What Guides Your Work? Will or Love?
Most of us do not realize that much of the conflicts that we suffer in our life are created by ourselves. There again, we do not suspect that certain attachment to goals, ideas or ideals is at the root of the problem. We conceive something as a good goal, a noble ideal or a respectable objective. We are convinced that we are not chasing some false value. Having decided that our agenda is unquestionably sound, we then get busy with mobilization of resources to achieve the set purpose. Among the many things we then need is “will power.” Call it just will.
Here begins the game. In the name of will, we goad ourselves to work. If we work well one day, we compliment ourselves; if we do not, another day, we blame ourselves. Judgments such as, “I am not focused; I am lazy; I lack killer instinct; I wish I was more ambitious,” and so on disturb our mind frequently. Some notion of achievement drives our life. At times we consider it even the only way to survive. Burn out or get out, goes the slogan in such a state of affairs. We lose all our sensitivity to many other aspects of life such as caring for people, animals and nature. Life loses its holistic quality. Even when we seem to succeed, in terms of earning money or name, there is stress and discontent.
When we pause at times, we wonder, “Do I love my work at all?” Caught apparently in a vicious circle, we are unable to change our way of living. “Do I do things out of helplessness? Would I do something very different if I were really free?” Most of us certainly imagine some other way of living, if we had a chance to reprogram our entire life. It seems that our responsibilities are tying us down. Not only our families but also the organizations where we work seem to have got us highly obliged to work for them. We sometimes envy monks or other unmarried people who, in our eyes, are free.
The truth is different. Married or single, a human being feels bound purely because of his (her) own countless conditionings. Numerous ideas of how things should be cloud his thinking so much that he loses all his sharpness of perception with regard to how things are. He hardly understands his fears but lets them drive him. He does not watch the structure of his desires but allows them to steer him. He does not re-examine his ideals but suffers under their weight. His agitations about the past and his anxieties about the future make him blind to the present. So he errs, errs and errs again.
Clean up. We must clean up our consciousness of so much junk that has accumulated. Thought – in all its varieties – carries many likes and dislikes. False prestige, vain pride, fears around our image and hopes of becoming some important person are just a few examples of this collected garbage. We have lost our simplicity. We need to slow down, take a fresh look at how our thought operates. We shall then discover that much of (if not all of) our fear is baseless and, equally so, a lot of our desires are unnecessary. It is not about labelling desire and fear as wrong; we just see that we can travel much more lightly without them. When it is not much cold, a sweater becomes unnecessary; without calling the sweater bad, we just take it off and walk away. So it is with many thoughts; they just drop off as we see them properly.
Love then manifests. Not pressure – external or internal – but a quiet joy accompanies our work. In the morning, we may then exercise with much enjoyment and not with the fear, “Oh, if I do not exercise, I will pay a heavy price later.” Without using will, we keep our house in order and do a number of things purely out of right understanding. Will (will power), much praised in this confused world, has actually the smell of conflict and contradiction, “A part of me does not want to do this; another part of me prevails and so I do it.” In love, there is no such division. We do everything wholeheartedly – eat, drink, sleep, exercise, meditate, work and earn. Love is the fragrance of total inner integration. Will has some charm but it is a soldier who wins battles but loses the war.
Swami Chidananda
Monday, November 9, 2009