere heedless force exult,
Passionate and violent, taste a fruit
accursed.
The Fury keeps till death her
baleful course
And blights their life,
tormenting with remorse.
Misuse of Life
This
noble earth, this place for glorious deeds
The
ill-starred man who reaching nowise heeds,
Nor
turns his soul to energy austere,
With
little things content or idlesse drear, —
He
is like one who gets an emerald pot
To
bake him oil-cakes on a fire made hot
With
scented woods, or who with golden share
For
sorry birthwort ploughs a fertile fair
Sweet
soil, or cuts rich camphor piece by piece
To
make a hedge for fennel. Not for this
In
the high human form he walks great earth
After
much labour getting goodliest birth.
Fixed Fate
Dive if thou wilt into the huge deep sea,
The inaccessible far mountains climb,
Vanquish thy foes in battle fierily,
All arts and every science, prose and rhyme,
Tillage and trade in one mind bring to dwell, —
Yea, rise to highest effort, ways invent
And like a bird the skies immeasurable
Voyage; all this thou mayst,
but not compel
What was not to be, nor what was prevent.
Page– 201
Flowers from a Hidden Root
With store of noble deeds who here arrives,
Finds on this earth his well-earned Paradise.
The lonely forest grows his
kingly town
Of splendour, every man has friendly eyes
Seeing him, or the wide
earth for his crown
Is mined with gems and with rich plenty thrives.
This high fate is his meed of former lives.
Page– 202
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