Work to live – avoid work that eats you alive

Work is essential for survival, as the Bhagavad-gita (03.08)acknowledges. Yet the same work that is vital can become vitality-sapping if done excessively. When work becomes the sole definer of our self-identity and self-worth, it degenerates to an indulgence, even an addictive indulgence. Just as alcohol can become an obsession that devours everything else in an alcoholic’s life, so too can work become an obsession that devours everything else in a workaholic’s life. Whereas alcoholism’s harms – physical deterioration, financial drain and behavioral lapses – are usually hard to hide, workaholism’s harms are often hard to notice. It inebriates us with a heady sense of success while silently sidelining things that make life worth living. Work driven by illusory conceptions is work in the mode of ignorance (18.25). Discerning workaholism is difficult also because our profession may sometimes genuinely demand long work-hours. But such occupational necessity can become a self-created mania, wherein we work driven by an illusory, uni-dimensional definition of success: “I am my work; the more I work, the bigger I become.” Sadly, many “big” people end up with battered bodies, muddled minds, fragmented families and starved spirits – workaholism has eaten them alive. Gita wisdom explains that we are at our core spiritual beings, parts of God, Krishna. And we need spiritual fulfillment, which becomes accessible when we connect ourselves devotionally with him through yogic practices such as meditation and scriptural study. Bhakti spirituality is inclusive – it can infuse a mood of devotion into all aspects of our life, including our work (18.46). When we cultivate devotion through regular spiritual practices, we become purified and gain holistic vision. Thus, we can discern and choose work to live – not just live in this mortal world, but also live devotionally with the Lord of our heart in both the here and the hereafter.

Activity, productivity and connectivity are no substitute for spirituality

We are all, by nature, active – we want the joy of doing worthwhile things. But not all activity is equally worthwhile. So we strive for not just activity but also productivity. From the industrial age onwards, we have strived to maximize productivity by making various devices. Such devices may help us do things faster and better or may even do mechanical work for us. As we now move deeper into the Internet age, connectivity has become a prime definer of progress. A place’s value is significantly shaped by its connectivity. Activity, productivity and connectivity are all important. Yet infatuation with them can blind us to the necessity of life’s spiritual side. The Bhagavad-gita (13.09) characterizes knowledge in terms of the perspicacity to perceive the universal and unavoidable problems of old age, disease, death and rebirth. We can’t solve these problems by material progress, no matter how dazzling; we need to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level and realize our indestructible essence. Moreover, spiritual growth alone can provide us deep inner fulfillment. If we neglect such growth for pursuing worldly progress, we make ourselves prone to stress, depression and loneliness – maladies that afflict today’s spiritually-alienated mainstream society. The same Gita section (13.08-12) that lists the characteristics of knowledge concludes the list by proclaiming (13.12) the primacy of spiritual knowledge and the necessity of seeking ultimate truths. While striving for spiritual growth, we don’t need to neglect or reject activity, productivity and connectivity – we just need to prevent them from monopolizing our conceptions of progress and success. By yogic practices such as scriptural study and meditation, our consciousness expands beyond matter and connects with our spiritual core and the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna. Thus, we find inner fulfillment and attain an elevated spiritual consciousness that initially tolerates and eventually transcends worldly miseries. 

Be mentally fit, not mentally fat

When fat accumulates in our body, we feel burdened because of having to lug around all that extra weight. We are often concerned about physical fat, but we hardly ever notice its mental equivalent – the baggage of unnecessary thoughts that we lug around in our mind. Most mental fat arises from our contemplation on titillating but agitating temptations. Such contemplation triggers myriad desires and anxieties within us. Consequently, we often have to battle through many stray thoughts just to get to the task at hand, leave alone doing it. This struggle and the resulting tiredness often make us irritable. When others make a small mistake, we explode disproportionately giving vent to the irritation that has been building inside us. Over time, being burdened by the thoughts running wild internally and the things going wrong externally, we become pessimistic, cynical and depressed. Just as we counter physical fat by diet regulation and exercise, we can counter mental fat by regulating our mental diet and by doing the exercises of meditation and scriptural study. Regulating our mental diet means minimizing our consumption of mental fat that is dangled before us by external perceptions or inner impressions. Scriptural study enables us to understand our outer and inner worlds better, thereby discerning what comprises healthy mental diet and what comprises mental fat. And meditation involves focusing on the supreme spiritual reality, the all-attractive supreme person Krishna. Such contemplation gives us the inner satisfaction and strength to resist the urge for munching on mental fat. Pointing to the shedding of mental baggage, the Bhagavad-gita (02.41) recommends one-pointed focus as foundational for success, cautioning that distractedness is the recipe for failure. The more we shed mental fat and become mentally fit, the more we can face obstacles without feeling disproportionately burdened, and can respond with greater dexterity and maturity. -

Don’t superimpose the negativity of proselytizing on sharing

Some people, alarmed by reports of overzealous missionaries, feel that proselytizing should be banned. It’s sadly true that some proselytizers do convert by hook or crook – they financially allure, emotionally manipulate, ideologically indoctrinate, politically pressurize and even physically threaten. But such ulterior motives don’t define all religious communication – some of it may well be inspired by the simple

human desire to share. Suppose a patient after a long fruitless search for treatment finally finds a cure. They will naturally want to share the cure with other patients. Similarly, some people search a long time for meaning and purpose. When they finally find a wisdom-tradition that provides coherent answers and adds value to their lives, they naturally want to share that tradition with others. Moreover, sharing is innate to us humans. Various important schools of thought, including science, have become influential because they have been shared. If every school of thought has a right to share, why should religious schools of thought be deprived of that right? If they are to be deprived because they talk about God, then atheists should also be deprived – they too talk about God by arguing that he doesn’t exist. And some atheists are just as aggressive proselytizers for atheism as are some religious zealots. The root problem with proselytization, religious or anti-religious, is not the content, but the method: a holier-than-thou attitude and an ends-justify-means modus operandi. Religious messages can be shared respectfully, as is demonstrated in the Bhagavad-gita. Krishna asks Arjuna (18.63) to deliberate on his message and then to do as he desires. Here is a vision of God who respects human intelligence and independence; he doesn’t issue diktats, but invites deliberation. If we all could adopt this mood while sharing our thoughts, the world would see far lesser strife and much greater wisdom. 

To find satisfaction, replace expectation with appreciation

Our satisfaction is often inversely proportional to our expectation. Suppose we go for a feast expecting a particular delicacy. If it is not included in the menu, we will feel dissatisfied. And that dissatisfaction will obstruct us in relishing the delicacies that are there in our plate. To avoid such dissatisfaction, we need to replace the expectation-paradigm with the appreciation-paradigm. Appreciation enables us to focus on what we have, recognize its value and feel grateful, thereby fostering satisfaction. For example, if we contemplate that thousands of people are forced by poverty to sleep daily with half-empty stomachs, our dissatisfaction with the food we have will disappear. In general, by remembering that many people don’t have what we have, we can change our paradigm from expectation-centered to appreciation-centered. Such paradigm-shifting thought-exercises can enable us to cultivate satisfaction, which, the Bhagavad-gita (17.16) states, is an austerity of the mind. That satisfaction is an austerity means that it is a choice we need to conscientiously make, just as we may conscientiously choose the austerity of a low-fat diet for losing weight. The austerity of shifting our paradigm from expectation to appreciation becomes easier when we assimilate the Gita’s worldview. This worldview explains that we are at our core spiritual beings; we are parts of the all-attractive, all-loving supreme, Krishna; and we can find lasting fulfillment only in spiritual love for him. Applying this worldview, when we practice bhakti-yoga and use whatever gifts Krishna has given us in his service, we start savoring the sweetness of love for him. Gradually, we appreciate that when such a devotional disposition enriches us, we can always access inner happiness, irrespective of what we have or don’t have materially. When we focus on appreciation of our spiritual gifts instead of expectation of better material things, we find lasting satisfaction..

Go beyond excusing yourself and accusing yourself to realizing your self

When something we are doing goes wrong, our mind often pushes us towards two broad thought-patterns: excusing ourselves and accusing ourselves.

In the first, we become defensive, trying to prove that something out there is to be blamed. In the second, we whip ourselves for being lazy, tactless, disorganized and so on – whatever negative labels our critics have affixed on us.

However, neither excusing ourselves nor accusing ourselves is helpful in dealing with the problem. Apart from doing necessary damage minimization, we need to see the problem as an opportunity to learn more about ourselves. The Bhagavad-gita (18.60) indicates that we all need to work according to our psychophysical nature. Based on our nature, we have certain strengths and certain limitations. Rather than blaming ourselves for what we don’t have, we can focus on realizing ourselves, that is, understanding who we are, what we have, what makes us tick and what makes us freeze. Without such basic self-understanding, we will keep bungling into incompatible situations and find our life degenerating into a perpetual firefighting nightmare.

To gain self-understanding, we need to look at ourselves calmly. But we can’t be calm as long as we fear that the next problem will destroy our self-identity and self-worth. Gita wisdom boosts our inner security with its basic teachings: We are essentially spiritual and indestructible; we are precious parts of God; he has blessed us all with gifts by which we can do our parts during our life-journey; we just need to discover and develop those gifts in a devotional mood.

Being thus reassured by Gita wisdom, we can focus on our strengths, put our best foot forward and make our contributions, thereby realizing ourselves – both in terms of actualizing our potentials in this world and experiencing our eternal identity beyond this world.

Devotion defangs and domesticates our desires

Desires are often thought of as enemies for seekers because they entangle us in material things. The Bhagavad-gita (13.22) stresses that the desire to enjoy rivets the non-material soul to matter.

For attaining liberation, the path of yoga requires that we eliminate all desire. However, desirelessness is unnatural. We are essentially conscious beings. And being conscious, we perceive things and subsequently experience desires in relation with those things.

Bhakti wisdom clarifies that our entanglement is caused not by desire per se, but by misdirected desire. The Gita (10.41) explains that the attractiveness of all objects is a spark of Krishna’s all-attractiveness. This implies that while those objects can give us a spark of pleasure, whereas Krishna alone can give complete fulfillment. When we see those objects’ attractiveness separate from Krishna’s all-attractiveness, the resulting desires misdirect us away from him.

But Gita wisdom redirects our desires by helping us remember that the attractiveness of those objects comes from Krishna. As we become thus absorbed in him, the resulting spiritual fulfillment decreases the lure of worldly enjoyment. Just as snakes become harmless when their fangs are removed, our desires become harmless when they no longer drag us away from Krishna.

Devotion can make our desires not only harmless but also helpful. Just as an animal when domesticated helps its master, so too can our desires propel us towards Krishna when we desire to know him, love him and serve him. For example, Arjuna’s desire to hear Krishna’s glories (10.18) enlivens and enlightens him.

Thus, spiritual growth centers on not desirelessness, but increasing desire for Krishna. By practicing bhakti-yoga steadily, our devotional desires to love and serve Krishna grow stronger and bigger till they automatically overpower and oust entangling desires. Thereafter, our defanged and domesticated desires drive us energetically and joyfully towards the supreme liberation in Krishna.