My work feels empty
I spend most of my life working and none of it feels like it matters.
The Mother ran an ashram of thousands and refused to distinguish work from yoga: “work itself is yoga if it is done in a spirit of dedication and surrender,” and, she claimed, ten times faster than meditation. Sri Aurobindo: it is the spirit in which an action is done that makes it yogic, not the action. The Gita's most quoted verse is about exactly this—your right is to the action, never to its fruits—and its definition of yoga is “evenness in success and failure.” Vivekananda: do not fly from the world-machine; stand inside it and learn the secret of work; he works best who works without any motive. Sarada Devi: through work alone one removes the bondage of work, not by avoiding it. Neem Karoli Baba told a housewife that cooking and feeding people was the highest sadhana. Marcus Aurelius, waking unwillingly: I am rising to the work of a human being. None of them say to find different work. All of them say to do this work differently.
It is the spirit and the consciousness in which it is done that makes an action Yogic—it is not the action itself.
I make no difference between work and yoga. Work itself is yoga if it is done in a spirit of dedication and surrender.
I ask people to live in the world in a spirit of detachment. If you break the jack-fruit after rubbing oil on your hands, its sticky juice will not smear them.
One must do some work. Through work alone one can remove the bondage of work, not by avoiding work.
He works best who works without any motive, neither for money, nor for fame, nor for anything else.
Do the duty that is yours, in the place where you are, without envying the duty that is another's. That is how the whole is held together.
ஓடி விளையாடு பாப்பா, — நீ
ஓய்ந்திருக்கலாகாது பாப்பாRun and play, little one — / you must never sit idle, little one.
Ōḍi viḷaiyāḍu pāppā, — nī / ōyndhirukkalāgādhu pāppā
Serving people is better than a ritual bath in the Ganga.
You must not get overdrunk with ecstasy. Much work yet remains for you in the world.
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥
Your right is to the action alone, never to its fruits. Do not let the fruit of action be your motive; and do not be attached to inaction either.
सत्यं वद । धर्मं चर । स्वाध्यायान्मा प्रमदः ।
मातृदेवो भव । पितृदेवो भव । आचार्यदेवो भव । अतिथिदेवो भव ।
Speak the truth. Practise dharma. Do not neglect study. Be one for whom the mother is a god, the father is a god, the teacher is a god, the guest is a god.
ஆக்கம் அதர்வினாய்ச் செல்லும் அசைவிலா
ஊக்க முடையா னுழை.
Prosperity asks the way and comes to the one whose effort does not waver.
上善若水。水善利萬物而不爭。
The highest excellence is like that of water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving, the low place which all men dislike.
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
Offering the work
- Before beginning any task, offer it—silently, in a sentence or without words.
- Do it as well and as exactly as you can, for its own perfection, without demanding a result for yourself or insisting that it be noticed.
- When it is finished, offer the outcome too, whatever it is. Done this way, he says, the work itself becomes the yoga.
What would change tomorrow if you did the same work as an offering?
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