Read The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling Online
Authors: Stephen Cope
The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling (53 page)
Oh, for God’s sake. It is just too damned much work to be an expanded self. Couldn’t I just be an ordinary self?
The great twentieth-century monk Thomas Merton encountered precisely the same spiritual exhaustion partway through his life. The chief source of this exhaustion, he writes, “is the selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a sparkling success in our own eyes and in the eyes of other men.” His vision of the possibility of relief from this burden occurred to me as brilliant: “We can only get rid of this anxiety by being content to miss something in almost everything we do.”
What? Miss something in almost everything we do? That is allowed?
Merton says it is: “
We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us—whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need.”
This has the feel of truth to me. A difficult truth. But a truth that may free me from the obviously false hope that I
can
have everything—indeed, from the view that I
must
have everything in order to have a fulfilling life.
Authentic dharma frees us from this false hope. Merton sees deeply into the nature of this freedom: “
… the fulfillment of every individual vocation demands not only the renouncement of what is evil in itself, but also of all the precise goods that are not willed for us by God.” We are
not called to
everything
. We are just called to what we’re called to. It is inevitable that authentically good parts of ourselves will not be fulfilled. What a relief.
“We can do no great things,” wrote the nineteenth-century French saint, Teresa, “only small things with great love.”
Thomas Merton—who struggled through his whole life with his longing to be considered a great author—writes of this: “
… we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. It is, therefore, a very great thing to be little, which is to say: to be ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.”
Merton here catches exactly the spirit of Thoreau and Anthony and Tubman—and all the others. These great exemplars of dharma each took a craftsmanlike view toward life: Do your daily duty, and let the rest go. Poke away systematically at your little calling. Tend the garden a little bit every day. You do not have to exhaust yourself with great acts. Show up for your duty, for your dharma. Then let it go.
In monasteries of old, the monk’s dharma, his purpose in life, was said to be this:
to support the choir
. In Latin,
propter chorum
. Literally, his life was lived “in support of the choir.” He was not a soloist. He was not a diva. He was part of a magnificent whole.
5
The holy dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna is at an end. It has been so powerful that it has transformed all who have listened to it. Sanjaya himself—the narrator of “the wondrous dialogue”—has been changed by it. Just recalling the scene of their dialogue lights him up with ecstasy. “The wonder of it makes my hair stand on end!” he exclaims.
“
Whenever I remember these wonderful, holy words between Krishna and Arjuna, I am filled with joy,” he says. “And when I remember
the breathtaking form of Krishna, I am filled with wonder and my joy overflows.”
Sanjaya speaks the final words: “
Wherever the divine Krishna and the mighty Arjuna are, there will be prosperity, victory, happiness, and sound judgment. Of this I am sure!”
Dedicated to my earliest mentors
,
Wilson Martindale Compton
and Helen Harrington Compton
,
who demonstrated in their lives the nobility of work
NOTESEpigraph
1
“Every man has a vocation” Thomas Merton.
No Man Is an Island
. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York, 1978, p. 133.
1
“What you fear is” Thomas Merton.
A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals
, Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo. HarperCollins: New York, p. 178.
2
“If you bring forth” “The Gospel of Thomas” 45: 29–33, see Elaine Pagels.
The Gnostic Gospels
. Vintage: New York, 1989, p. xv.
3
“All that is worthwhile” Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in
For the Time Being
, Annie Dillard. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1999, p. 105.
1
“I see omens of chaos” Barbara Stoler Miller.
The Bhagavad Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War
. Bantam: New York, 1986, I.31, p. 25.
2
“Krishna, halt my chariot” ibid., I.21, 22, pp. 23–24.
3
“fathers, grandfathers, teachers” ibid., I.26, p. 24.
4
“Conflicting sacred duties” ibid., 2.7, p. 30.
5
“We don’t know which” ibid., 2.6, p. 30.
6
“My limbs sink” ibid., I.29, 30, p. 25.
7
“I cannot fight” Author’s translation of,
The Bhagavad Gita
, 2.9.
1
“Doubt afflicts the person” Author’s translation,
Gita
, 4.40.
2
“Doubt is a state in which” Charles B. Herbermann et al, eds.
The Catholic Encyclopedia
. Vol. 5. Robert Appleton Company: New York, 1909, p. 141.
3
“Doubt is opposed to certitude” ibid., p. 141.
4
“Krishna, my delusion is destroyed” Stoler Miller,
Gita
, 18.73, p. 153.
5
“No one exists” ibid., 3.5, p. 41.
6
“OK … so I cannot” Occasionally, as in this case, the author has imagined or paraphrased a statement by Arjuna.
7
“Arjuna, look to” Author’s translation,
Gita
, 2.31.
8
“There is a certain” The author imagines this speech, based on the text.
9
“Look to your” Stoler Miller,
Gita
, 2.31, p. 34.
10
“Relinquish the fruits” Author’s translation,
Gita
, 18.2, p. 143.
11
“It is better” ibid., 3.35, p. 46.
12
“Dedicate your actions” ibid., 3.30, p. 33.
1
“Dharma is the essential” René Guénon.
Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines
. Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, NY, 2001, p. 146.
1
“The gentlest thing” Stephen Mitchell.
Tao te Ching
. Harper Perennial: New York, 1991, saying 43.
2
“One of my tasks” Jane Goodall.
Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey
. Warner Books: New York, 2000, p. 6.
3
“At last, a hen” ibid., p. 6.
4
“despite her worry” ibid., pp. 6–7.
5
“I was lucky” ibid., p. 7.
6
“assumed, upon depositing” paraphrase, based on ibid., p. 61.
7
“Little did they” ibid., p. 61.
8
“I had a mother” ibid., p. 4.
9
“The attempt to live” author’s paraphrase.
10
“As David and I sat” Goodall, Hope, p. 81.
11
“More and more” ibid., p. 81.
12
“Each one of us” ibid., p. 266.
13
“Of course, it is” ibid., p. 267.
14
“I always have” ibid., p. 267.
15
“The youth gets together” Henry David Thoreau, from his
Journal
, July 14, 1852.
16
“Play comes after” paraphrased from
Walden
, Chapter I.
1
“Be resolutely and faithfully” Henry David Thoreau.
Journal
, ed. John C. Broderick et al. Vol. I. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1981, p. 225.
2
“Depend upon it” Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Stoler Miller,
Gita
, p. 161.
3
“A man tracks himself” Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Robert T. Richardson, Jr.
Henry Thoreau, A Life of the Mind
. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1986, p. 291.
4
“A man’s own calling” Henry David Thoreau, quoting Krishna, in
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
, quoted in Stoler Miller,
Gita
, p. 156.
5
“an irresponsible idler” Richardson,
Thoreau
, p. 298.
6
“Thoreau is as ugly” Nathaniel Hawthorne, from
American Notebooks
, September 1, 1842, quoted in
Bloom’s Classic Critical Views: Henry David Thoreau
. Bloom’s Literary Criticism: New York, 2008, p. 8.
7
“Think of the small as large” Mitchell,
Tao te Ching
, Saying 63.
8
“See yourself as a grain of sand” paraphrased from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche,
The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation
. Shambhala: Boston, 1976, p. 9.
9
“human nature in general” Richardson,
Thoreau
, p. 74.
10
“Self-emancipation in the” Thoreau, from his
Journal
, quoted in Richardson,
Thoreau
, p. 152.
11
“The whole is in each man” ibid.,
Thoreau
, p. 22.
12
“Imagine this web” Alan Watts, from Alan Watts Podcast:
Following the Middle Way #3
,
alanwattspodcast.com
13
“Every object” Sir Charles Eliot, quoted in David Mumford.
Indra’s Pearls: The Vision of Felix Klein
. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2002, p. xix.
14
“Dharma upholds”
The Mahabharata
, 12.110.11.
15
“[Thoreau] produced” Richardson,
Thoreau
, p. 154.
16
“I am a mystic” Thoreau, ibid.,
Thoreau
, p. 285.
17
“Do what you love!” Thoreau, ibid., p. 188.
18
“If I knew for a certainty” Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Jeffrey S. Cramer.
Walden: A fully annotated edition
. Yale University Press: New Haven, 2004, p. 71.