The Monk’s Podcast 15 with Shyamananda Prabhu – What is work meant for – part 2

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Hare Krishna. Thank you very much for joining once again and I was thinking today we could talk on the topic of work. This is a time when many people are working from home or are not able to work or may have to look for some other work.

Basically, work is a major part of our life almost. You could say half of our waking life we spend at work. So, what are the different ways in which people across history and geography have looked at work and how does spirituality infuse a fresh insight into our vision of work.

Maybe that could be a topic of discussion today. Okay, so would you like me to begin? I am fascinated by this concept given in one of the major Abrahamic religions that is Christianity and the basic idea is in paradise you don't work. All your needs are fulfilled.

There is only enjoyment and then because of man's call it rebellious nature or too much of inquisitiveness or the desire to be separate from God. This I find very much aligned with the Vedic understanding and so there Adam suddenly hides from God says that I cannot come before you because I'm naked and then God says who told you that? What made you aware of that? Why are you embarrassed now? He said no but that's the reality because I am naked and I am ashamed. So, then God asked him did you eat of that knowledge tree which I told you not to do it and he says that yes.

So, because of this now you won't be able to stay here. You are cast away from this beautiful place and you have to work. So, thus begins humanity's ordeal of as they put it work from the sweat of your brow that means you really had to work hard and of course hard work is not something which goes very easily.

In fact, people who don't like hard work they have this kind of humorous take that the rich always say hard work never killed anybody but we hardly see them working. Of course, by this they say what means mining, cleaning the gutters or all kinds of demeaning work and I also heard somebody from the rich class saying that hard work never killed anyone but why take a chance? So, Vishnu Purana talks in terms of Vishnu Shakti Paraprakta, Kshetratnakhya Tatha Para, Avidya Karma Sanghya Anya Tritiya Shakti Ishyate and here we have Vishnu has three potencies. There is a Para, Apara and Avidya is equated with Karma.

Karma Sanghya. It is Tritiya Shakti Ishyate and here Karma means work. More specifically fruitive work and this is a terminology which when I started reading Prabhupada's books, it became so prevalent everywhere.

Fruitive, fruitive, fruitive. It's almost as if and I never heard of it in any literature before. It was just plain work like if you tell somebody or a student you work but don't expect grades then why should I work? If a man says I am working for my salary, don't expect that salary then why should I work? So, basically the Abrahamic Judeo-Christian tradition may not be Judeo-Christian tradition of work began with Adam being cast away and after that many people tried to give it respectability.

St. Augustine was the one who matter of factly said please understand work in this material world has to be miserable period. There can be nothing like enjoyable work and then up to the Renaissance where Michelangelo and Da Vinci and by the way they were very wealthy people. They were artists, they were creative.

So, now people in the 20th century looking back at them saying that wow, they loved what they were doing and they were paid for what they were doing. So, we have Martin Luther who then started the understanding that even the meanest of jobs, baking, tilling, gardening, cleaning you can find God through that and thus was born the protestant work ethic. Till the time when he went to America, he actually praised the early Americans for their hard work, give everything to God, at least the credit and share the bounties of what you have with others.

So, we have Americans having that kind of identity that we are very charitable people. There is a lot of emphasis of course things have the Kali Yuga kind of erosion but at least that thing is there. So, I am ending with this one thing with Karl Marx saying that work is boring.

Work doesn't give fulfillment and today we have people either unemployed or unhappily employed. So, over to you. I think you said that you have certain four or so categories.

So, let us begin with that. Yeah, let's just a quick recap or just a few comments about what you said. Basically, whenever there is a strong religious ethos, there is a significant emphasis on another world beyond this world as life's ultimate purpose and in some ways, there is a devaluation of this world.

So, devaluation of this world means devaluation of the efforts to improve the world as not going to be consequential in any way. And devaluation of the distresses of the world in the sense that, okay, we just have to live with them, bear them, they are not unbearable. By devaluation, do you mean discouragement? Yeah, it's not that big a thing.

The pleasures are not, the improvement that you will be making is not that big that you have to work for it. You won't be able to make any significant improvement and the sufferings are there. They are also not that big, don't make such a big issue out of it.

So, in some ways, this is equivalent to what the Gita says that, they don't get affected by the dualities. So, this is broadly the general religious worldview and that does lead to overall devaluation of this world. Now, we'll talk about the Gita later.

But this idea that to some extent, there is a world denial or a world rejection that was quite central to the early Christian ethos. Jesus himself lived a life of poverty and you could say denial to some extent. And then the Catholic Church taught that although the Church itself was immensely wealthy and the Popes lived in a form that superseded that of even the monarchs of various countries.

So, seeing all this, there was a, the Protestants had a, they called the reformation but it was also a rebellion against the people authority. And there were both doctrinal and practical differences. But with respect to the practical differences, there was in Protestantism a sanctification of everyday life.

So, if we look at European history, there were three major events that changed the pre-modern world to the modern world. The first was the Renaissance, the second was the reformation and the third was the scientific revolution as they call it. So, the Renaissance was the time, there's one author already says that, it was as if man suddenly woke up from a stupor and started looking at the world around him as if this is also a place for curiosity and investigation and learning.

So, in Renaissance, it was primarily that it was a flowering of the art. So, start depicting, start doing artistic things and Michelangelo and others were, where you could say pioneers of Renaissance. So, where this world was also considered important.

Now, once this world is considered important, then what happened, the next step was that those who said that this world is not that important, that were the religious authorities, they were challenged and to some extent they were rejected. That was the reformation. And the third scientific revolution was in some ways that we have the power to improve this world.

So, another way of looking at it is that the Renaissance shifted the vision from the other world to this world. Then the reformation led to a religious justification for focusing on this world. Renaissance was more of a cultural shift.

Reformation was more of a religious justification for that shift. And the scientific revolution was a technological mobilization in this world. So, where we start working on improving this world.

In fact, after the scientific revolution gained momentum, it was more or less that the other world became inconsequential. Now, most people don't believe in any higher world and even if they believe, still the idea is this is the world we need to improve. And in fact, some early Christian thinkers, they said that just as Jesus offers redemption at a spiritual level through Christianity, so science will offer us redemption at the material level through technology.

And so correspondingly, as the emphasis on this world starts increasing, then naturally the idea of what we do in the world becomes more and more important. And then if this world is just what the Bible I think is a veil of tears. If this world is not a veil of tears, if this world is where we are meant to make our home and live, then what we do in this world also matters.

So, our view of work is also affected by our worldview. And work gains increasing importance as the worldview starts focusing more and more on this world. So, that's why in today's world, you could say that now when you conclude with Karl Marx, now he was a strong rejecter of the idea of any other world.

In fact, as he famously said, religion is the opium of the masses. So, his idea was that to the extent people are hypnotized or seduced or anesthetized by the hope of some other world, they become apathetic to their miseries in this world. So, on one side, he was a strong as a trenchant critic of religion, but he was also a strong critic of industrialization because yes, at one level, the work involved in the factories or many of the activities that resulted from industrialization, be it mines or factories or mills, it was quite dehumanizing because people just had to do the same mechanical work and it was not very rewarding financially, it was not rewarding emotionally, it was not rewarding spiritually in the sense that it did not lead to any growth in any way.

So, that led to a big conflict between the worldview, say this world is important, but the work that I am doing, it's utterly meaningless. Then that conflict eventually erupted as the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, where capitalism was rejected and communism was accepted. So, this is my main point that worldview and work view are also quite intrinsically related.

Just to add that why religion was the favorite whipping boy of the Marxists, that the capitalists, the landowners, the mill owners, the industrialists, they would say that I am rich because I worked hard and if you work hard, you also could become rich. So, how do you work hard? You take part in my enterprise, but that work as Marx discovered was boring, tedious and not fulfilling and when those workers would complain why I am made to work for you, so then religion was thrust onto them saying that this will soothe you, this will help ameliorate your woes, your miseries and just like opium is used as a medicine, like in a war somebody has wounds and the soldier is howling in pain, so the masses are howling in pain and the opium of religion is given to silence them. So, of course, after 70 years when Russia rejected Marxism and how people are thirsty for some religious nourishment is evidence enough that this didn't work.

Yes, the Soviets tried to flatten all the churches, turned them into the priests, these food were told to become land laborers, like produce something. So, rather than contemplation was never seen as productive, it has nothing to do with human development. If you manufacture a nut or a bolt, then you are contributing to this world as you said.

And even today we have this vestiges where people say if somebody has taken the saffron cloth, so in India that do you do any work or are the fruits of your labor tangible, countable, helping the economy today or they are not. So, we will see this particular point of view later, sort of added to that karma thing which you said. Yeah, so it's interesting you say that the idea of upward mobility through work is so central to the modern ethos.

When people get a job, they are not just concerned about how much that job is going to pay me right now, but also what is the trajectory up for me. Now, in the past, whether it was India or the West, more or less, there was stasis in the world. Your one's birth more or less determined one's trajectory throughout life.

If somebody was born as a laborer or in Britain, there was, they call it the gentry, those are the aristocracy and the lords and all of them. And then everybody who was not the gentry, they were just, they had their life of labor, that's how they would live and they would die. So, we humans innately need the hope of a better future.

If our hope for a better future dies, then ultimately something within us dies. So, either that hope for a better future can be at the material level or it has to be at the non-material level. So, traditionally, the hope for a better future was at a non-material level and work was considered just as a means to survive here while we progress toward that non-material better world.

But if we have to create a better world here, then we work and we create it. And the biggest frustration comes in two ways in today's world. One is that if my work does not create a better future for me.

So, the idea is that we may say that it's a meritocracy. Those who work hardest, they will get to the top. But what if it doesn't turn out to be like that? I work hard, but still I don't achieve the success that I wanted.

I'm passed over for a promotion or somebody uses some contacts and grabs a contract that I was wanting and I stagnate. So, within this worldview, either because of something beyond my control, I'm not able to move forward, then the work does not lead me to a better place. And also, if I don't like the work, then there is no extrinsic fulfillment and there's no intrinsic fulfillment also.

And then work becomes unbearable. So, if I don't get money, position, power, and I don't get satisfaction, meaning, joy through my work, then why am I working? So, that I think is an existential angst that gnaws at the hearts of millions in today's world. Any thoughts on this? Okay.

So, you really put it in a nice little bracket that the kind of work I'm doing is gnawing at my existence. What is the way forward? I think it is now time for me to look at our Vedic wisdom. So, the Bhagavad Gita through the Bhaktivedanta purports informs me that there are some things which I should kind of accept that these are the fundamental things and they cannot be done away with either by wishing them away or by meditating or by running away from it.

So, the fight or flight response, fight it and subdue it or fly away from it may not work, accept it. So, the common acceptances, understanding philosophy of work, which I saw and which apply to my life is one has to maintain one's body. If our body is the cause of dissatisfaction, then I need to do something about it.

But the basic fundamental is I need to maintain my body. The second thing would be if work I must then what do I work with? So, I feel I work with my body. But when like a boss may shout at his subordinate, seeing the report, seeing some mathematical mistakes committed or something, where were you when you were doing this? Or have you just brought your body to the office? Where is your mind? So, Srila Prabhupada gives us this little bit of extra vision that we don't work with the body, but we work with the mind and intelligence.

So, building upon these two that I have to work and I work with more, not with my body mainly, but with my mind and intellect. The disadvantages which I see here, angst, depression, suffering, stress, could it be that I am not aware of the art of work? That there is somebody who doesn't have tools. Like somebody doesn't have a pneumatic drill and therefore drilling the earth, I'm just giving a mundane example, is difficult.

But if somebody gets a tool, an electrically operated pneumatic drill, but the north-south poles are not properly connected and every time I touch it, it gives me a shock. So, instead of helping me work, finish my work, it's actually giving me severe electric shocks. So, do I destroy the tool, curse it, put some agarbatti on it, offer it some flowers or learn the art of work, which means learn the art of how to use these tools.

So, the Bhagavad Gita encourages me to understand that work will be the cause of bondage. It's a fact and the Gita describes that bondage as the recurring cycle of I work, I get the results, I pounce upon the results, covet them to myself saying this is mine, I get bound up in the law of action and reaction, which gives rise to more material desires, which gives rise to materialistic work, which gives me fruits, which I am attached, they never give me fulfillment and this thing continues. Okay.

So, I won't describe the solution right now. If you want to add something to the nature of bondage, because I see that Adam was forced to work, which he need not have been subjected to that because of the desire to have that rebellious idea. So, God allows loyal ideas and the reaction is you live in paradise where there is no work.

God also allows a separatist mentality, but then the result of that is you have to work. Augustine tells me work is miserable. I also understand.

Then there is a gradation whether if I can do higher quality work, will that make me happy? So, people always go for like we have the intellectuals, administrators, traders and the service sector. So, even Arjuna kind of fell for this kind of a choice that if contemplation is equally good, then why should I engage in this warfare? So, work for Arjuna was to kill his relatives and therefore anybody would shy away from that. So, Krishna is telling it's your work, not mine.

I am not in one sense, the creator of this battlefield. This is your work. Your work happens to be that your grandfather and your teacher happened to be there and whom you love and therefore you do not want to work.

But if instead of that Dushasan, Duryodhana, Karna, Shakuni came, you will gladly do that work. Because killing them is kind of enjoyable, but killing your grandfather and teacher is not enjoyable. But I have news for you.

You have to do it. It's your work. So, the suggested formula is and we will take a small gap.

We won't go immediately to that. How does one avoid bondage? Now in bondage, the Bhagavad Gita I think sums up all the things which Marx did like work makes you an automaton, work makes you miserable, work makes you, it is not creative, it doesn't give fulfillment provided it gives some money. But today we find people are not even happy with the money they get.

Yes. So, any thoughts on that? Yeah, it's quite a succinct summary of the context and the content of the Gita's take on work. I was thinking maybe I'll just first try to build a bridge between what we discussed earlier and then we'll look at the Gita.

So, I thought three things. When we look at work, what is the worldview within which the work is viewed, work is seen? Then what is the purpose of work in terms of its extrinsic results and in terms of its intrinsic results? Now, if we consider the Gita's context, the worldview of the Gita is at one level undoubtedly spiritual. At another level, it is also world affirming.

When Arjuna wants to renounce the world and as it become a contemplative, Krishna also doesn't ask, Krishna also doesn't approve that at least in that context. So, there are verses in the Gita which could sound similar to the prosperity theology gospel that is led to Americans become very wealthy. So, in 1133, he says that you fight, arise and fight and win by my arrangement and you will enjoy a prosperous kingdom.

So, there is definitely some amount of world affirmation over there in the Gita. So, this world is important, but why is it important? Because Arjuna is a part of a divine plan to establish Dharma in the world. So, having moral and spiritual order in the world through a proper political order, through a proper administrative order, all this indicates a world affirmation.

So, this world is important and if this world is important, then the work that we do is meant to maintain order in the world. This theme Krishna talks about several times. I think in the third chapter, he says that if you do not work, then Lok Sangraha.

Lok Sangraha, the Sanskrit as far as I understand, it actually refers to the maintenance of the world. So, there are two, we could say, extrinsic results of work. One is remuneration and the other is contribution or maintenance.

We contribute by playing our part to maintain the world and we get some remuneration from the world. So, Krishna also says, Sharir yatra apichate na pasiddhya da karmana. So, when the Gita talks about the world and the work within the world, both of them have significance.

Both of them are given due importance. However, the key element that we mentioned is that the Gita talks strongly about this concept of bondage and that is something it says we need to avoid that. So, bondage can be understood at various levels.

At one level, it is psychological bondage where we become attached to certain things in the world and we can't live without them. We feel ourselves pulled toward them. Asha paashishatair baddha.

Krishna in 1612 says that our desires become like shackles that pull us. And so, when we work only for the extrinsic results, we work for money and then the things that money can buy and then we become attached to them and then we want them more and more. And as we want them more and more, we have to work more and more.

And that way, we get more and more bound by it. So, one understanding of the bondage is psychological bondage. Our attachment pulls us towards the objects that we buy that work and then because to buy those objects, we need money, we need to work more.

So, we work more, we buy more and then we again work more. So, we work and buy and work and buy and we hope that by buying, we will enjoy. But do we really enjoy that? That is an open question.

I once summarized the modern way of living. We work, work, work and work is frustrating. So, then I want a break.

So, I come back and watch television, or watch movies, watch things on my phone now. And then I watch, watch, watch, just want to escape from the boredom and the frustration of the world. But when I watch, I see so many wealthy and pretty people, I want to become like them.

So, then I go and shop things. So, the essence of modern life can be summarized in these three activities, work, watch, shop. When you shop, then you again, you want to, you shop so much, I don't have so much money, I have to work more.

I work more, I get frustrated more, then I watch more. And I try to escape from the world. But then when in trying to escape through the world, escape from the world through television and entertainment, and there is a big difference, even if say religion was supposed to help people, make life bearable for them by giving them some hope for some other world.

Now, television also does the same thing. Life is boring, life is frustrating, and you escape from it. But the key difference is that religion, while helping, while giving us a escape way from the world, it decreases our infatuation with the world.

Whereas television, it gives us an escape way from the world. But what is shown on the television, you probably see very attractive looking people living in magnificent houses. And to become like that, that craving, that lust, that greed, that actually increases infatuation with the world.

So then we watch, but by watching, there is only temporary escape and come back and shop. So WWS, we call this as worldwide stupidity. So we can actually see that people are bound by working, they're bound to working more, shopping more, escaping more through watching.

So even if we don't consider the philosophical aspect of the repetition of the cycle of birth and death, we can see that people are bound. People are bound by their mortgages that they have taken. People are bound by the credit card debts that they owe.

And people are bound by the desires that they have got, which just don't allow them to live peacefully. So this could be a contemporary explanation of bondage. And that will inspire us, is there a way I can become free from bondage? Is there a way I can work without becoming bound? So here, let us say somebody knows that he's bound.

Somebody wants to kick the spiral of working hard and then going to some resort or some nightclub or some food court or some movieplex and then again coming and feeling remorse or not knowing exactly where this is leading to. Krishna jolts a person's mind by saying that, Arjun, those who want to enjoy the fruits of their labour are misers. The first time I read it, I said, is it not true that if I work for something, then the fruit belongs to me? Where is the question of misers here? So miserliness is keeping the fruits with you and broad-mindedness is, what is broad-mindedness? Giving it up or like getting gold and burying it or throwing it away.

What exactly I'm supposed to do with the fruits of my work? So this is not in the Bhagavad Gita directly, but Krishna does talk of amritam ashnute, tasting immortality or tasting nectar. So what Martin Luther told his people that you could be doing the simplest of things, you could be a janitor, you could be an usher in some drama or Broadway or you could be a street sweeper, but there is God in, God is to be found in the work you do. So that aspect, Krishna keeps it alive by saying that, offer the fruits of your work directly to me.

Now there is some leap of faith which is involved here that as such I am not happy with the fruits I'm making and then I should take a complete 180 degree turn and give the fruits to you. Why? So that is explained in other bhakti tradition wisdom text where it is said that rasa vaisaha, Krishna is the personification of all rasa, all happiness, all bliss and giving your fruits to him, you never are a loser. So rather than to give a contemporary example, if there's a company which is making 25% net profits every year, so not investing in that corporation stock and keeping it in your own home where there is no increase, if you keep money at your own place where there is an increase.

So not utilizing something means miserliness because if you utilize properly it may increase. So Krishna as a Supreme Personality of God introduced in the Bhagavad Gita is not just the enjoyer of all work, the enjoyer of all sacrifices, Yajnavayi Vishnu, but he is the one who can expertly give you that creativity, that fulfillment. For example, this is an example given worldwide.

I have seen so many motivational speakers and so many people they tell it but only when you read the Bhagavad Gita you can understand the essence of it. Like there are three people who are breaking stones and it's a European example, so they are building a cathedral. So the first one is asked, my dear good man, what are you doing? Can't you see I'm breaking stones? So he's a worker in the mode of ignorance, he doesn't like what he's doing, he's a grumbler, he tries to do as less as possible.

The second one says, well I'm breaking stones, I was working in a quarry over there but here I'm getting 10 cents more per hour. So here is somebody who knows what he is doing but he's attracted merely because the wages are higher. The third one says, I have been told that they are making a cathedral, I'm happy to be a part of it, we are making a house of God.

So the outward act is the same, the hammer, chisel and the stones are exactly identical but as we discussed in the beginning, the Atropa said you work not with the body but with the mind and intellect. So with the mind and intellect you can uplift yourself and it could be any kind of menial, any kind of so-called third grade work but the reciprocation coming from Krishna will give you creativity, will give you fulfillment, will give you happiness and even like Prabhupada said, even after the Gita's discourse was over, Arjuna remained a warrior. It's not like he became a contemplative sage or he went to the forest.

So the Gita's ideal of work is there is a sea change for sure but not in the tools, not in the bearer of the tools but in the consciousness of the bearer of the tools. Beautiful. So to again try to rephrase what you said in maybe the context of what we discussed earlier, if we talk about the extrinsic rewards of work and the intrinsic rewards of work.

So we can say that when Krishna is telling, don't be detached from the fruits of your work. So he is talking about that don't be attached to the extrinsic fruits. So work is talked about in the Bhagavad Gita at various levels.

At the most, if you know everything that we do can be placed in increasingly bigger contexts. So right now I can say that I am speaking to you. That's an activity.

Other thing I can say is that we are discussing the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita. Other thing we can say is that we are getting a better understanding of how we can live in the world or how we can share with others how we can live in the world. So like we talked about the work itself that whether I am just breaking stones or I am building a cathedral.

So similarly, we could say remuneration is a relatively speaking small result of the work and if that's what I get infatuated with then I blind myself to some bigger result. And what is that bigger result? So I feel it is at three levels. One is apart from remuneration, there is a bigger is contribution.

You contribute to society, you do your dharma, you help Krishna in establishing dharma in the world. So there is a social contribution and for Arjuna, he feels that if I fight the war, the remuneration I get, I will win the kingdom. It's not worth it because I am going to lose my teacher and my grandfather.

And not only I am going to lose them, I may have to kill them. And he feels this is not worth it. That it will all be tainted with blood of my loved ones.

So at that level of calculation, if I consider gaining the remuneration of gaining a kingdom or losing my loved ones. But at that level, the war doesn't seem to be worth it. So he says no.

But Krishna has a bigger vision that you are fighting to contribute to society. Contribute to society for establishing order in society. And beyond that, Krishna talks also about at another level of work is, you could say, psychophysical harmonization.

Krishna tells Arjuna later that, svabhāva jena kaunteya nibaddhasvena karuṇā kartum necchasi anmohād karishyase avasopitād. That you are bound by your svabhāva to do a particular kind of work. If you don't do it now, you will do it later.

You'll say right now, I want to live like a Brahmana. I want to live like a contemplative. But then when the provocation comes immediately, you will raise your weapons.

So there is a certain work which is natural for you. And when the work is natural, we do it because that work itself is what gives us satisfaction. So at that particular point, Arjuna has got so caught in the external cost of the work that he is blinded to the fact that this is what he is meant to do.

I read about writing at one place. One person, aspiring writer asked a promising established writer, I don't feel like writing, what should I do? He said, if you don't feel like writing, there is nothing I can tell you to do that will make you feel like writing. If you don't feel like writing, just stop writing.

And then he said, after some time, if you feel, if I don't write, what am I going to do? If you feel that I can't live without writing, then you will come back to writing with greater conviction. So I think it was Isaac Asimov who said that, if I knew I was going to die within say, what something like one minute or 10 minutes or one hour, I will just type faster. I will type faster.

So there is intrinsic joy that comes when we are harmonized with our innate nature, our psychophysical nature. You have heard of flow? Psychologists call it flow. Yeah.

So interestingly, when they talk about the concept of flow, is flow a constant state or it's a phase that we get into sometimes? Because what I find is that say, although I love writing, but it's not that I love writing all the time. So even in writing, you get into a flow sometimes. But in some other things, you never get into a flow.

You just have to push yourself to do it. So there's a hint in the Bhagavad Gita that when Krishna says, I am adventure. So like rock climbing is not exactly enjoyable.

But because of that particular jiva, this living being wants to make it out of pity. Krishna decides to enter into that activity just specifically for that person. So he's tasting Krishna and is thinking that because I climbed that mountain, I became happy.

So if you're collecting stamps, collecting stones, doing a triathlon, 176 kilometers across the desert, people are doing all these kinds of things. And one may wonder, where is the enjoyment here? They ask somebody, you just work for money. Is that enjoyable? Like Andrew Carnegie, the millionaire, he was positively diagnosed with a condition where he was told, try to see as less money as possible because that gives you.

And one day in a public bus, he was told to get down because he didn't have change. So this material world has enough evidences that when you said that work has to be psychosomatically congruent or harmonized, harmonization, that's a very important point. And Krishna enters into those things enough to make you feel them enjoyable.

And out of his own sweet will, when he leaves that work or that process, you feel why I'm not able to enjoy it anymore. So he comes in, gives you that taste, which is inherently spiritual, makes you aware that there is something which I need to do. But then he leaves.

And the secret is, as the Gita says, when you offer everything to him, slowly, slowly, you are now becoming adept at the art of work. And therefore, highly evolved spiritualists, when they have, like Prabhupada, worked incessantly, 18, 19, 20 hours a day, 11 years of the last 11 years of his life, going around the world. And if he was asked that, isn't this work? No.

This was not work. This was just, I'm happy I was engaged. So, this level of enjoyment is what every Steve Jobs, every Bill Gates wants it.

Do they get it? Well, in their honest moments, they say, I didn't get it. The world is convinced though, you have to be happy. You are a billionaire.

You have to be happy. You are so famous, you have to be happy. You have a million likes on Facebook, you have to be happy.

And then people say, maybe I am, maybe I am happy. But then in their honest private moments, when the kind of mask or the makeup of worldly acquisition wears off, then the ugly face rears its head. Beautifully put.

So let me reword what you said, if I understood rightly. So you said that when people experience flow, it is actually they experiencing Krishna at that time. Because Krishna is the adventure in work.

And because Krishna is independent. So it's not that every time we do the work, we will experience that flow. So sometimes we may, sometimes we may not.

But if we are in the flow, so there could be two things, you know, we keep doing the things. I think it was that Nobel laureate Somerset Maugham, W. Somerset Maugham, he said, do you write every day? Or do you write when you are inspired? He said, I write only when I'm inspired. And I make sure that inspiration arrives every day at 10am.

So the idea is that we could say that there is a place where the flow comes. And we go and keep ourselves in that place. And sometimes the flow comes and we move.

Sometimes the flow doesn't come. But we are there in our place. So I was thinking of like a mind map, what are the purposes of work? Okay, so if we consider one work, one could be remuneration.

Second could be contribution. These two are somewhat external, which we can see in this world. Yeah, say a doctor, doctor works, they get a salary at the end and they see okay, I sell somebody's life.

But now the third could be harmonization. Harmonization is where I do what I'm meant to do. And that also gives satisfaction.

So all of these actually can give some pleasure. Remuneration can give satisfaction. Contribution can give some satisfaction.

Harmonization also gives satisfaction. But the harmonization is the, we could say intrinsic result. And then there is the last part, which is connection.

Our work connects us with Krishna. Swakarmanatam abhyarcha siddhim vindati manava. And I found the first half of this was quite fascinating.

It says yathah pravrttir bhutanam yena sarvam idam tatam. From him whom the world has emanated and by whom the world is pervaded, worship him with your work and you can attain perfection. That means the way I connected the first and second parts of this verse is that from whom the world has emanated, that means your abilities are also coming from him.

And by whom the world is pervaded means that when you are working in this world, actually you are offering those abilities to him who is manifested in the world. In that sense, the karma can become like a yajna. Like when we worship the Ganga, we take water from the Ganga and we offer it to the Ganga.

So, or when we are doing yajna, we understand that everything has come from Brahma, everything has come from the Lord, but we offer it back. We offer the ghee to the fire. The fire is considered to be Brahma.

So, the ghee is also the divine in one sense and we are offering the ghee. So, we could say work becomes worship. When we see that our work is a gift of God and that same God is manifest in the world and when we serve, when we work in a mood of service, in a mood of selfless contribution, then we are worshipping the Lord.

So, through our work, we establish a connection with the Lord and this can happen at one level by giving the fruits of our work in some charity, but it can also be just offering our consciousness to the Lord through the work. So, when Ma Faleshu Kadachana Krishna says that don't be attached to the fruits of the work, in my understanding, he's primarily saying don't be caught in the remuneration part or don't be caught, broadly speaking, the extrinsic results of the work. So, if you get caught in the extrinsic results, you'll miss out on the intrinsic ones.

Remuneration and contribution are extrinsic results of work. Then we could have harmonization which leads to inner satisfaction and we could say harmonization provides us inner material satisfaction. It's subtle but it's material and connection, if we do the work in a mood of worship, then it leads to a spiritual satisfaction.

So, detachment from work means don't be infatuated with too much of the remuneration part, see the bigger picture and know that that bigger picture is what you need to focus on. So, if we focus only on the remuneration in work, that will lead to bondage and you could say that there are progressively higher levels. Krishna at one level says that just work for some fruit, work and sacrifice the fruits of your work.

That means he could be saying contribution. So, these four, we could explore these in detail in terms of what the applied in today's context to solve or to address the emptiness that many people experience while working. But maybe this will be another discussion, isn't it? It will take some time.

Yeah, because one of the major fallouts of the COVID-19 crisis would be a massive rise in the unemployed and people would be looking at spirituality for giving some kind of a solution. So, right now the only crime need would be bread but we can take it even higher than that. It is not like just you give unemployment benefits, therefore you will be happy.

You just get a new job at Walmart or at Amazon warehouse, you'll be happy. It is a very essence of work that is threatened by this worldwide crisis. And if we can have some kind of a serious wisdom based understanding, it could benefit a lot of people.

Yes, definitely. So, I think this was worth exploring. So, I'll try to summarize what we discussed today and then you can add some things if I have not put in a summary.

We discussed first the history of work, history of conceptions of work, that it is a result of, it is a laborious punishment as a result of rebellion against God and it is going to be as St. Augustine said. Then he had work can be remunerative and creative. That's what Michelangelo and their conception was and Leonardo da Vinci.

And then Martin Luther's idea was that work is also devotional, work is also divine. Any kind of work. Any kind of work.

Then a Marx said that work is spirit sapping. It is boring and it destroys people's character and potential. Then I talked about how the vision of the world is also affected by the worldview.

Vision of work is affected by the worldview. So, often religions had the idea that this world is a veil of tears as Christianity says. So, then you just have to endure here so that you can get to the other world.

And then your work is something which you have to bear. But as the vision shifted, say in the Renaissance, the world was an arena for artistic reproduction, artistic depiction. Then the reformation said that those who say that the other world is all that matters, we challenge their authority.

An oversimplified depiction of that historical progression and science, scientific revolution said that this world we can improve through technology. So, as the worldview changed, this world is what matters. By the time of Karl Marx, the other world was considered to be like a belief induced by opium.

So, then we have to find happiness in this world. Almost like a conspiracy. It was almost like a conspiracy to keep themselves rich and ourselves poor.

Yes. Conspiracy to keep people satisfied without any upward mobility. Yes.

Because with the hope that you don't have any material upward mobility, but you will have spiritual upward mobility. So, then the idea was capitalism presents the promise of meritocracy, that if you work hard, you will succeed. But quite often, the capitalists are so much in power and exploitative that people cannot rise up.

So, the philosophy of meritocracy sounds great for the winners. And it sounds terrible for the losers because if you are poor, that's your problem. It's because you didn't do something right.

So, then a lot of people, we talked about some people don't get the extrinsic results of work that they don't get money, position, power, and they don't get intrinsic results that they don't feel satisfied doing the work. Then they think why should I work at all? So, there is emptiness. Then to address that emptiness, we turn to the vision of the Gita.

And then you pointed out that the Gita talks about firstly, work has to be done for maintenance, then work is, there is an art to work, where we avoid bondage. And then we discuss what is that bondage, you could say psychological bondage, by which we get bound to the things that work buys, and we keep craving from them. So, WWS, work, watch, and shop.

So, you get bound by that. And then, so, the way to, so you then you also talk about the idea of when we work according to our nature, there is a flow. So, I concluded that that mind map, four parts, work for remuneration, then work for social contribution, that Krishna tells Arjuna that don't look at this calculation that whether gaining a kingdom is worth losing your relatives, your purpose is, from a higher perspective, act to establish Dharma in the world.

So, that's a bigger picture. And then also there is discussed about how when people are in flow, that means that they experience intrinsic satisfaction in the work, and they also are able to create something wonderful through it. And then you mentioned that how when somebody is in flow, that means they are experiencing Krishna, Krishna is manifesting to them as adventure as thrill.

And that's why we can't control, we can't always maintain that the flow goes on, but we can keep ourselves in the flow by doing our part. Like, I mean, I make sure that inspiration comes every day. So, and lastly, you said that work can also help us connect with Krishna, because he is the source of our abilities.

And he's also present in the world, where we offer our work. So, work can be like a sacrifice in that sense. So, we will talk more about how these intrinsic and extrinsic results of work can be applied in today's context.

Any points I missed out? No, I just came up with something right now just came out of the top of mind that meritocracy is because I am good, therefore, I won. Because I have merit, therefore, I have money, I have power, I have prestige. And the suspicion today is, because I have money, therefore, I must be good.

Oh, okay. Because I won, therefore, I must have worked hard, therefore, I must be superior. And when this is not found to be true, then the masses lose all hope in even meritocracy.

Oh, okay. So, we could say, in our context, this is really worth exploring later. Dharma leads to Artha.

So, virtue leads to wealth. But if I presume because I have Artha, that means I must be having Dharma. Exactly.

Because I have wealth, so wealth can be a fruit of virtue, but wealth is not the proof of virtue. So, when it is presumed like that, then people start becoming the patronizing, moralizing, condescending, and then that triggers a rebellion. So, if somebody who is at a higher level in hierarchy is there because I can clearly see they are better than me, then I am okay that they are there.

But if I see that they are actually lousier than me, and still they are in a better position than me, then my blood starts boiling at that time. So, how, you know, whether a Gita-based world view or Gita-based vision of the work, how much would meritocracy would have to recognize and accept meritocracy? This could also be a topic of discussion in the next session. In fact, I would say that for a post-COVID, for a COVID-19 recovered world, facing unemployment or a work crisis, people are saying, at least comparable to the 1929 Great Depression, does the Bhagavad Gita give any hope, any solace? So, that will be our second part.

What is the preparation for, at least? The kind of economic problems which would come, they are said to be comparable with the Great Depression of 1929. So, the impact will be that big. So, can the Gita wisdom give a solid foundation for someone to work in that post-recovery world? That we will explore in our next segment.

Okay. That is a very good segue to both our future discussion and the current situation. Thank you very much.

I look forward to that. Hare Krishna.