If you are working, become work itself

If you seek ease and comfort for your bodies, waste your time in sensual pleasures and luxury, there is no hope for you. Inactivity, in other words, would bring to you death, and activity and activity alone is life. Look at the stagnant pond and the running stream.

The crystal water of the rustling river is ever fresh, clear, drinkable, and attractive. But, on the other hand, see how disgusting, odorous, filthy, dirty, stinking and stanching is the water of the stagnant pond.
If you wish to succeed, follow the line of action, the constant motion of a river. There is no hope for a man who would waste his wick and oil in preserving it from consumption.
Follow the policy of a river, ever progressing, ever assimilating, ever adapting itself to the environment and ever performing work. Work, ever performing work, is the first principle of success.
Students know that when they are speaking in their literary societies, the moment the idea “I lecture” comes into prominence within their mind, the speech is marred. Forget your little self in work and entirely throw yourself into it; you will succeed.
If you are thinking, become thought itself, you shall succeed. If you are working, become work itself, and thus manifestation of love. A merchant who does not look upon his customer’s interests as his own, cannot succeed. In order to prosper, he must love his customers. He is to observe them with his whole heart.
Be not anxious as to the reward of your labors, mind not the future, have no scruples, think not of success and failure. Work for work’s sake. Work is its own reward. Without dejection at the past and without anxiety as to the future – work, work, work in the living present. This spirit will keep you cheerful under all circumstances.
To a living seed must be attracted by an inviolable law of affinity all that it requires of the air, water, earth, etc, to fructify. So does Nature promise every kind of help to a cheerful active worker. “The way to more light is the faithful use of what we have.”
If in a dark night you are to travel a distance of twenty miles and the light in your hand shows only up to ten feet, think not of the whole way being unilluminated, but walk up the distance that is already lighted and ten more feet will of themselves be illuminated. You will not find a spot in the dark. So a real, earnest worker by a necessary law encounters no obscure ground in his course. Why then damp our cheerful spirits by uneasiness about the event? Falling suddenly into a lake, persons who do not know how to swim can save themselves by simply preserving their equanimity. The specific gravity of man being less than that of water, he will keep floating on the surface.
Imbibe the spirit of sacrifice and reflect unto others all that you receive. A seed in order that it may bud forth into a tree must perish itself. Fruition is thus the final result of complete self-sacrifice.

Swami Rama Tirtha
Excerpted from ‘In Woods of God Realization’
The 139th birth anniversary of Swami Rama Tirtha was observed on October 22