Sometimes, you've just gotta stop the traffic

Concepts for Conscious Living

Nishkamakarma - Do your duty, with faith in God, without attachment to the fruit of your action.

As I mentioned last week, we named our first Australian Shepherd Nishka, which was short for Nishkamakarma.

. I don't exactly remember where I first heard that term, but I liked it enough to write it down and turn it into posters (one of many) that hang in both of my counselling offices. When Dar and I were thinking about names for the dog, we were sitting in my "home" office, I noticed the poster and said, "How about Nishka?" We both loved the name. She was a wonderful dog.

There is a certain beauty to things that come in threes. Like the three clauses and three meanings in Nishkamakarma. Three is often the number of choices there are:

• things can get better,
• stay the same or
• get worse.

Without change, we may hope things will get better, but ordinarily things either stay the same or get worse. We've talked about that one before.

The definition of Nishkamakarma, appropriately, is three clauses long, and here's how I unpack them:

The first clause, "Do your duty," is a clear reminder that life can be vocational. It may seem that we get involved in the things that we do in a random way. I also see, in myself and others, a "pull" towards a specific way of being. Thus, it's not as important what we do, as how we do what we do, for what reason.

The opportunity for vocational thinking seems to happen to everyone eventually; vocational reflecting has its own decade of life.)

There are decades appropriate to many of life's tasks.)

• The twenties is a time of making initial choices re. career, marriage or relationships.
• The thirties is the decade for building, moving up the ranks, acquiring.
• The forties, on the other hand, asks the question, "Is this all there is?" That question is a vocational one. It's the time when the pat answers foisted on us by society or by our previous choices no longer cut the mustard.

In any event, at whatever age, there comes a time when we all must ask, "what am I called to do; whom am I called to be?"

Vocational thinking and acting often seems to be about "service," about being a part of a helping profession, or so it appears at first blush. I remember, though, how many business executives I've worked with, who caught on to the duty-vocation "thing," and who worked within corporations as enablers and empowerers. They, in the midst of budgets and marketing and corporate struggles, helped those around them to find out a bit more of who they were. They led and taught through example.

The second clause, "With faith in God . . . "

Many of you know that I am also ex (very ex) clergy. I guess, these days, I might describe myself as a "Protestant Zen Buddhist," if you can get your head around that one.

I woman stopped by my office today. Her husband had just discovered the body of one of his best friends, dead from suicide. The woman was distraught, and worried about her husband, who wasn't talking much. In the course of our conversations, she said, "I suppose we are more spiritual than religious." I was glad for that.

Faith in God is different from belief about God. The latter is all about rules, doctrine, obedience, sin, guilt. The former is about relationship.

I'm not convinced that everyone needs to "get" the God thing. I have many friends who would classify themselves as atheists, but who are relentless in their search for meaning and selfhood. On the other hand, I've also met a ton of people who have lots of beliefs, and very little peace of mind, whose rigidity is inexhaustible.

For me, faith in God is all about admitting that I don't know all that much. All I know is that it seems to me that there's some kind of system in place that keeps providing me with the lessons and experiences I need. I call that system or experience God or "the cosmos."

To go back to the woman who showed up in my office, this was not just a helpful experience for her. It was another lesson for me. I had just, and I mean just, finished looking at my DayTimer for next week, and was thinking I needed more clients, and maybe I should go get a "real" job -- one of the little games I play with myself. (My Haven friends, reading this, will be saying, "Is he still on about that?" Yes, I am . . . ) Anyway, not 5 minutes went by and my waiting room door opened and in walked the woman of my story. We talked for 40 minutes, and after she left I realized (again!) why I do what I do and am who I am. My faith tells me counselling is my vocation.

And, as you've gathered from my stories, like last week's about the little old man and the traffic, I really do believe that God (or the cosmos, as I usually put it,) communicates by sending events and people into my life. I need only notice and listen.

The third clause: "Without attachment to the fruit of your action." This is actually the hard part, at least for me. This part is about being willing to do what you do because that's what you do, without needing to be rewarded, singled out, noticed. The walk is walked for the walk's sake, not for the adoration of the crowds. Not easy.

Attachments are easy to find. We simply think about what we are not willing to give up. Titles. Relationships. Money. Being declared "right." Whatever. If you have one (we all do . . .) then your life is determined for you, not by your vocation, not by much of anything but by what you won't give up.

Non-attachment is what Ram Dass once called "nobody special training."

So, for me, Nishkamakarma is a total package calling. It calls me into self-knowledge, self-awareness, and into a place of seeing who I am, which is demonstrated, among other ways, by what I do. It calls me into a battle with those things I am still attached to, because they keep my focus off my duty. And it calls me deeper into my Spirituality -- deeper, as Paul Tillich called it, into the Ground of my Being.

What is your duty? What is your Spirituality? And what are you attached to?