An action performed with pure heart does not attach itself to us. It
leaves no residue of sin or virtue, papa or punya; else, what a heavy
pressure of action would our hearts and minds have to bear!
If the news gets abroad at 2 o'clock today, that
all political prisoners are to be released tomorrow, people gather
together from all sides, and what confusion, what tumult! The problem of morality, the goodness
and badness of action, distracts us.
We feel that action crowds in on us from all sides, we feel that it has caught us by the throat.
Just as the waves of the sea dash with force against the land and make channels into it, the complexity of action
(karma) enters the mind and agitates it. The quality of pleasure and pain, sukha and
dukha, develops; all peace is lost. The action takes place, and is over, but its force remains behind. Action corrupts the mind, and
destroys sleep.
But if, with karma we combine vikarma, then, however much work you do; you will not feel its strain. The mind
becomes still steady and radiant, like the pole-star. When you put vikarma into karma, it becomes akarma; it is
as if you wrote karma on a slate, and then rubbed it out.
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