Sri Swami Vishwananda's Shree Peetha Nilaya Darshan Talk 26 February 2011 (excerpt)
A few days ago somebody asked me “Swamiji, you always say pray to God, always, but I am working on the outside (in the world). How will I attain the Divine?” Many of you ask this question. The answer is simple. Of course, one’s duty is very important; one can’t not do one’s duty. In the Gita it [is] said that the dharma one has to do. No matter what, dharma is very important, but how one has to do it, that is the most important.
There is one form of doing one’s duty, [which] is nishkama karma, which means to do ones duty without expecting anything, to do ones duty in rendering service to others without even thinking of the result. That’s what the Gita said: If one does [and] one is attached to the fruit of the action, one will suffer. It’s true, because when we do certain things there is expectation and when that expectation is not met, what happens? You get sad. You feel upset. Where does this come from? You created it. You make yourself sad.
So when one does ones duty without even expecting something, the mind is already surrendering to the Divine. When the mind has the satvik (without impurities) quality, the mind doesn’t have any power into it. This is where whatever one does is a complete surrender to the Divine, whereas when one gets a little bit mixture of the rajasic (passionate; active; restless) quality into the satvik quality, then one will, always, say “I will do good to the world.” Into that state we’ll see that the I is very big. Whenever the mind pictures the I, it doesn’t mean the I of the Self; it means, always, the I of the ego, [which says] "I can do this; I can do that." As long as you have not Realised your Self, the I of the ego is, always, big. That’s why it is said in the scriptures: Remove this I. Put Him, you know, the Lord, because as long as one has not Realised anything, one has to remind oneself continuously that All, it is Him.
