Destiny and Karma
Bhakta: What is the use of confidence and hope when one is not destined? Hope will only cause greater disappointment.
Swami: Has destiny a shape and a personality so that you can recognize it even before it shows itself? You should not hang on its favor, talking all the time of destiny, destiny… How can destiny fructify by itself without your will and wish in the form of action? Whatever be the destiny, it is essential to continue act. Karma [action] has to be done, even to attain one’s destiny.
Bhakta: If one is destined, everything will fall in into place, isn’t it?
Swami: That is the big mistake. If you sit quiet with the fruit in your hand, hoping that its juice will reach the mouth, how can you drink it? It is sheer stupidity to complain that destiny denied you the juice, without squeezing the fruit and swallowing the juice. Destiny gave the fruit into your hand; karma alone can make you enjoy it. Karma is the duty; destiny the result. Result cannot emerge without action.
Bhakta: So, Swami, we should not just sit with folded hands and place all on destiny, isn’t it?
Swami: Listen. You should never under-estimate your powers; engage yourselves in action commensurate with that power, and then talk of destiny to your hearts content. It is wrong to desist from the appropriate karma, placing reliance on destiny. If you do so, even destiny will slip out of your hands. Every one must engage in karma.
Bhakta: Yes, yes. Swami. In the Gita [the Celestial song] also Krishna said to Arjuna, “Even I do karma; the Universe cannot go on if I desist from karma. And so, if you withdraw from it, how can you realize the result?” I believe now that karma is purusha-lakshana, the hall-mark of men.
Swami: And of women too. It is prakriti-lakshana [the hall-mark of women]. All beings, men or women, trees or animals, worms, insects, all have to do karma. This law binds everything in the universe; there is no escaping it. Karma is the characteristic of prakriti [the female aspect]. Do not refer to it as purusha-lakshna. Paramatma [God] is the one and only Purusha. Prakriti is all Shakti, feminine. You are all not purushas, remember.
Bhakta: But Swami, there is that distinction in nature, then how is it correct to say that all are feminine?
Swami: You may imagine it to be so, guided by your natural reason, but the reality is not that. All this is just secular experience, temporal, and temporary. That is not the basic truth, but simply play-acting; a mere impersonation. In some plays, men act the role of women while women enact the role of men. Are they, therefore, men? In the drama, or prakriti, all the actors are feminine, though there may be roles for men too. The genuine Purusha is only one, that is Shiva, the Atma. Even though the Atma is immanent in every one, all cannot be deemed masculine. The prakriti theatre is like a girls’ school where girls play up all the roles of the play. Shakti, that is feminine, plays all these parts. But do not take this drama to be real, my dear fellow.
Source: Sandeha Nivarini
