It has been commonly observed that people celebrate their success and feel happy about their achievements but get frustrated and disappointed in failure. On the contrary, wiser people neither feel delighted about achieving success nor get distressed in the loss. For them, real pleasure lies in doing their work. In fact, the pleasure attained while doing work is the biggest reward of labor because if one does not enjoy his job, it appears as a burden. Any assignment, done half-heartedly or under pressure, lacks excellence. On the other hand, when a person gets so engrossed in his work that he forgets about the time and space, then it provides absolute pleasure to him.
Only such dedicated efforts make one experience the meaningfulness of life. If the mind is undecided and skeptical while executing any work, not feeling involved or concerned and procrastination persists in mind to avoid the job, it shows that the job at hand is not of mind’s inclination. However, quite often, we have to pursue many such tasks we are not interested in, but they are significant for us; we have to do them, and gradually we start finding them pleasing. For example, kids have an innate inclination for playing, they love fun and frolics, and studying is always a secondary choice for them. But once they are convinced about the importance of education, they begin to understand the significance of the study, and then they stop escaping from it. They then work hard on the course, and later on, acquiring more and more education becomes their life pursuit. Students who succeed in their examinations rejoice on their hard work done during the study, and the ones who fail mourn that whatever hard work they did to achieve success has gone waste. Yug-Rishi once said – ‘Failure only proves that efforts for success were made half-heartedly.’ It is true that failure hurts, and success pleases every person. It is also true that failure is a result of work done half-heartedly and lacking commitment. However, if a person identifies his shortcomings and learns from his previous errors, then failure can become a driving force for future success. Plenty of examples are available about the persons who reached pinnacles of success, winning over innumerable failures. These persons neither got frightened with failures they faced nor were disappointed; instead, they learned lessons from their imperfections, which helped them to do away with their repeated flaws and errors, and they finally succeeded. It is our efforts that make us happy or distressed and not success or failures as is understood otherwise. The fact is only that process of doing as well endows an esthetic feeling to the doer and gratifies the heart.
To intellectually grasp the significance of doing work, one should choose any day when he does not have to do anything except lying idle and that too, without any entertainment. This situation reveals how a restless mind can behave in those restrictive conditions when it can’t do anything. In fact, the mind wants to be engaged in activities whatsoever. Every time it keeps on thinking what to do next, it always keeps on blissing out in its fancies. But when this tranquility of ecstasy of mind is broken, it gets irritated and becomes impatient, which ultimately holds it back from engaging in work willingly. If the mind is controlled and steered to put efforts in any direction, then gradually it begins to rejoice in its activity. All the inventions in the world have been made with the deepest engrossment for the object. Innovative devices came into existence by the use of ingenuity when the mind got more and more deeply involved to concentrate in a specific discipline. All of the scientists so far have invested their hours and days in exploring innovative findings; only then they have been able to get the fruits of their crucial efforts. It is not wrong to say that every human is precious. The difference between a wise person and a common man is that an intelligent person understands his worth and has already perceived the treasure of pleasurable contentment and gratification of soul, while ordinary person quests for that treasure in the external world. The inner wealth is inexhaustible and is an eternal source of incessant beatitude. On the other hand, the wealth of worldly possessions in the outer world is transient, perturbs, and causes mental and emotional disruptions. Indeed, worldly materialistic pleasure can’t be acquired by internal treasure, but this is equally true that an abundance of valuable material possessions can’t help a man realize the state of subtle blissfulness. Ideally, this blissful state can be achieved by considering every work as God’s work and doing it enthusiastically. Maintaining equanimity and without expecting the fruits of one’s actions, it is possible to enjoy any work.
Source: Akhand Jyoti Magazine 2020 Sept-Oct
Akhand Jyoti is not merely a magazine Its an embodiment of my soul
— Pandit Sriram Sharma Acharya