Our duty to others means helping others; doing good to the world. Why should we do good to the world? Apparently to help the world, but really to help ourselves. We should always try to help the world, that should be the highest motive in us; but if we consider it well, we find that the world does not require our help at all. This world was not made that you or I should come and help it. I once read a sermon in which it was said, "All this beautiful world is very good, because it gives us time and opportunity to help others." Apparently, this is a very beautiful sentiment, but is it not blasphemy to say that the world needs our help? We cannot deny that there is much misery in it; to go out and help others is, therefore, the best thing we can do, although in the long run, we shall find that helping others is only helping ourselves…This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures a world for himself. If a blind man begins to think of the world, it is either as soft or hard, or as cold or hot. We are a mass of happiness or misery; we have seen that hundreds of times in our lives. As a rule, the young are optimistic and the old pessimistic. The young have life before them; the old complain their day is gone; hundreds of desires, which they cannot fulfill struggle in their hearts. Both are foolish nevertheless. Life is good or evil according to the state of mind in which we look at it, it is neither by itself. Fire, by itself, is neither good nor evil. When it keeps us warm we say, "How beautiful is fire!" When it burns our fingers, we blame it. Still, in itself it is neither good nor bad. Accordingly as we use it, it produces in us the feeling of good or bad; so also is this world. It is perfect. By perfection it means that it is perfectly fitted to meet its ends. We may all be perfectly sure that it will go on beautifully well without us, and we need not bother our heads wishing to help it.

- Swami Vivekananda

We Help Ourselves, not the World

The mind in us determines the quality and beauty, the dynamism and glory, the nature and arrangements of the world around us. An extension of our mind in its constant perceptions and interpretations, unveils for us our private world of sorrows and joys, likes and dislikes, successes and failures. By conquering the mind we conquer our world. The outer circumstances and the available objects and beings around us can no longer make us dance to their will and whim. We shall come to call the tune, and the world around us shall learn to obey, as we will it act. In fact, without this subjective conquest of one's own mind, no conquest anywhere is a real conquest. Even if you have won the whole world, of what avail is it to you, if you have not won over the soul (mind) in yourself? No success is a success, no joy a real joy, no beauty a true beauty unless the individual has conquered his own mind.

- Swami Chinmayananda
The Altar of Contemplation

Superstition is a great enemy of man, but bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is the face turned toward the sky in prayer? Why are there so many images in the Catholic Church? Why are there so many images in the minds of Protestants when they pray? My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association, the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa. This is why the Hindu uses an external symbol when he worships. He will tell you, it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being to whom he prays. He knows as well as you do that the image is not God, is not omnipresent. After all, how much does omnipresence mean to almost the whole world? It stands merely as a word, a symbol. Has God a superficial area? If not, when we repeat that word "omnipresent", we think of the extended sky or of space, that is all. As we find that somehow or other, by the laws of our mental constitution, we have to associate our ideas of infinity with the image of the blue sky, or of the sea, so we naturally connect our idea of holiness with the image of a church, a mosque, or a cross. The Hindus have associated the idea of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with different images and forms. But with this difference that while some people devote their whole lives to their idol of a church and never rise higher, because with them religion means an intellectual assent to certain doctrines and doing good to their fellows, the whole religion of the Hindu is centred in realisation. Man is to become divine by realising the divine. Idols or temples or churches or books are only the supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood: but on and on he must progress.

- Swami Vivekananda World Parliament of Religions, Chicago Address

Naturally the work becomes excellent. Excellent work shall produce excellent results. We cheat ourselves from our successes by our unintelligent dissipation of the mind, in our over-anxiety for the fruits thereof. Krishna is giving a tip to Arjuna. Here is a wonderful field for you to achieve and in achieving do your duty, fight out the battle! Let every arrow go and hit the point that you want to hit. Don’t worry about the future. Don’t evaluate that their army is larger than our army. Will we win? Don’t dissipate, I mean distract your mind. Keep your mind calm and serene. Your anxiety must be to excellence…it is the goal. Learn to work thus, with your mind where your hands are working. We don’t do it. We work with our hands and our mind is wandering all over. So, the hand that is working is a mindless hand. Mindless hand cannot afford to expect any great results. Think! Keep your mind where your hands are functioning. Be here now and act. We are never here. We are everywhere but not here. Think! Either we are wandering in the past, “I should not have done it…I don’t know why I did it!” or you are in the future, “Will I get the result…”. You are never here and now. Think! Learn to be here and now. Bring all your mind and your attention and awareness there where the hand is doing a job. The performance will become excellent. Excellent performance will always give you excellent results.

- Swami Chinmayananda

Mindfulness