Life On Purpose

I didn’t make soil, or blood, or light. I didn’t make the water I drink. I didn’t cause the sun to hang in the sky or the crops to grow. I didn’t design the system by which plants cast off oxygen as a waste product, oxygen that keeps me alive. Nor did I extract the crude oil from the ground and refine it into gasoline to fuel my car. And I wouldn’t, for the life of me, know how to make a car from scratch either.

            I didn’t grow the cotton, weave and dye the cloth, or sew it into these clothes. I didn’t invent language, write the world’s literature, or teach myself how to read. I didn’t discover electricity, design this computer, pave these roads, build this house, or make all the art that lends depth, significance, and beauty to it all.

            My life is supported by countless natural systems, and the work of hundreds of thousands of people who I’ll never meet.

I don’t do anything. I just get up in the morning, put on my pants, drink some coffee, and try to keep up. Everything I do, everything I build, everything I create, is only possible because of the boundlessly supportive universe in which I find myself. All creation is co-creation. There is no such thing as the self-made man. Even if you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps, somebody else made the bootstraps.

            In Vedanta philosophy these dynamic relationships are known as dharma. The Sanskrit word dharma comes from the root dhri meaning to support, to sustain, or to hold. In its most basic sense, dharma is the supportive nature of universe, including the laws of physics, the maxims of biology, and the breathtaking harmony of all of these systems nested within systems that make life possible. But it doesn’t stop there. Dharma also means the social order, the way human ingenuity weaves a web where all of our contributions intertwine to create sustenance for us all. We are clever builders with opposable thumbs and an insatiable drive to create.

            There is no such thing as insignificant work. From the field hand to the brain surgeon, the cafeteria worker to the Nobel laureate, every human effort matters, because it all exists in an interlocking edifice of inter-being: pull one brick out and the whole thing comes down.

            And now the moral dimension. Dharma imposes an ethical obligation. It’s imperative that we pitch in. In the same way that we are supported, we are morally obligated to take the talents, passions, and abilities we have been given and offer them as contributions to the sustenance of the universe. For some mysterious reason, the sacred formless source of the universe took form as you. Trust the source. Allow the fledgling idea that you are infinitely significant to take flight. There has never before been a human being exactly like you with your sensibilities, talents, and gifts, nor will there ever be again. You’re a one-off. And there must be some reason why the sacred, eternal, formless source of the universe took form as you here in the world of time-bound, embodied forms. You’re needed. There is work to do – work only you can do.   

When seen through this lens, the work that we feel called to do is a sacred calling. Our calling is that still, quiet voice within us nudging us to take risks, think big, and throw ourselves into the flow of our own best life. Something’s tugging us toward self-actualization the way sunlight tugs the branches of trees upward in ever grander expressions of themselves. How do we discover our dharma? Your mind doesn’t know, but your heart does. Your love will lead you to your purpose. As the Sufi poet Rumi put it, “Let yourself be silently drawn by the pull of what you really love.”

            You have eyes. You see the woundedness of the world. You have a heart. You feel the pain of injustice and cruelty. You have ears. You hear the quiet voice of the truth hidden just beneath the din. You have hands and a mind and two strong legs. You can help. In fact, your own happiness depends on it. As we feed we are fed. As we teach we are taught. As we heal we are healed. As we love we are loved. Our joy arises only insofar as we are able to lift the joy of others.

            As you discover the places where your passion meets the needs of the world, you are uncovering your dharma. And when you live in accord with your dharma – when you are true to your sacred purpose – two amazing things happen. One, life gets easier. It gets easier because you feel yourself being lifted. You’re no longer struggling alone. Allies and resources mysteriously show up when you least expect them. And two, the quality of your work elevates. Your work is better now because you are weaving your unique contributions into the supportive outpouring of literally everything else. In cosmic cooperation, our efforts are amplified.

            In chapter three of the Vedanta classic The Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna, “Every selfless act is born from Brahman, the eternal, infinite Godhead. He is present in every act of service. All life turns on this law.” In other words, in the consciousness of surrender to your higher purpose, working not for your own gain but in the consciousness of service, the flow of the universe is pouring forth from you like water from a fountain. You are not doing the work, the work is doing you. In the theologies of the west, where God is personified, a similar concept is found. It only sounds different. Jews, Christians, and Muslims say things like “God, use me. Make me an instrument. Lead me where you want me to be. Tell me what you want me to say. Thy will, not mine be done.” The result is the same – selfless action performed not for self-interest but for the good.

            Peak performance in any endeavor is realized only through self-forgetting. When we are attached to selfish outcomes, we fail. When we put other’s needs first and act for the sheer joy of it with no attachments to specific outcomes, our egos disappear leaving an opening through which the light of the divine reveals itself. We didn’t need to seek greatness, we had only to get out of its way.

            All work is service. We must cultivate the consciousness of seeing our work as a love-offering. This shift will liberate us from the chains of craving and attachment. We’ll no longer be working for a private reward alone. We know we’ll get paid. But we know the wealth and wellness our work co-creates goes far beyond self-interest, far beyond dollars and cents. As we work for these larger purposes, our deeper reward will be the embodied knowledge that we are fast in the arms of a conscious, loving universe. You can’t get that from your 401K. But you should have one of those anyway.   

The Five Questions

There is nothing as powerful as a question. Answers close everything down. Questions open everything up.

In our efforts to improve our lives, our careers, our relationships, and our creative output it’s important to spend some quality time with a handful of good questions.

What really matters to me?

There are so many conflicting demands made on our attention. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Before you know it, the day is gone. And what do you have to show for it? Every moment requires a decision in the face of an infinite array of possibilities. The moments turn to hours, the hours turn to days, and before you know it, another year is gone. And you never know how many of those you have left. The little things add up and become the whole. Our life is the sum of our decisions. “How we spend our days,” wrote Annie Dillard, “is, of course, how we spend our lives.” It’s vitally important that we by any means necessary clarify our values and order our priorities. There is no time to waste time. Make room for what really matters. As Stephen Covey says, put first things first. Whatever doesn’t fit gets dropped. Learn how to be o.k. with this.

A good way to re-order your priorities is by asking this next question.

Why am I doing this?

We do things for a lot of different reasons, some valid, some empty. Start being more careful about what you say yes to. Honestly assess the quality and value of the experiences you sign up for. Are you a thoughtful steward of your time, talent and treasure? What are you getting out of this? A tangible benefit? The joy of contributing to a worthy cause? Do these actions help cement a relationship that is important to me? Or am I doing this just to curry favor and feed my ego? There are no hard and fast rules here. Again, the question is so much more important, so much more vitally alive than the answer. When we live in the why, we stay open to the flashes of intuition and insight that guide us through the challenging terrain of motive.

What do we owe each other?

We do not live alone, no matter how isolated we feel. Our lives are inexorably bound up in the lives of everyone and everything else. We breathe the same air, share the same space and support each other in innumerable ways. Our decision making needs to begin in the realization of our complete and utter interdependency. From that foundation it becomes clear that our society comes with a contract – the moral obligation to take responsibility for co-creating a world that works for everyone. That being said, we cannot offer ourselves up as martyrs on the altars of other people’s self-absorption. Finding the line between altruism and self-love is the work of every thinking man and woman. Compassionate action must be our guiding principle, including compassion for ourselves – why should we be excluded? Again, there are no hard and fast rules, just a formless, living awareness of our interdependency and a simultaneous acknowledgment of our personal liberty and responsibility. We cannot save everyone we meet from their own bad choices. But we also know that our fates are intertwined, and a blind eye and closed fist is a miserable response that shuts us off from our own happiness.

What is happiness?

When you keep it simple, happiness is simply feeling comfortable in your own skin. It’s a word we use to describe a general sense of well-being born of a thousand mothers – external circumstances, biology, the actions of others and our own free-will decision to choose happiness in spite of all those things.  Without putting too fine a point on it, we all know what happiness is, yet we must keep this question open and alive if we are to move through the minefield of the myriad conflicting demands placed on us.  We have to develop a subtle understanding of long-term self-interest. The willingness to sacrifice momentary, fleeting pleasures for long-term well-being is the watermark of maturity. Discipline, mastery and self-restraint create the conditions in which our deepest and most authentic joy can thrive. For Aristotle, happiness is the result of risk-taking, hard work, and the courageous cultivation of our innate potential. Having the will power to nurture our own excellence and avoid the dissipation of trivial pursuits is an essential component of the well-lived life. And yet we must avoid thinking of happiness as a distant goal, an endpoint achievable only after we arrange all of the outer elements of our lives in accord with our whimsical demands. Nothing outside of us makes us happy. Happiness is a decision. It is quality of being, not a passive response to favorable stimuli.  Pay attention to the subtle, fluid nature of your own emotional weather systems. Know that while there are always going to be ups and downs, it is possible to move in the general direction of happiness. One of the best ways to do that is to ask yourself this next question.

What am I?

Not Who am I? but What am I? Who am I? simply elicits a long list of labels and social definitions – man, woman, child, son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, college student, job description, nationality, introvert, extrovert, political affiliation, ad infinitum. When the list is done, you’re still no closer to the real question. What’s beneath all of those masks? Don’t let the brevity or the childlike simplicity of the question fool you. This is a tough one. I know this sounds strange, but don’t let the mind rush to an answer – it will gladly offer up all of the usual suspects: a soul, a body, a spirit, a mass of protoplasm. The mind is incapable of answering this question – how could it?  The mind is a function of the self, not its source. Asking the mind to define the mind is like asking your eyes to see your eyes. Confused? That’s the point. The mind is out of its depth here. Like a Zen koan, the question Who am I? nudges us through the veil that divides our surface consciousness from the depths of our inner witness, a profound and wordless knowing that hums with the energy of Being itself.  How can a wave know that it is the entirety of the sea while it is utterly identified with the wave-state?

Again, as much as we long to run into the arms of every awaiting answer, it is far more powerful to simply remain in the uncertainty created by the imposition of the question itself. As magnets attract iron, questions attract insight.  Answers, on the other hand, attract argument.

 Socrates lived his life, and ultimately gave his life, in the pursuit of self-knowledge. The dialogues of Plato that tell his story are masterful testimonies to the power of inquiry. Socrates wasn’t interested in cataloging the qualities of things; it was their essence he was after – beauty, truth, justice, and the good. And most importantly, what are we in the face of this eternal mystery?

Learn to trust the authority of your own inner voice. There is wisdom in the field of awareness, available to anyone willing to become silent enough to hear it. Take the time to listen. If you aren’t already, begin journaling. Take these questions into your prayer and meditation. In one way or another, make it a daily practice to spend time in the contemplation of the five questions.

The Phi Theta Kappa Address: Learning to Serve

The following is a transcript of a talk I gave at the induction ceremony of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society at Southwestern College on February 18, 2012.

Good morning and thank you all so much for this honorable invitation. It’s profoundly inspiring to be in the presence of so many deeply disciplined and completely committed people.

Over 100 years ago Phi Theta Kappa was created to honor, inspire and celebrate academic excellence. And over the last 100 plus years, tens of thousands of outstanding young people have earned the right to wear the banner of this esteemed honor society. And today, we celebrate you, our newest inductees.

On this important occasion, I think it would be a good idea, alongside the pageantry and celebration, to reflect for a few minutes on some important questions that we’re generally too busy to think about because we’re working so hard at being successful. But what is all this success really for? What is it really that we’re working towards? What is the real purpose of education?

Sometimes it seems that education is about gathering information, collecting data and hypotheses and theories and techniques and methods and more and more and more and more until you think you’re going to burst. It’s as if every class is an information dump – teachers back up giant trucks full of knowledge and dump it all in the middle of the room and you’re expected to carry all of it away and make good use of it.

All of that may be true to a large extent. But lost in that model is a more ancient notion of what education is really all about. The word education comes from the Latin educare which means “to draw out”. In other words, in this classical sense, the purpose of education is not to cover you over with layers and layers of what everybody else thinks, but to draw you out of yourself, the way a sculpture is lifted out of a bath of water.

Here’s a dirty little secret. Your teachers don’t really know anything. Sure, we’ve read more books than you and taken more classes than you, and after years of teaching we’ve certainly mastered our disciplines and learned how to effectively draw others into them. But we are not pouring our wisdom, such as it is, into you like water into an empty vessel. All we teachers really do is set up a series of tasks and challenges – read this, try this, find your way through this confusion, struggle through this problem – and when you take on these activities earnestly and vigilantly, something begins to shift inside of you. The real you begins to emerge.

The best education then, true education, is not indoctrination. True education does not bind you to tired and stale second-hand opinions of powerful others. True education sets you free, to finally be who and what you really are. It draws you up out of your fear and safety and invites you, or drags you, onto the wider stage where the rest of us are waiting for you to pitch in and help us heal the world.

So in a very real sense, education doesn’t add anything to you – it removes barriers. The Tao te Ching says that “in the pursuit of knowledge everyday something is added, but in the pursuit of wisdom, everyday something is dropped.” As we become who we really are, all the fear and artificiality falls away from us. Real education gives us to ourselves.

I know you’ve all experienced this yourselves. In the best classes with the best teachers, you’ve confronted this irony – that wisdom is the end result of a process of unlearning – letting go all of the false assumptions, prejudices, conditioned responses, biases, judgments and opinions that coalesced during our long childhood and adolescence. College strips all of that away.

A true teacher frees you from the things you think you know.

A true teacher leads you into an open field beyond all the partisan encampments.

A true teacher softens the walls that compartmentalize the uncarved wholeness of the world.

And out there in that field, with the rest of us, you find your own path, your own rhythm, your own light.

And then within yourself a sense of authority arises, an unshakable conviction that you are on the right track, that this is where you are supposed to be. Joseph Campbell calls it “following your bliss.” It comes from within and tells you clearly whether you are on the right path or not.

Bliss is different from pleasure. Bliss isn’t always pleasurable. Sometimes it’s challenging, difficult, frightening. But when you feel it, you finally feel alive, really alive, and you wouldn’t trade anything in the world for it.

And then comes the surprise – we learn that our deepest, most abiding joy lies not in the private fulfillment of desires. Our deepest, most abiding joy arises only when we perform the work that we have been given to do, in the service of others. When we take the tools we have been given and courageously fashion out of the raw materials of our lives great works of compassionate action, when we do this, a joy wells up in us that affirms our very existence. Finally we feel comfortable in our own skin. Finally we feel useful. Finally we feel like we are a part, a vital part, of something bigger than ourselves.

And this is where our education has been leading us.

And next comes this insight – that there is no difference between self-interest and the interests of others. In western philosophy we often place altruism – self-sacrifice for others – and egoism – pure self-interest, on opposite ends of a spectrum. We act as if they were diametric opposites. I’m either doing things for myself, or I’m sacrificing myself for others. It’s one or the other. But our own lived experience reveals that that construct is a lie. When we learn how to live lives of service, when we fully embody the truth that any and all work is service, then we awaken to the fact that our self-interest and the interests of others are, and have always been, wholly interconnected.

The Dalai Lama puts it this way: “Compassionate action is the highest form of self-interest.” In other words, only when we truly embody the consciousness of service does our own deepest joy arise.

So today we celebrate learning and achievement. Today we celebrate hard work and great accomplishment. Today we celebrate willingness and optimism. Today we join together to bind our talents and gifts into a great moral force for good. And today we honor that hunger you feel inside of you, that hunger to learn more, to grow, to do more, to be more, for that yearning you feel arising in you is a sacred energy, a divine expansion. It is nothing less than the universe expressing itself in you, through you, as you.

From us, to whom so much has been given, so much is expected. We have the talent, we have learned how to cultivate the discipline, we have the desire and the ambition, and we have the chops. We know how to write, we’re good at math. We figure things out. We read. We incessantly read. And all of this struggle is polishing us smooth, and shaping us for the rich and rough road ahead.

The real purpose of education is to draw out our authentic nature, and equip our joy with the tools it needs to better be of service, to be a part of the healing of the world. And the world needs healing. So many suffer. So much injustice thrives, awaiting only our awareness. For in the withering light of our vision suffering and injustice cannot stand. And in the warmth of our compassionate action, misery and disease cannot persist.

So take these colors, take this banner, take this honor of membership in Phi Theta Kappa and carry it forward as it carries you forward, into a future not one of us knows. But together, with the good men and women all around us, we will walk across that bridge together, and begin to build a world that works for everyone because that is what our soul is asking for, that is what we were born to do, that is what all this hard work is for, and that is where our deepest joy lies.

Meaningful Work

In my role as a professor I have the opportunity to counsel many young people as they face the endless options before them. What should I major in? What kind of career should I work toward? Should I do what I love or make a living? I’m not there to tell them what to do or who to be. In my counseling work I don’t try to change people. I help them tell the truth to themselves about themselves. The healing comes from that.

When students agonize about their majors, their college choices, their careers – in other words, their futures – what they are really agonizing about is a far more fundamental question, the most important question of all: who am I or even more to the point what am I? No other question so effectively clears out the accumulated debris of years of fear and misunderstanding leaving us clarified and ready to act in accord with our essential nature.

Although he is terribly out of fashion and much maligned, the philosopher Karl Marx made a powerful point when he suggested that instead of homo sapien, our species would be more aptly named homo faber. Homo sapien means “man the thinker”. Homo faber means “man the maker”. For Marx, the single most defining characteristic of our species is not our ability to think but our ability to shape the world around us. Yes, birds make nests and bees make hives, but human beings reach into the ground extracting iron, oil and other elemental substances and then with our opposable thumbs and creative visions we turn the earth’s elements into space shuttles, heart valves and iPads. Like gods we pick up clay and breathe our essence into it. In the alchemy of transformation, work is our talisman.

It is in our nature to work, to create, to combine, to innovate, to synthesize and to build. The things we make, whether they are songs or skyscrapers, are externalizations of our essence. And as we shape the world after our own visions, the world in turn shapes us. It is hard to know where our consciousness ends and the world begins. When we invent the world we are inventing ourselves. And work is the sacramental act that binds it all together.

A former student recently wrote to me through Facebook and relayed a struggle he was having. His heart and his gut were telling him to major in religious studies but he knew that with only a BA he wouldn’t be able to teach or in any other way earn a living with that degree. Grad school in the foreseeable future was out of the question and without a Masters degree his fear was that he would have to settle for some menial job outside his genuine interests – something just to pay the bills. As he framed it, the dilemma was between making money and meaningful work. He asked me what to do.

When a philosophical dilemma arises the problem is often rooted in the way we frame the issue. In other words, to make any headway on this dilemma we must first step back and examine the words we are using. What are our underlying, unexamined assumptions? What does “meaningful work” really mean?

What we have are two conflicting truths. On one hand is the notion that each of us must realize our passion by finding work that is deeply and personally meaningful for us. By finding a career that aligns with our deepest purpose we realize joy. From this perspective, the greatest blunder is selling-out for the almighty dollar and letting our sacred purpose wither.

On the other hand is the equally compelling notion that any work, so long as it does not profit from the suffering of others, can be profoundly fulfilling if the attitude of the worker is deeply committed to the consciousness of service. In this truth the so-called dilemma between making money and meaningful work dissolves. Any work can be meaningful work because meaning is found in the consciousness of the worker, not in external conditions or circumstances. It is this second possibility that often gets short shrift from both career counselors and spiritual advisors. The idea that any work can be meaningful is just not as sexy as following your bliss.

But not everyone gets to be an astronaut or a rock star. Very few earn a living at poetry or painting. Mystics and monks may get manna from heaven, but money? Not so much. And last time I checked, mothers don’t earn a dime. Clearly there must be a way to shift our consciousness into realizing that the sacred nature of work is only incidentally related to income stream. If your dream job has not yet materialized and you find yourself having to take whatever kind of employment comes your way to put food on the table and a roof over your head, consider this. There is great honor and dignity in being a part of something bigger than you, even if that something is an assembly line, a muffler shop, an office suite or a corner café. Some of the most deeply fulfilled people I’ve ever met are humble people with simple jobs – taxi drivers, janitors, warehouse workers, shipping clerks, gardeners.

When you surrender yourself to the choreography of your work, you slip into the now moment where you encounter other human beings, beings of infinite value, and you have the momentous opportunity to bring your training, skill and compassion to bear on their suffering and unmet needs. Making sandwiches, filing paperwork and cleaning rooms may seem like humble work, but it is no less essential than rocket science – without either one the world would be immeasurably poorer. No matter the nature of your work, realize that you are playing an essential role in bringing order out of chaos. As you trim hedges and stock groceries and wipe tables and deliver packages you are participating in the healing of the world. You are mending hearts. You are creating beauty. You are bringing people out of darkness. You are feeding them body, mind and soul. With every kindness you are restoring the faith of the people you serve. Your work is the connective tissue of the body of humanity. To recast an old theater adage, there are no small jobs, only small workers.

Whether we are called teachers or not, all of us teach. The way we treat other people teaches them who they are and who we are. Every encounter, no matter how mundane, is a holy meeting.

So while it is true that we must follow our bliss it is also true that we must guard against the tendency of the ego to hijack our hearts and twist our minds into thinking that we are too good for menial labor. When the Zen student complained to the master that after three weeks at the monastery he had still not learned a single thing about Zen the master asked, “Have you eaten?”

“Yes,” said the student.

“Then wash your bowl.”

All work is service. And service is the work of heaven. Who would think themselves too good to perform the work of heaven?

It is right in the midst of these everyday chores that we realize wisdom. Sweep the path. Wash the sheets. Lift up those around you who have fallen. Let go your empty dreams of fame and glory. They were only the projections of your fears and self-aggrandizement. Instead, embrace your role as a part of the whole, not beneath anyone else or better than anyone else. This is our meaningful work.