The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling - Hardcover

Cope, Stephen

 
9780553807516: The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 055380751X ISBN 13: 9780553807516
Verlag: Bantam, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

An inspiring guide to finding your life’s purpose—what spiritual teachers call dharma—through mindfulness and self-exploration.
 
Stephen Cope says that in order to have a fulfilling life you must discover the deep purpose hidden at the very core of your self. The secret to unlocking this mystery, he asserts, can be found in the pages of a two-thousand-year-old spiritual classic called the Bhagavad Gita—an ancient allegory about the path to dharma, told through a timeless dialogue between the fabled archer, Arjuna, and his divine mentor, Krishna. Cope takes readers on a step-by-step tour of this revered tale and highlights well-known Western lives that embody its central principles—including such luminaries as Jane Goodall, Walt Whitman, Susan B. Anthony, John Keats, and Harriet Tubman, along with stories of ordinary people as well. If you’re feeling lost in your own life’s journey, The Great Work of Your Life may help you to find and to embrace your true calling.

Praise for The Great Work of Your Life
 
“Keep a pen and paper handy as you read this remarkable book: It’s like an owner’s manual for the soul.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion
 
“A masterwork . . . You’ll find inspiration in these pages. You’ll gain a better appreciation of divine guidance and perhaps even understand how you might better hear it in your own life.”—Yoga Journal
 
“I am moved and inspired by this book, the clarity and beauty of the lives lived in it, and the timeless dharma it teaches.”—Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart
 
“A rich source of contemplation and inspiration [that] encourages readers . . . to discover and fully pursue their inner self’s calling.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Fabulous . . . If you have ever wondered what your purpose is, this book is a great guide to help you on your path.”—YogaHara

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen Cope has been for many years the Senior Scholar-in-residence at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. He is the author of a number of bestselling books, including Yoga and the Quest for the True Self and The Wisdom of Yoga.

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One

The Four Pillars of Dharma

From the very beginning of the Bhagavad Gita we can see that it is going to be a teaching about dharma—­about sacred duty. Anybody can see that the first chapter is a device used by the author to set up the problem of vocation. How do we know, finally, to what actions we are called in this life? The author knows that we’ll identify with Arjuna’s dilemma: How do we choose between two difficult courses of action? What are the consequences of an inability to choose, or of choosing poorly? Who can effectively guide us in making these choices? Finally, in any ultimate sense, does it really matter what choices we make with our life?

At the outset of this tale, the narrator describes Arjuna as paralyzed by doubt. He has come to a crossroads in his life, and is forced to choose between two difficult paths. And for the time being Arjuna has demurred. He is stuck on the floor of the chariot, unable to act at all. From the beginning, then, it is clear that the narrator sees Arjuna’s central affliction as the problem of doubt.

For those of us who study the contemplative traditions, this is exciting. Something new! Until the writing of the Bhagavad Gita, the Eastern contemplative traditions—­both yoga and Buddhism—­had almost universally seen grasping as the central affliction or “torment” in the lives of human beings. These traditions had come to really understand the afflictive nature of desire, craving, grasping, greed, lust.

Grasping will come into Krishna’s teaching, to be sure. But at the outset of the tale, Arjuna’s central torment is not grasping. Or even its flip side—­fear and aversion. No, it’s clear to us that Arjuna is not really so much afraid as he is immobilized in a web of doubt. Stuck on the floor of the chariot.

In the fourth chapter, Krishna will state the principle clearly: “Doubt afflicts the person who lacks faith and can ultimately destroy him.”

This doubt of which Krishna speaks is the outward and visible sign of an inner struggle. And if this inner struggle is not resolved, it will (as St. Thomas declares in his Gospel) destroy him.

The stakes are serious. It will be important for us to understand the exact nature of this doubt that afflicts our hero.

Notice that “doubt,” as used in the Gita, is somewhat different than our ordinary Western understanding of doubt. When we think of doubt, we most often think of what we might better call “healthy skepticism”—­a lively mind, closely investigating all options. That is not quite what the Gita means. Doubt, as understood here, really means “stuck”—­not skeptical. Doubt in this tradition is sometimes defined as “a thought that touches both sides of a dilemma at the same time.” In yogic analysis, doubt is often called “the paralyzing affliction.” Paralysis is, indeed, its chief characteristic. It follows, then, that doubt is the central affliction of all men and women of action.

The Catholic Encyclopedia weighs in convincingly on this issue. Apparently, doubt is an issue for Catholics as well as Hindus: “Doubt,” it reads, “[is a] state in which the mind is suspended between two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them.”

Catholics and yogis are apparently in agreement about this phenomenon of doubt.

The Catholic Encyclopedia continues at great length. “Doubt,” it says, “is opposed to certitude, or the adhesion of the mind to a proposition without misgiving as to its truth.”

Here the Catholics make an opposition of doubt and certitude. This, I think, is very helpful.

And listen to the definition of certitude that follows. Certitude: “the adhesion of the mind to a proposition without misgiving as to its truth.”

Without misgiving!

In Arjuna we have a hero whose doubt is writ large. He is split down the middle. And it will take the entire eighteen chapters of the Bhagavad Gita before he gets to certitude. But what a thrill when he does.

“Krishna,” says Arjuna at the very end of the Gita, “my delusion is destroyed, and by your grace I have regained memory; I stand here, my doubt dispelled, ready to act on your words!”

My doubt dispelled!

Until I began to wrestle with the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, I thought that doubt was the least of my problems. Grasping and aversion, the classic afflictions pointed to by the earlier yoga tradition, were much more obvious in my life. However, as I have begun to investigate the Gita’s view of doubt, and as I begin to understand what doubt really is, I see it at work everywhere. I’ve begun to see the ways—­both small and large—­in which I am paralyzed from action on a daily basis. Split. Replete with misgivings. Unsure. A foot on both sides of various dilemmas.

We can see why the yoga tradition has called doubt “the invisible affliction.” It is slippery. Hidden. Sneaky. Indeed, it is this very hidden quality that gives doubt its power. I know people who have been stuck in doubt their entire lifetime. Each of these unfortunate individuals—­some of them my very own friends and family—­came at some point to a crossroads. They came to this crossroads and found themselves rooted there, with one foot firmly planted on each side of the intersection. Alas, they never moved off the dime. They procrastinated. Dithered. Finally, they put a folding chair smack in the center of that crossroads and lived there for the rest of their lives. After a while, they forgot entirely that there even was a crossroads—­forgot that there was a choice.

We do not suspect the ways in which doubt keeps us paralyzed. Plastered to the bottom of our various chariots. Unable to assent.

I see it all the time in the people I work with at Kripalu.

Just to give you a taste of how these things show up, let me give you a thumbnail sketch of one of these people, a woman whom I will call Katherine. She has recently come to one of these fateful crossroads, and has already put down her folding chair.

2

Katherine has been for many years the dean of a small private girls’ school—­a school that one of my friends calls Crunchy Granola Hall. Katherine is loved by several generations of students: mothers and daughters. For years she has lived squarely in the center of her dharma, her sacred duty. She has changed lives. Anyone who knows her would declare that she has thrived in the role of dean of this school: counseling and befriending faculty and students; helping chart the course of the school; raising money for new buildings. Now, however, she is tired. She is irritable and pissy with her faculty. She forgets to attend important meetings. She is, if truth be told, finished. In her heart of hearts she knows it. In private she admits it to me: She no longer even cares.

But Katherine is terrified. And completely unsure of what might come next. She is afraid that if she leaves the deanship, she will be devastatingly lonely. That only her cats will need her. She knows there is a new dharma calling her, and in fleeting moments she sees it out of the corner of her eye. She occasionally gets a whiff of a calling that feels more real than rain: Perhaps she could teach English literature to her young charges. She could be free of the wearying burdens of deanship. She could work only a few hours a week. She could garden (her passion)!

Katherine can occasionally visualize how perfect this would be, and how well it would meet her energies at this stage of life. English literature has been one of her most enduring loves. She...

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Verlag
Bantam
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
055380751X
ISBN 13 
9780553807516
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
304
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Verantwortliche Person
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