Don't Be Afraid Of Hard Work

Years ago, I was at a post office in a tiny northern Indian village, when I noticed that one of the clerks had written over his desk: “Work Will Set You Free.” Now, being the grandson of Holocaust survivors, I shuddered, because, of course, those were the same words written over the entrance to Auschwitz. But I soon realized that the poor clerk had no idea about these associations. He was just trying to express his truth that, whatever happiness there is in life, it can only come from making the work in front of you an opportunity for devotion.

In the West, we’re distrustful of hard work. Political types see work as exploitation. Spiritual types insist on the importance of “effortless manifestation.” But while we assume our criticisms of labor come from wisdom and experience, a lot of them actually come from privilege: we simply don’t need to work as hard as our ancestors did or other nations do. And that sense of privilege is very dangerous when it comes to changing courses. Because effortless living is fine when you’re going in the right direction, but not so fine when you’re running off the road into a ditch. Changing a bad habit, a bad social problem, or a bad relationship to your environment DOES take hard work — more, often, than we imagine.

The Buddha didn’t teach effortless practice. His image was of a man being carried off by a river. Would that man be effortless in trying to get to safety? No, he’d fight tooth and nail to get out of the flood. In the same way, the greed, hatred, and delusion in our minds are constantly threatening to wash away our happiness. And if we are wise, we’ll do what it takes — change lifestyles, companions, habits of consumption, and above all, our thinking — in order to protect the goodness of our minds.

So if you’re not sure what to do next, start with your mind. Uproot any bitterness or self-pity you find there, and plant something beautiful, even if it’s small, even if it takes a lot of protecting. No one is coming to pull you out of the flood. Life will get easier if you exert yourself, and harder if you don’t.

Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners (1857)