Treating All Work as Karma Yoga

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When the spiritual aspiration
awakens in an individual, he

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often feels like he has to leave
his employment and take up some

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work that is more spiritual.
He tends to equate the type of

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work with some I'll defined
spiritual nature.

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Thus we frequently see spiritual
people and organizations take up

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work to feed the hungry, heal
the sick, etcetera.

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This of course, is very positive
and needed work and we honour

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those who make that commitment.
Such efforts, however, are not

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always immediately feasible for
an individual, particularly if

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he is living and working in the
society, managing the needs of a

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family and taking the employment
that he is able to get.

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He may wind up in restaurant
service or assembly line action,

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or working in a warehouse moving
products around, etcetera.

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From an external standpoint,
there's nothing spiritual about

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these things.
What makes them spiritual or not

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is the attitude and effort put
into any work.

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When 1 takes up a line of work,
even if it is simply as a means

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to supporting the family, it can
be turned into a practice of the

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yoga of works by giving the job
full and careful attention,

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doing the best possible, and
making the situation one that

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enhances 1's own Interstate of
spiritual development through

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that dedicated action.
The story of the devotee at the

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Sri Rabindra Ashram who was
given the task of drying plates

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after they were washed is one
that illustrates this concept.

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There's also the famous story
from the ancient texts about the

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youth who came to a teacher and
asked for becoming a disciple to

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learn the science of
spirituality.

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The teacher gave him 2 cattle
and told him to take them into

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the forest and when they were a
herd of 1000, he should return

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and would obtain the teachings.
How many years of dedicated and

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focused effort went into
succeeding at the task?

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When the youth eventually
returned, the teacher vacated

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his own seat for the student and
told him that he was now the

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teacher.
As he glowed with the knowledge

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of the divine, the mundane
everyday tasks of looking after

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cattle, nurturing, feeding and
protecting them were turned by

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the devoted young person into
the means of his realization.

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During the late 1960s and early
1970s, a number of people went

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to the Oroville project in South
India to help build the

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community.
Many of them were engaged in

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hard manual labor, constructing
the matra mandir or various

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other facilities, planting and
tending trees, cooking food,

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etcetera.
The work in and of itself was

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not inherently what would
traditionally be called

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spiritual, but the dedication
and consecrated action based on

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a deep aspiration is what
transformed the hard work into a

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means of spiritual progress for
many.

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Sri Aurobindo notes quote.
One must take it work done in

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the world as a training and do
it in the spirit of karma yoga.

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What matters there is not the
nature of the work in itself,

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but the spirit in which it is
done.

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It must be in the spirit of the
Gita, without desire, with

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detachment, without repulsion,
but doing it as perfectly as

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possible, not for the sake of
the family or promotion or to

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please the superiors, but simply
because it is the thing that has

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been given in the hand to do.
It is a field of inner training,

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nothing else.
One has to learn in it these

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things, equality,
desirelessness, dedication.

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It is not the work as a thing
for its own sake, but one's

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doing of it and one's way of
doing it that one has to

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dedicate to the Divine.
Done in that spirit it does not

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matter what the work is.
End Quote.

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Reference Srioro Bindu and the
Mother, Looking from Within,

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Chapter 3, Action and Work,
pages 63 to 64.