Secret of Work

Secret of Work

Working for the sake of work according to Bagavath Gita, the ancient book of wisdom gifted by India to this entire world, is a wonderful concept. As an youngster I never understood this, how can u work without expecting a pay check, how can u work without expecting some recognition for the good work you have done, how can you work without expecting a career growth or more precisely promotion, pay rise etc. Well that’s the problem, most of the time, we cannot work without expecting some thing in return. However the concept of “Work for the sake of work and Love for the sake of Love - do not trade either in work or in love” is said in a broader sense. However I believe it can be applied in the smallest of the situations in our lives. Having this attitude of not looking at the fruits of the work, while doing the work can be psychologically helpful too. When we say fruits of the work we are talking about the benefits which we expect, not the outcome of the project itself. When a doctor is doing a surgery for a patient, all he has to think about is how to save the patient from his illness and make the operation a success. That’s the outcome of the work. Fruits can be thought of something like the recognition, the money or the fame the doctor is going to get if he makes the surgery a success. Now psychologically speaking if the doctor keeps his mind pure such that he is not bothered about the fruits but just making the patient well, then he can be much more focused on his work and the chances of the surgery turning out to be a success is far more, than a situation in which the doctor is thinking about his fruits when doing the surgery. The important thing to be noted here is by keeping one’s mind away from the fruits a person can accomplish much more and be more successful. For the doctor saving a patient’s life itself is the biggest victory and fame, he can ever have. He doesn’t even have to wait for simple thank you recognition from the patient later. If he gets a recognition, fame and money for the work he is doing, it is well and good but the purpose of the work should be to save the patient’s life and not to earn more money or fame. This is true for any profession, an Engineer’s purpose is to invent, design and manufacture great products to improve the society as a whole, a school teacher can do the same thing by inculcating the greatest virtues to the children he teaches no matter what his paycheck is, a hourly worker in McDonald or Wal-mart can do the same thing by serving the customers much more delightfully. Each one of us no matter whether we are the president of a country or a humble hourly worker, we have responsible duties toward the society we live in. After all at the end of the day if we don’t have a great society to live in, we can not have a peaceful satisfying life no matter how much money we make.

At this point it is very important that we don’t misunderstand that a person should not be looking for money and live a poor life. No body wants to be poor. Realizing material wealth is one of the important step towards realizing spiritual consciousness. In the modern society we are living in, we can not get anything without money. We cannot afford to be poor. A poor person puts him and his family at big risk. He is a problem for his relatives and the society. Nobody is going to work without expecting a paycheck. However when we are actually doing the work, when we are going to the work place or doing our projects we don’t necessarily have to think about the so called fruits and we can just focus on doing our projects to our best no matter whether we get a pay hike or recognition or anything of that sort but just work for the success of the project in hand. That is the path for accomplishing more and leading a more satisfied living. It’s the same thought which we have heard from the very common story of three building workers. When asked what they are doing, one says I am arranging bricks to build a wall, the other says I am making $10 per hour and the third says he is building the greatest Cathedral of the world. Same work but different mind sets. I am sure the third worker eventually became an architect or something to lead a happier and wealthier life.

(Learning from Bagavath Gita, Complete works of Swami Vivekananda, own personal experiences)