The Great Work of Your Life

by Stephen Cope

  Katherine had been—indeed still was—a trustee for a number of schools and community institutions. This was a role she played well. She understood what it meant to be responsible for the best use of an organization’s assets. In fact, she’d been notoriously ferocious in conserving the assets of every organization on whose board she’d sat. And she understood that the assets were to be used for one thing only: to maximize the mission. When she transferred this frame of thinking to her own life, it was as if a light switched on in her brain. She saw that she was the sole trustee of her own gifts, opportunities, and assets. It was up to her to put these to work in the very best interests of the world. What was her mission?

  I reminded Katherine of Teilhard de Chardin’s identical conclusion: “My life does not belong to me.” Chardin would have said, “My life belongs to God.” Katherine found it closer to the truth to say, “My life belongs to the world.” This reframed the struggle of her life. It set her free. As she internalized this insight, she realized that she had made a small but crucial error in her understanding of her life. Up until this point, she had been dedicating her gifts, her assets, and her opportunities, to herself. She had taken her self as her primary project in life. And this had caused suffering.

  One evening she called me, excited. “Stephen, I’ve discovered something that’s probably totally obvious to you.” She went on to explain her insight. If you don’t find your work in the world and throw yourself wholeheartedly into it, you will inevitably make your self your work. There’s no way around it: You will take your self as your primary project. You will, in the very best case, dedicate your life to the perfection of your self. To the perfection of your health, intelligence, beauty, home, or even spiritual prowess. And the problem is simply this: This self-dedication is too small a work. It inevitably becomes a prison.

  Katherine had been startled by this discovery, and she began to see its manifestations everywhere. She saw it, most of all, among her friends. “We’re all constantly preoccupied with ‘How am I doing?’ ‘How am I measuring up?’ ” she said to me. And she realized that no matter how well-perfected it was, her self was never going to be enough. She would forever have to struggle with her aging body, her aging mind, and the increasingly limited accomplishments of her day-to-day life. She would never be enough!

  This insight is brilliantly expressed in the Tao te Ching. “Hope and fear,” it teaches, “are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don’t see the self as self, what do we have to fear?”

  Then, the author of the Tao te Ching, Lao-Tzu, makes a stunning prescription for living a fulfilled life:

  See the world as your self.

  Have faith in the way things are.

  Love the world as your self;

  Then you can care for all things.

  See the world as your self. Then you can care for all things! As we age, we will always be losing the “How am I doing?” game—the “How am I measuring up?” game. Old age, illness, and death heighten our awareness of the inevitable failure of the self project. It is all going down to the grave. But when we throw ourselves into our work for the world, the project of self—with all its disappointments—disappears. When we lavish our love on the world, it doesn’t matter whether we succeed or fail. It’s inherently fulfilling.

  This was precisely Gandhi’s discovery in South Africa. And the insight changed his life. Prior to this, Gandhi had been taking himself as his own project. And he had been a dramatic failure. When he took the world as his project, and gave up any clinging to outcome, he saw that he could not possibly lose.

  See the world as your self. Love the world as your self. This is a simple reframe—like taking one small step to the side. You only have to love what you already love. For Katherine: Gardening. Editing. Writing. The magazine. You only have to love your little corner of the world. But you have to do it intentionally. And full out. And you have to get yourself out of the way. Then you can care for all things.

  Gandhi came to believe that any power he might have to affect the world only emerged when he got himself out of the way, and let God do the work. He came to call this “reducing yourself to zero.” “There comes a time,” he wrote in the peak of his maturity, “when an individual becomes irresistible and his action becomes all-pervasive in its effects. This comes when he reduces himself to zero.”

  It’s a wonderful phrase. Gandhi’s meaning was simple: Only the human being who acts in a way that is empty of self can be the instrument of Soul Force. And it is only Soul Force that can establish a harmonious world. Human beings alone are helpless to resolve conflicts without it. With it, however, Gandhi came to believe that harmony is inevitable. Because harmony, Oneness with all beings, is our true nature.

  Gandhi discovered to his delight that when his own self was not in the way—when he was not clinging to any fixed views about the outcome of his actions—he could be hugely creative. He was free to move on a dime, very much as Harriet Tubman moved. Like Tubman, Gandhi began to listen carefully to his inner guidance and to trust this guidance. As a result, his actions were highly creative, and also wildly unpredictable. Gandhi himself often had no idea what creative solutions would emerge from his inner guidance—or when they would emerge. (In later years, when he was back in India leading the resistance to British domination, he would have all of India waiting with bated breath—sometimes for weeks or months—while he sat quietly in his ashram spinning cotton, praying, and waiting for guidance about the next action.)

  Eknath Easwaran wrote about this phenomenon: “Gandhi was the most bewildering opponent any nation ever faced. Every move he made was spontaneous; every year that passed found him more youthful, more radical, more experimental. British administrators were baffled and exasperated by this little man who withdrew when they would have attacked, attacked when they would have withdrawn, and seemed to be getting stronger day by day. No one knew what he was going to do next, for his actions were prompted not by calculations of what seemed politically expedient, but by a deep intuition which often came to him only at the eleventh hour.”

  8

  Take yourself to zero. Not for yourself, but for the world. Having taken yourself to zero, you are free to act. And Gandhi was a man of action. Indeed, for him, it was action aligned with truth that had true power, true Soul Force.

  Gandhi identified with Thoreau’s near-mystic view of the power of action aligned with Truth. Thoreau, he believed, had fully grasped and articulated his own view of Soul Force. Soul Force means holding to Truth no matter how fierce the storm. Because he wants nothing for himself, the true satyagrahi is not afraid of entering any conflict for the sake of those around him—and he enters it without hostility, without resentment, without resorting even to violent words. In the face of the fiercest provocation, he never lets himself forget that he and his attacker are one. This is the true spirit of ahimsa, or “nonviolence.” But ahimsa is more than just the absence of violence: It is the presence of justice and of love. Gandhi always made it perfectly clear that “the satyagrahi’s object is to convert, not to coerce, the wrongdoer.”

  In South Africa, Gandhi had brought this understanding to maturity. His movement of nonviolent resistance in South Africa was spectacularly successful. Six years after his first civil disobedience—and after many other such actions—he and the South African president, General Jan Smuts, signed a pact that led, at last, to the so-called “Indian Relief Bill,” which restored Indians’ civil rights. Gandhi would call it the Magna Carta of South African Indians, and it was a mammoth victory for Soul Force.

  9

  By the year 1915 Gandhi knew that he was complete with his work in South Africa. He felt called to return to India, where his people were suffering under the increasingly onerous burden of British rule. Gandhi returned to India a seasoned veteran of satyagraha, and he believed that the principles he had tried so successfully in South Africa could be put into action in India.
He believed that they would inevitably result in the political freedom and self-determination of the Indian people. He knew that this could be done without war, without violence, and without contempt for the British. And he knew that it was his dharma to lead the way.

  Gandhi had left India a fearful, befuddled young attorney. He returned a masterful satyagrahi. More than anything else, he had mastered his disabling fear. He had become an exemplar of courage. And he knew that this kind of courage would be required of the whole Indian people in order to throw off British rule. “Greater courage is required of the satyagrahi,” he often said, “than the run-of-the mill soldier with a gun in his hand. Any coward can be brave when holding a rifle.”

  Gandhi’s courage surprised no one more than himself. He sometimes wondered just how far his own courage would hold. He really did not know. He wrote: “Have I that nonviolence of the brave in me? My death alone will show that. If someone killed me and I died with a prayer for the assassin on my lips, and God’s remembrance and consciousness of His living presence in the sanctuary of my heart, then alone would I be said to have had the nonviolence of the brave.”

  Krishna taught Arjuna that the origin of all fearlessness is the facing of death. Indeed, their entire conversation took place just on the edge of death—on the edge of the great battlefield on which Arjuna might well die. Gandhi himself had to wrestle with death almost constantly throughout his career. Indeed, it is likely that Gandhi knew he would face a violent death. He wrote presciently: “Death is the appointed end of all life. To die by the hand of a brother rather than by disease or in such other way, cannot be for me a matter of sorrow. And if, even in such a case, I am free from the thought of anger or hatred against my assailant, I know that it will redound to my eternal welfare, and even the assailant will later on realize my perfect innocence.”

  This is exactly how Gandhi did die, of course. Then seventy-eight years old, he was in Delhi, working—as ever—for unity. He had had a particularly busy day. And as he was hurrying to evening prayers, arm in arm with two young disciples, a young man approached him, offered him a gesture of respect, and then fired a gun point-blank into his heart.

  As the Great Soul crumpled to the ground, his mantra emerged spontaneously from his lips: Rama, Rama, Rama.

  10

  For Mahatma Gandhi, all of his courage, all of his trust in God, all of his capacity to love the world as himself issued from the pages of the Bhagavad Gita.

  No human being living in the twentieth century has lived the precepts of this great text with more fidelity and passion than Gandhi. “Select your purpose,” he challenged, “selfless, without any thought of personal pleasure or personal profit, and then use selfless means to attain your goal.”

  “Do not resort to violence,” Gandhi wrote, “even if it seems at first to promise success; it can only contradict your purpose. Use the means of love and respect even if the result seems far off or uncertain. Then throw yourself heart and soul into the campaign, counting no price too high for working for the welfare of those around you, and every reverse, every defeat, will send you deeper into your own deepest resources. Violence can never bring an end to violence; all it can do is provoke more violence. But if we can adhere to complete nonviolence in thought, word, and deed, India’s freedom is assured.”

  And assured, indeed, it was, largely as a result of the faith and integrity of this one small man who took himself to zero—and who simply put into practice the words of his divine mentor, Krishna.

  11

  When Gandhi first discovered his dharma—“to unite parties riven asunder”—he realized that this calling would somehow save him—give him something to live for—give him a focus for his life. Gandhi’s sacred calling showed up just in the nick of time. It appeared to him as a lifeboat in a stormy sea. At last! Something reliable to cling to. Something that actually floats. Beethoven’s music occurred for him, too, as a welcome raft in a gale. And Keats’s poetry. And Mark’s playwriting.

  Many of us have precisely this experience of dharma: a lifeboat! You cling to it because it is the only boat you have and the storm is rising. You work at it—you row as hard as you possibly can against the storm, because you have to survive. But gradually the seas calm, and you don’t have to row quite so hard, and you actually begin to enjoy the exercise. You get stronger from the exertion—as Gandhi did. Finally, the storm abates. You have a spell of beautiful weather. You feel your strength. You begin to love this rowing. You begin to love the sea itself. You see things in the waves that others do not see. You begin to see that rowing this little boat of dharma connects you to very life. Gradually the task of rowing itself begins to ease. At times it is effortless. There are moments of rapture.

  Dharma is very much like Gandhi’s mantra. Rama, Rama, Rama. Eventually it takes on a life of its own. It does things spontaneously that you had no reason to expect. It begins to drill down into the deepest parts of your mind. Soon you begin to see that this dharma is not just any old stick of bamboo. It is a magic wand. A wish-fulfilling wand. It is a way to know—to interact with, to be in relationship with—the deepest parts of yourself. It is a vehicle to know the world.

  Eventually your dharma takes you into a new land, as Gandhi’s did. A land where you can rely only upon God. You cross a bridge, and you are suspended in the air. Only God is holding you up now.

  “Abandon all supports,” says Krishna to Arjuna in one of his great final teachings. “Cast off your dependency on everything external, Arjuna, and rely on the Self alone.”

  We work first because we have to work. Then because we want to work. Then because we love to work. Then the work simply does us. Difficult at the beginning. Inevitable at the end.

  EPILOGUE

  Krishna and Arjuna have now reached the end of their dialogue. It’s twilight on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. There’s a cool breeze moving over the now-quiet field, bringing a faint smell of the river that lies beyond. Arjuna has gotten up to stretch, and to bring a cup of water to Krishna, who is seated under a small banyan tree at the edge of the field.

  As Arjuna sits down on a log next to Krishna, they both realize that the wondrous dialogue has reached its conclusion. How long have they sat here talking? For weeks? For months? For years? Arjuna really does not know. It seems as though lifetimes have elapsed.

  Krishna turns his head to look directly into Arjuna’s eyes, and asks, “Have you understood the teaching? Have you listened with attention? Are you now free from your doubts and confusion?”

  Arjuna hardly knows how to answer. The whole dialogue seems like an intense and vivid dream. Arjuna knows, though, that he has been mysteriously transformed. “My memory has been restored!” he cries. Through communing with Krishna, he has remembered who he really is. Arjuna is no longer deluded into thinking that he is his mortal body, or his personality, or even his various tasks and roles, noble as they are. He knows that his True Self is unborn, is undying, uncreated—immortal.

  But the most important outcome is this: Having remembered who he is, Arjuna now knows how to act. Remember that from its very opening sentences, the Bhagavad Gita has been a treatise on action. When you know who you are, you will know how to act.

  Arjuna returns Krishna’s gaze with a faint smile. He feels a wave of gratitude wash through him. “You have dispelled my doubts and delusions,” he says, “and I understand through your grace. My faith is firm now, and I will do your will.” Arjuna is no longer paralyzed by doubt. He is ready to move back into action. But it will now be action with a difference: It will be action guided by the voice of the Inner Divine.

  Krishna, in the final chapter of the Gita, describes the magnificently transformed Arjuna: “Free from self-will, aggressiveness, arrogance, anger, and the lust to possess people or things, he is at peace with himself and others and enters into the unitive state. United with Brahman, ever joyful, beyond the reach of desire and sorrow, he has equal regard for every livi
ng creature and attains supreme devotion to me. By loving me he comes to know me truly; then he knows my glory and enters into my boundless being. All his acts are performed in my service, and through my grace he wins eternal life.”

  2

  Arjuna looks again at the field of Kurukshetra. He anticipates the massing armies that will come with the morning. He perceives again the odor of war.

  You have been wondering how the story ends. Will Arjuna fight the battle?

  Arjuna will fight, yes. But what is the real nature of this fight? At the outset of our tale, Arjuna saw at Kurukshetra only the great battlefield of a conventional war. Now he has new eyes. He sees that the battle Krishna has called him to fight is really the battle of life. And this battle is revealed to be the battle of separation—the separation of sons from fathers, the separation of cousins from uncles, the separation of caste, the separation of race. But most of all, the separation from God.

  Arjuna is still a warrior. But his duty now is to fight a different kind of battle. Henceforth he will be engaged with all of his might and passion and skillfulness in the moral equivalent of war.

  3

  So, we have reached the end of our journey together. Of course, the Bhagavad Gita is just a tale. But do its teachings bear out in real life? In your life?

  If you bring forth what is within you it will save you.

  Do you think this is so?

  My own view is this: There are some things, alas, from which we cannot be saved. Indeed, we cannot be saved from most of the things from which we most desperately want to be saved. We cannot really be saved from pain, from loss, from failure, from dissatisfaction. We cannot be saved from grasping and aversion.