The secret of success in work is total involvement in the execution of it followed by total detachment as to its result. One's whole energy must pour into the job at hand with meditative concentration backing it up. One must become one with the work and, for the while, so to say, lose one's identity in it.
But such involvement does not come by overnight. One must struggle for years before one's mind gets attuned to the work and flows in to it with rhythmic ease for the higher harmony to be attained. This is called 'ekaagrata' or one-pointed concentration. Prolonged practice and renunciation of all distracting desires lead the mind slowly from turbulence to tranquillity.
The Bhagavad Geeta says, 'Abhyaasena tu Kaunteya, vairaagyena cha grihyatey' (This perfection may be attained by practice and by renunciation of desires). A tranquil mind is the fittest instrument for work, a mind which nothing can disturb, which retains its poise in all situations and never loses equilibrium. Such a mind, secure in meditative wisdom, skilled in the practised performance of the work, achieves excellence in it. Such a work becomes a labour of love, refines the soul of man, deifies his being and eventually becomes the indirect cause of his liberation, for according to Shankaracharya, detached work purifies the mind-stuff (causes 'chittasuddhi') and makes it fit for liberation through discrimination by the process of negation (neti neti) but cannot directly effect liberation.
Be that as it may, we owe all our great inventions, discoveries and works of art, music and literature to the great geniuses in human history who, instinctively perhaps, have practised karma yoga and arrived at the finality of the masterpieces which were the crystallised essence of their seminal souls. These supremely gifted individuals would become one with their creation as they would release their creative energy into their work and lose themselves in it. Such total oblivion of one's outer self-consciousness while performing a work is termed 'absorption' and is the secret of success in work. Human civilisation is the product of such proficiency in work and bears in its miniatures and mega-structures, mosques and mausoleums, churches and chateaus ample testimony of the diffusion of human genius in man's creative endeavour.
Thus, to succeed in work and achieve excellence in it, one needs a high level of motivation, purity of purpose, dogged determination and patient perseverance. Add to this the twin virtues of practice and renunciation and the picture is perfected. 'Karmanye adhikaarastey ma phaleshu kadaachana' (To work you have the right, not to the fruits thereof).
May all be endowed with these wonderful attributes of the selfless worker ! May all be fired up by the discipline of detached devotion in work ! May all consecrate themselves to this ideal of worshipful service that work in its essence is ! May all offer themselves as oblations to the universal sacrificial fire that is ever ablaze ! In the attributes is the seed of work, in the enthusiasm the energy, in the consecration is the submission to this supreme yoga and in the oblation the extinction of the ego. So the path is, this universal way of union with the Divine, this 'tao' of the cessation of sorrow, this science of worship through work --- karma yoga.
But such involvement does not come by overnight. One must struggle for years before one's mind gets attuned to the work and flows in to it with rhythmic ease for the higher harmony to be attained. This is called 'ekaagrata' or one-pointed concentration. Prolonged practice and renunciation of all distracting desires lead the mind slowly from turbulence to tranquillity.
The Bhagavad Geeta says, 'Abhyaasena tu Kaunteya, vairaagyena cha grihyatey' (This perfection may be attained by practice and by renunciation of desires). A tranquil mind is the fittest instrument for work, a mind which nothing can disturb, which retains its poise in all situations and never loses equilibrium. Such a mind, secure in meditative wisdom, skilled in the practised performance of the work, achieves excellence in it. Such a work becomes a labour of love, refines the soul of man, deifies his being and eventually becomes the indirect cause of his liberation, for according to Shankaracharya, detached work purifies the mind-stuff (causes 'chittasuddhi') and makes it fit for liberation through discrimination by the process of negation (neti neti) but cannot directly effect liberation.
Be that as it may, we owe all our great inventions, discoveries and works of art, music and literature to the great geniuses in human history who, instinctively perhaps, have practised karma yoga and arrived at the finality of the masterpieces which were the crystallised essence of their seminal souls. These supremely gifted individuals would become one with their creation as they would release their creative energy into their work and lose themselves in it. Such total oblivion of one's outer self-consciousness while performing a work is termed 'absorption' and is the secret of success in work. Human civilisation is the product of such proficiency in work and bears in its miniatures and mega-structures, mosques and mausoleums, churches and chateaus ample testimony of the diffusion of human genius in man's creative endeavour.
Thus, to succeed in work and achieve excellence in it, one needs a high level of motivation, purity of purpose, dogged determination and patient perseverance. Add to this the twin virtues of practice and renunciation and the picture is perfected. 'Karmanye adhikaarastey ma phaleshu kadaachana' (To work you have the right, not to the fruits thereof).
May all be endowed with these wonderful attributes of the selfless worker ! May all be fired up by the discipline of detached devotion in work ! May all consecrate themselves to this ideal of worshipful service that work in its essence is ! May all offer themselves as oblations to the universal sacrificial fire that is ever ablaze ! In the attributes is the seed of work, in the enthusiasm the energy, in the consecration is the submission to this supreme yoga and in the oblation the extinction of the ego. So the path is, this universal way of union with the Divine, this 'tao' of the cessation of sorrow, this science of worship through work --- karma yoga.
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