Gratitude to you all for sharing insights and encouraging messages throughout the month of May. We began the month with Easwaran’s message about how our sadhana is intimately tied to our work, and that the purpose of work is the attainment of wisdom. We hope that our in-depth study of the articles in the current Blue Mountain Journal has given you a well of inspiring examples of hopefulness to draw from as you go through your days and weeks at work.
We will close this study with Part 2 of Easwaran’s article “The Secret of Selfless Action” in the Spring 2019 Blue Mountain Journal. In the comments below, we’d love if you’d share a line or two that really stood out to you, or a practical step you’d like to emphasize for yourself and others.
Is there one thing you will be taking away from this month of reflection and practice? Do you have something new you can add to your practice of the eight points?
Work without worry
Karma yoga, the way of selfless action, is praised throughout the Gita. But you can see why a true karma yogi is so rare. The best example I can point to in our own times who embodies this path is Mahatma Gandhi, and he is quite candid about how difficult he found it to work tirelessly for others without getting attached to things turning out his way.
The key to this is given in some of the most famous verses in the Gita:
You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself — without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind. (2:47–48)
This sounds prescriptive, but Sri Krishna is just pointing out something we all know but can’t easily accept: we have really no control over the results of what we do. Even with something that seems completely within our domain, a million things can go wrong; a million events can change the outcome in an instant. We can’t control the universe; we are doing well if we manage to control ourselves.
Do your best; then leave the results to God
Therefore, Sri Krishna says, it is within our power to act wisely, but wise not to be anxious about getting what we want. Gandhi summarized this in a memorable aphorism: “Do your best; then leave the results to God.”
Krishna goes on to explain the value of this kind of detachment:
Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill. Therefore, devote yourself to the disciplines of yoga, for yoga is skill in action. (2:49–50)
In practical terms, he is reminding us that worry, vacillation, and other divisions in consciousness only weaken our resolve and disturb our focus.
When Mahatma Gandhi had to make a decision, he would put his attention on the problem completely, work out the pros and cons, and listen to trusted advice before deciding what to do. Then, once he had made his decision, he didn’t pay the slightest attention to praise or blame or even threats. It’s not that he ignored the outcome; when he decided he had miscalculated, he could reverse himself spectacularly. But he was always in the driver’s seat, not pushed and pulled about by what other people thought.
The result of this is just marvelous: you don’t lose your nerve when things go wrong. The main reason why we get afraid of obstacles and anxious about problems, the Gita says, is that we become entangled in getting the results we want.
The secret of selfless action lies in using right means to achieve a right end, and then not getting anxious over the outcome. When we have learned to drop attachment to getting what we want while working hard and selflessly for a great cause, we can work without anxiety, with confidence and peace of mind. Reverses will come, but they will only drive us deeper into our consciousness.
In the midst of people
Without personal relationships, we cannot learn to work selflessly. That’s a very important point. If you retreat to the forest, you cannot work out your debts with bears and trees. You have to be in the midst of people, rubbing off the angles and corners of your personality in the give and take of every day.
In other words, as far as spiritual living is concerned, the purpose of selfless service is not only to benefit others; it is also to remove the obstacles to love in our own consciousness. 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, never shirking responsibilities, never insisting on our own way.
I have tried to follow this prescription for decades, and as a result I don’t feel any tension or fatigue because I don’t compete with anybody. I try to complete everybody; I try to help everybody around me to complete each other.
In this way none of us is unemployed. All of us are born to be servants of God. We are all born on earth to make life a little better than we found it. And until we understand this and begin to carry out our job, a feeling of frustration will always haunt us.
In whatever capacity — teacher, parent, student, doctor, computer programmer, or retired person — we become fulfilled when we use our talent, our training, our time and energy, for the benefit of all, without questioning what we’ll get in return.