14 Apr 2020
[Reply to a question by Shri Anil] Swami replied: If you are detached from the fruit of your work (duty), your mind will not be disturbed. If you are attached to the fruit, anxiety or tension constantly keep arising in your mind and they will consume part of your energy, making you weak. While doing God’s work, you are expected to not aspire for any fruit from God. But this being free of aspiration is limited only to God’s work and it should not be applied to your worldly work. If you do your worldly work without aspiring for any fruit, your employer will exploit you by getting work done through you without paying you anything. Hence, you should do worldly work with an aspiration for its justified fruit. But aspiring for the justified fruit of worldly work does not mean continuous attachment to the fruit, every minute. If you are continuously attached to the fruit, it will only create mental tension, which will make you weak since tension consumes a lot of your energy.
If we analogically apply the first law of thermodynamics (Q = E + W), to the mind, the energy supplied to your brain (Q) is partly consumed to do useful work (W) and is partly used to increase mental tension which is like an increase in the internal energy of a system (E). Since our body produces only a limited amount of energy that can be supplied to the brain, as mental tension increases (E), there is lesser and lesser amount of energy available to do useful work (W). Due to an insufficient amount of useful work done, you fail to achieve the desired fruit. Hence, in doing your worldly duties, you must have an aspiration for the fruit of the work, but you should not be continuously aspiring for the fruit.
When you join your job, your appointment order tells you what salary will be paid to you at the end of the month. So, on the last day of the month, you can verify whether the said salary has been paid to you or not. This simple aspiration for the fruit is justified. It does not mean that you should go on thinking about your salary all day long for the whole month! If you constantly think about your salary like that, you will get worried and tense. You will have no energy to do your work. Due to your failure to do your duty properly, the employer will send you out, at the end of the very first month! He might even refuse to pay you for that one month since you have not completed the assigned work properly.
In the Gita, it is repeatedly emphasised that you should work without the aspiration for any fruit. This is said in the context of God’s work alone and is not applicable to ordinary worldly work. In the Gita, God repeatedly urges Arjuna to do God’s work (Mat karma paramo bhava) with all sincerity. God is not like the worldly employer who wants to cheat you by getting work from you without paying you. While working for God, if you aspire for some fruit in return for your work, God will give you the desired fruit in proportion to your work. But if you do His work without any aspiration for the fruit, due to love for Him, He will pay you a million times more than what is justifiably payable to you!
★ ★ ★ ★ ★