Work and its Secret

Los Angeles
January 1900

Means are as important as ends in all that we do. Our failures are often due to our ends being beyond our means. If we paid careful attention to means, the results will flow automatically. Means and ends are related to each other as cause and effect.

The Gita teaches us to put our whole mind on work, without a thought to the results. This calls for strength of mind. If we succumb to desire for the results, it is a source of weakness. Success comes unasked, unsought, to the strong. If you are weak, you will be overcome by failure, sorrow or disease.

Attachment and detachment are key attitudes to work. Attachment can be to high eternal values, and efforts directed to them alone can bring true, long-lasting joy. But attachment to low, transient values, lead to sorrow in the event of failure, or pleasure in the event of success. But the success is short-lived and soon yields to the next failure and it's trail of sorrow. The secret of success lies in attachment to eternal values, detachment in respect of transient ones. The teaching of detachment has to be understood thus. Life must be joyful, full of joy, and not be an existence bereft of joy

Selfless love is an eternal value, while selfish love is a transient one. Says Vivekananda "Whatever we do, we want a return. We are all traders. We are traders in virtue, we are traders in religion. And Alas!, we are traders in love"

"Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back multiplied a thousand fold -- but the attention must not be on that. You have the power to give, and there it ends. Learn that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to give. Sooner or later, you will have to give up"

All this is very difficult, but can overcome by practice. Constant practice opens your mind to the fact that there is a constant interaction between your inner nature and your external circumstance; to the fact that you can control the former, but not the latter; and to the fact that former is your only choice, and that if you take it, you will pre-empt the actions and reactions of circumstance. This is the only way open to you of pre-empting failure and sorrow. Blaming circumstance, blaming the world, can only give sorrow, not a solution. It is self-defeating. The central lesson from Swami Vivekananda then is:

"Let us perfect the means, and the end will take care of itself. For the world can be good and pure, only if our lives are good and pure. It is an effect, we are the means. Therefore let us purify ourselves. Let us make ouselves perfect"