Why “Being Busy” is Good.

It is premised on philosophy of Karma Yoga :

“ “To work we have the right, but not to the fruits thereof:” Leave the fruits alone.”

When you have so many things to do — to focus on, to indulge your mind in, to keep track of , to solve issues and so on.. then you are less likely to spend much time on thinking about the results of that work.

Firstly, there’s no time to waste on day dreaming about results. By thinking about fruits of work, we build castles in air. Yes, it definitely does act as a motivator to complete your work but there are lot other factors it brings in:

a) You build unrealistic expectations and when it doesn’t happen you suffer.

b) When chasing the fruits, a sense of fear comes in that says “ What if someone gets it before you”. Now, the focus shifts from ‘Work’, slowly on to fear, jealousy & competition.

c) Using fruit / results as a motivation to work is a low level one. The real true motivation to work should be the work itself.

Secondly, we “don’t put all eggs in the same basket” — By being busy, I mean having multiple important things to pursue. This way you do not put too much importance on just “one” thing. And when that ‘one’ thing doesn’t happen, you don’t suffer by losing hope. If results don’t yield in one, then its easier to move on as there are plenty of other works that need attention.

And lastly, the question is how to manage being at peace and calm if being busy is good ? The answer is in this article and I end with this excerpt :

“There arises a difficult question in this ideal of work. Intense activity is necessary; we must always work. We cannot live a minute without work. What then becomes of rest? Here is one side of the life-struggle — work, in which we are whirled rapidly round. And here is the other — that of calm, retiring renunciation: everything is peaceful around, there is very little of noise and show, only nature with her animals and flowers and mountains. Neither of them is a perfect picture. A man used to solitude, if brought in contact with the surging whirlpool of the world, will be crushed by it; just as the fish that lives in the deep sea water, as soon as it is brought to the surface, breaks into pieces, deprived of the weight of water on it that had kept it together. Can a man who has been used to the turmoil and the rush of life live at ease if he comes to a quiet place? He suffers and perchance may lose his mind. The ideal man is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert. He has learnt the secret of restraint, he has controlled himself. He goes through the streets of a big city with all its traffic, and his mind is as calm as if he were in a cave, where not a sound could reach him; and he is intensely working all the time. That is the ideal of Karma-Yoga, and if you have attained to that you have really learnt the secret of work.

But we have to begin from the beginning, to take up the works as they come to us and slowly make ourselves more unselfish every day. We must do the work and find out the motive power that prompts us; and, almost without exception, in the first years, we shall find that our motives are always selfish; but gradually this selfishness will melt by persistence, till at last will come the time when we shall be able to do really unselfish work. We may all hope that some day or other, as we struggle through the paths of life, there will come a time when we shall become perfectly unselfish; and the moment we attain to that, all our powers will be concentrated, and the knowledge which is ours will be manifest”