Work – the ticket to Nirvana

Most of our life we spend working. We wake up in the morning. Get ready for work. Commute (for those not working from home). Work. Return back home. Sleep and get ready for a new day. Somebody described a worker as a

A man who shaves and takes the train

And rides back home to shave again

This is our routine. It’s so easy to get locked into a ritual and get comfortable in it. So much so that, we get perturbed when there is a deviation from the normal. Change is so hard. But it is so boring to have a groundhog day (Daily the same routine). Most of us succumb to this phenomenon. However some manage to break the shackles of monotony. Change the status-quo. The younger generation seem to be more receptive to change. This is because, unlike the older people, they are not prejudiced. Their mind and beliefs are still malleable. For some people, it’s a daily dose of thrill that they want to experience. While for others, it may be an obligation. People work for different reasons. Some for growing, some for the knowledge, some for the money and so on. Whatever may be the case, one thing we all know is that we must keep working.

Work is worship. You should enjoy the work that you do. Like a carpenter who whistles while he is sawing. Work for work’s sake. Not the results. Some of you think that we work for the end results. That is not true. If our work is perfect, the end result is almost guaranteed. It’s not the destination, but the path that is important. There are different ways of achieving the goal. The most important part of the work is the execution. But first you must have the skills. And before that comes talent. You see, most of us have been blesses with one or multiple talents. We must identify this first and only work where we can apply it. Talent once converted to skills that we acquire is the logical way looking ahead. An most important is our style of working or the way we execute that work. In NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) there are three kinds of personalities : Visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. We may be any of these types but what matters is what we bring to the table. There is a saying :

Trust in God, but bring Data to the table.

This data that you bring to the table is your talent, skills and execution style.. To paraphrase

Talent >>> Skills >>> Style of execution.

We are like a servo motor. A servo motor improves it’s output over time. It achieves this by feeding back the error to the input, so that the next time around, you get a better output. We are also a learning machine. However, some people do not learn from their mistakes. This may be due to many reasons :

• They have not understood what the mistake was
• They are not having the skill to correct it
• They are slow learners
• They are thick headed

Our aim while working should be for perfection. And in this race against time, we have to be very agile and alert. Gone are the days when we had time at our disposal and we could manage the schedule. In today’s world of bits, changes happen faster than the speed of light. You were working on something and maybe because of myriad reasons, you may have to disrupt your own work and pick up something new for competitive advantage.

The great sages of the past mentioned about two terms : Action and Inaction.

Action is focussed work when you forget the mind. Inaction is the opposite of that. Action in Inaction means that although you may be idling, you are working.away. Because you are not still. You get thoughts and that automatically drives you. While Inaction in action means that although you are working, there is a deep silence in you. This concept has to be understood clearly. Your work is your karma. One way to realize God is through work. You may have read a lot of books, but this is not the final word. The word is an experience to be had. And through work we can get liberated. Instead of picking up a book, if you pick up a guitar and play, chances are, you will achieve realization sooner. Work, where and when, you forget yourself is true work. Work is your ticket to Nirvana. Like master Yoda said to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars : ‘No try. Do’

All the best,

Guru30