Work As Meditation
Hi, my name is Richard and I’m the idiot who went to an Indian ashram and paid them to let me work there. This wasn’t an internship with a step on the ladder at the end. This was ‘Work as Meditation’. This was me doing crappy jobs like greeting new guests, copying and pasting long talks into order, building IKEA furniture, bag checking for security and taking payments for new arrivals. You work every day for at least 8 hours and there are no days off.
Why would anyone do this, I hear you say?
The answer could be any of:
I’m an idiot
They brain-washed me
I wanted to learn how to enjoy any job and teach this to people in the West.
Now, I say I’m the idiot, but there were many other idiots there and there have been idiots for hundreds of years who have gone to ashrams and worked for rewards other than money. The idea is that anyone can be meditative sat in a silent room while following their breath… but wouldn’t it be nice if we could have that same sense of calm and presence in stressful situations like work?
We spend most of our lives trading our time for money, and spend much of that time dreaming of how we are going to spend that money. All these dreams take place in the future so we sacrifice the only thing we really have; the present.
I’m just going to share what I learnt about work and maybe you can apply this to yourself. I’m not going to try to convince you of why you need to do a program like this. (I’ve done it, so that you don’t have to).
Motivation
Many people’s motivation for work is money.
Without money in the equation my reward became praise. I worked hard so that someone could tell me I was a good boy and that I’m special.
Perhaps, your relationship with earning is the same as this.
In 2008 researchers found that people’s levels of happiness increased as their salaries increased but only up to a point. That point was £62,500 (adjusted for inflation). So, if you are earning more than this, money can take on a different meaning too. Your salary becomes a points system. The more points you have the better you are doing at the game of work and the more people can tell you that you’re a good boy (or girl).
Time
What’s your relationship like with time?
How do you think about time?
Time is money, right?
Time is finite, so make the most of it?
Well it didn’t always work this way. If you’ve read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari you’ll know that the way we think about time comes from the Calvinists. There was a time when we thought about time as circular, where we didn’t worry about clocking in, and we didn’t judge others for leaving the office earlier than us. Productivity wasn’t measured with a clock; it was measured by what was achieved.
I am a perennial clock watcher. I am indignant when others are late or waste my precious time. Like the rest of London, I’m very very busy, all the fricken time.
What I learnt about time on this program is that when you are present in the moment, time stops being so important.
I am no longer having my short life sucked out of me by the ever-advancing clock. I am free. I am not anxiously planning the future. I just am. And funnily enough, the more engrossed I became in what I was doing in the moment, the faster time went. This was really helpful to me. Whenever I thought about time or started planning for the future, I gently reminded myself to get out of my head and into the moment.
Taking things too seriously
I am going to reiterate this, as it was something I often forgot during work….I was paying to work there! There was no possibility of future promotions. I would leave at the end of the course and probably never see any of those people again.
However, there were times when I became really, frustrated, angry, judgemental and upset in my job.
Although the ashram was run by Westerners, it was still in India and therefore, extremely disorganised and bureaucratic. There was a distinct lack of leadership and no one really knew what they were doing. Without clear guidelines, its easy to start panicking and blaming. We were just like children, ‘playing doctors and nurses.’ Except the game was work. As you probably know, sometimes games get out of hand. Monopoly money still has a lot of value to some people.
Egos were everywhere. I believe the Buddha once said, ‘before enlightenment a$$hole…after enlightenment a$$hole.’ Or maybe it was ‘chop wood, carry water’. Sadly, there was no one at this ashram who could call themselves enlightened. (There were more than enough a$$holes) But the two points here are, before and after enlightenment your life is still filled with the same things and if you’re an asshole before going to an ashram there is a good chance you will still be one if you don’t manage your ego.
I often found my ego getting involved in this game. Thankfully, the game isn’t to transcend the ego, it is just to notice it. Once I did notice it, I was able to release the pent-up emotions and laugh at how silly it all is.
The harder the better
When I was faced with difficult emotions, or challenges, or tasks that seemed too much for me I would go through a familiar pattern of thoughts.
This is BS >
I’m paying to be here >
Everyone is an idiot but me>
I’m going home and taking my football with me.
Once I had finished with that melodrama and I gotten myself through the struggle I noticed big pay-offs. I noticed that the harder the struggle was the bigger the reward was. The more frustrated I got over misunderstanding IKEA instructions, arguing a theoretical point, screaming and shouting in a dynamic meditation…(the more tension that was built up)… the greater the pleasure upon release.
This is something that David Deida talks about in The Way of The Superior Man:
People, (esp masculine ones) like tension and release. That is basically what a sport like football is. Loads of tension and resistance as one team tries to penetrate a defence, then a huge release of emotion when it happens. If you’ve ever been to a football stadium and witnessed the tension of the last few minutes, one team searching for an equalizer as time runs out. A goal is scored. People go mad. The release is huge. You can see it and hear it and sense it. And yes, that is also what sex is, a build up of tension and release.
What I learnt from this was a reframing. I could choose to do something easy so that I could achieve it. Or I could chose something harder that I knew I would get a greater feeling of reward from at the end. When I chose the greater reward, I stopped focusing on the discomfort and focused on how good I would feel at the end. This completely changed my mindset for the task, I stopped focusing on the difficulties because I knew they would be worth something at the end.
Seek big struggles, receive big rewards…. is what I would say if I was a native American shaman.
The mind gym
Meditation is basically like going to the gym for the mind.
The Work As Meditation program was not about things going well. It was not about doing a good job. It was about being aware and awake to all thoughts and feelings. There were many times when my reaction to any sort of discomfort was to think about escaping.
That was just my ego trying to assert itself. Every internal complaint was a chance to exercise the awareness muscle. And every time you exercise it, it gets stronger. This is how any type of mindfulness mediation works.
You have something to focus on, like your breath, and every time your mind drifts off you notice it, and bring the attention back to the breath. Each time you do this it is like doing a rep of a bench press. The more reps you do, the stronger your awareness muscle gets. So those who say they can’t meditate as their mind will drift off too many times will actually be getting a much better workout than the Buddhist monk who only has to bring his attention back once.
My take home messages
I have taken a lot from this process. It has shown me things about work that I would not have been able to see on my own. Having the chance to take so much time to make work better for me was revolutionary.
What I value most is the recognition that any job can be pleasant when you immerse yourself into it totally.
This program is clearly not for everyone due to the cost of travel and time required so it doesn’t get the highest transformation rating. But if you want to change your relationship to work without traveling to foreign lands I can give you some jobs to do at my house if you like. I won’t charge you that much. Or we could just have some coaching sessions around it.
Transformation Rating
Ease of use = 3
You have to go to an ashram and pay so not available to everyone
Lasting changes = 8
I learnt so much about my relationship to work that I hope will last forever
Time requirement = 2
You need to spend several weeks or months to be accepted on the program
Impact = 8
It totally changed my understanding of what it means to meditate.
Final score = 5.25
A pretty average score but that’s mostly due to the travel and time required