Thank you all so much for your warm comments and for sharing your gratitude for our shared practice activities throughout April. It was a great way to come together as a community.
This month, we’re shifting to a series of reading studies from the Spring 2019 Blue Mountain Journal “The Purpose of Work”. We always like to share journals through the eSatsang because it’s a great opportunity to deepen our understanding of Easwaran’s teachings together, and gain new insights.
In the current Blue Mountain Journal, Easwaran explains how our sadhana is intimately tied to our work:
“The purpose of work is the attainment of wisdom. Modern civilization hasn’t caught up with this idea, which turns economics upside down.
“I understand the need to support ourselves and our families, to have a sense of personal fulfillment, and even to provide the goods and services that society needs. But there is a higher purpose for work, and that is self-purification: to expand our consciousness to include the whole of life by removing the obstacles to Self-realization.
“And there is no way to do this except in our relationships at work and at home: by being patient, being kind, working in harmony, never failing to respect others, and never seeking personal aggrandizement. Our work then becomes part of our path to the complete integration of character, conduct, and consciousness.
“If we give ourselves wholeheartedly to selfless work without any desire for recognition or praise, power or remuneration, then our actions cannot help bearing good fruit — not only in the world but in our own lives, in our spiritual growth.”
What reflections do you have on Easwaran’s statement that the purpose of work is the attainment of wisdom? Does it inspire any reflections on the tremendous opportunity for growth in our daily lives?
Below is a story from Easwaran to illustrate how these lofty ideals look in an everyday context. As always, please share what stands out to you in the comments section. Feel free to summarize what you noted and/or share implications for your meditation practice. We look forward to hearing from you!
We hope you enjoy this excerpt, which is Part 1 of the article titled “Work: A Chance to Grow” by Easwaran in the Spring 2019 Blue Mountain Journal:
Our capacity to give, to think of others’ needs before our own, to love: as my grandmother saw it, these inner resources are our greatest wealth. Those who derive their security from external things like money or possessions or power are the only really poor people in this world.
Granny rarely taught with words, though. More often she helped me discover these things for myself, as she did during the summer of my freshman year in college. My ambition at the time was to become a writer. Everybody said that if you want to write, you have to have experience, so I got the idea of wandering off to explore our corner of South India and observing life first hand. I got Granny’s permission — actually, the idea was hers, but she made me think it was mine — and set out.
A bright idea
Soon I came across a rather small, hard-working village. Exploring on foot was the kind of thing an Englishman or American might do, but for a fresh-faced Indian boy it was unusual: when I showed up suddenly in this isolated village, people must have thought I had dropped from Mars. Naturally they asked all sorts of questions, and when they found out I was a writer they were really impressed. No one among them had ever had a chance to learn to read or write.
Then someone got a bright idea: wouldn’t I like to teach them? I felt lost. I had no teacher’s training and not the faintest notion of how to begin. I had come out to observe life, and I was already in over my head.
But they had a strong desire to learn. They asked me to stay and be their teacher, not only of the children but of the adults too. What would I charge? They had never had a teacher in the village before, they explained, and they had no money with which to pay. But they could provide me with food, each family taking turns, and I could stay with one of the better-off households as if I were their own son.
All this moved me deeply. I was only a freshman, after all; most of these villagers were old enough to be my parents. And I had only three months of vacation. How much can you teach in three months to people who had scarcely had a day’s schooling in their lives, who knew nothing but crops and soils?
“What do you want to learn?” I asked.
“We’d like to know arithmetic,” they said, “for buying and selling. We’d like to learn how to read, so we could read the stories in the scriptures. And we’d like to know how to write, so we could write letters to our relatives and friends.”
“That’s a lot,” I said. They smiled. “We have all summer. Of course, we can’t come
during the day; we have to work in the fields. But we can come at night.”
That kind of desire really impressed me. “Do you have a building where we could meet?”
“No,” someone said. “But we can make one.” In my mind the three months began to shrink into two.
“How long would it take?” I asked. They grinned enthusiastically. “We can do it tonight.” I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Sure,” they said. “It’s a full moon. We’ll start after dinner. You have your meal and then come and select the site; we’ll do the rest.”
That was my first glimpse of the real strength of India’s villagers. I selected a pleasant site on a gentle hill, from which you could see the river running close by. And after dinner, probably about eight o’clock in the evening, a man turned up from every hut in the village. These were men who had been up before dawn, worked hard in the hot fields with just a couple of hours rest when the sun was at its zenith.
I was so profoundly impressed that I insisted on working alongside them, though I probably only slowed them down; they had to teach me everything. But by the time the sun came up the next morning, we had a one-room school — mud walls, thatched roof, sand from the riverbank for a floor, even a slate to write on and a piece of railing for a bell. As far as we were concerned, it was perfect.
The joy of the work itself
I taught throughout that summer, and though attendance was a little irregular, by and large someone from every household was there faithfully every evening at eight when class began.
None of us had a watch, so we used to end the lesson when we heard the whistle and clatter of the Blue Mountain Express chugging its way up the hills. Sometimes I would get so absorbed that when I heard a train and stopped, they would laugh and say, “The Blue Mountain Express went by an hour ago. That’s the Malabar Express; it must be eleven o’clock.” By the end of the summer we didn’t go home till we heard the Cochin Express go by at midnight.
They would bring me fruits and vegetables, sandals they made with their own hands, pieces of cloth that they wove right in their homes. I spent all my time with them; we worked hard in school, shared all our meals, and went swimming and climbing together on our days off. By the end of the summer, they had learned the basics of reading, writing, and reckoning, which must have felt like the greatest achievement of their lives. Yet I felt I had learned much more. From those simple villagers, who had just the bare minimum of material possessions, I had learned that the reward of work is not financial but the joy of the work itself, and the satisfaction of being deeply connected with the lives of those around you.
Giving our very best
Real work contributes to life rather than taking from it. It gives us the chance to discover and hone our skills, to see how we fit into life, and to lose our sense of isolation by sharing a common goal with our fellow human beings.
For those who are on the spiritual path, it is not enough if we make progress in meditation. We have also to make sure that we share the fruits of our efforts with everyone around us, and the very best way to do this is through our personal example.
Here the Bhagavad Gita offers some very practical advice: whoever we are, we can improve our contribution to the world simply by giving complete attention to the job at hand in a spirit of detachment. We don’t have to compare our lives or work with others’. All that is expected of us is that we give our very best to whatever responsibilities come our way. As our capacity to contribute increases, greater responsibilities will come to us. That is the way spiritual growth has always taken place down the centuries.
Gandhi’s example
I like to illustrate this from the life of Mahatma Gandhi. We are so used to thinking of Gandhi on a world stage that it is easy to forget how he got there. Even when he goes to South Africa at the age of twenty-four, an unknown failure, what we remember is that dramatic incident when he is thrown off the train because of the color of his skin. It took years after that for Gandhi to find his direction. Yet, looking back, we can see that he began to remake himself quite unconsciously, simply by giving full attention to the responsibilities at hand.
His tasks were mundane, far below his training as a barrister. He learned from them to focus his attention and keep the welfare of the whole in mind instead of personal gain. Gradually, that quiet example attracted people to him. People of all races and religions learned that they could trust him. By the time the separatist challenge to Indian immigrants came, a full thirteen years later, both Gandhi and his community were ready for the great experiment of nonviolent resistance.
Even in my own small example, this is the pattern that emerged. When I began to meditate, I don’t think it ever occurred to me to change jobs or to try to make a “spiritual” contribution with my writing. I simply gave more and more attention to my teaching — to my colleagues and especially to my students. I was meditating every day on the words of the Bhagavad Gita, where Sri Krishna counsels: “Do your best; then leave the results to me.”