The Great Work of Your Life

by Stephen Cope

  And yet, dharma clearly does save us in many wonderful ways. Dharma saves us not by ending but rather by redeeming our suffering. It gives meaning to our suffering. It enables us to bear our suffering. And, most important, it enables our suffering to bear fruit for the world.

  I have come to believe that dharma gives us the one thing we need to be fully human: Each of us must have one domain, one small place on the globe where we can fully meet life—where we can meet it with every gift we have. One small place where, through testing ourselves, we can know the nature of life, and ultimately know ourselves. This domain, this one place that is uniquely ours, is our work in the world. Our work in the world is for each of us the axis mundi, the immovable spot—the one place where we really have the opportunity to wake up.

  Dharma provides us with the perfect vehicle through which we can fruitfully die to our smaller self and be reborn to Self. And make no mistake: This mystic death—this death that our egos abhor—this taking ourselves to zero—is absolutely required in order to be fully human.

  My good friend Luke is a Christian monk, living in a monastery not too far from Kripalu. He tells me that the most important work of his life—his work of prayer, his dharma—mostly takes place in his little ten-by-ten monk’s room. In his tradition, this little room is called a “cell.” Luke also sometimes refers to his little cell as his “tomb.” For a while I thought he was joking about this. But no. In his tradition the monks are told early on: “Your cell is your tomb where you die and arise to new life.”

  Luke showed me his cell one day. It was simple, sparsely furnished, whitewashed. But that simplicity belied the complex work that I knew went on there. Prayer is hard work. I could practically see the gnash marks in the white plaster walls. As you pit yourself against any real dharma, the problems of mastery, the challenges of selflessness, and the need for sustained courage all arise. In every case, the authentic pursuit of dharma results in gnash marks. Your dharma is your tomb where you die and arise to new life. You only get yourself when you lose yourself to some great work. And whatever your authentic work is—I believe it is great. It is the great work of your life.

  4

  Do you have a sense that you know more about your dharma now than when we began this journey together, twelve chapters ago? I hope so.

  As for me, I can say that studying the lives of Goodall and Thoreau, of Lonny and Ethan and Mark, of Corot and Tubman and Gandhi, has helped me tremendously. It has helped me resolve my midlife confusion about dharma—the confusion I spoke about in the Introduction to this book. I see now that I had been confused about dharma because I had both too high an opinion of it and too low an opinion of it all at the same time. I thought that life should always be high art. I thought, indeed, that I should always be jumping out of bed in the morning, ripping open the curtain to meet the day. When we study the lives of truly fulfilled exemplars of dharma, we discover that, alas, it is just not like that, even for the most accomplished among them.

  I have come to see that dharma is more like craft than high art. Those of us struggling to live our dharmas awake every morning like everyone else—to the sound of the alarm. We roll over. We take a deep breath. Another day. We know what we have to do. We get up. We make the coffee. We work away at the work we were put here and set here to do, like plodding, persistent craftsmen—putting one foot in front of the other. We are part of a team of craftsmen building a cathedral. We may not live to see the whole structure completed. In fact, our small part of the magnificent whole may not even be visible to the eye once the thing is finished. No matter. It is not really about us anyway. It is about the cathedral.

  Through studying the many extraordinary lives that appear in these pages, I have come to see that our understanding of dharma today is obscured by our fondness for the cult of personality and for self and for celebrity. Our understanding of dharma is obscured by the narcissism of our time. Studying the lives of great exemplars of dharma has helped me to see that the primary distortion in my dharma life has been the age-old misery of self-absorption. Deep in midlife I had begun to feel the awful burden of wanting to be special; wanting to be better; wanting to experience every possible adventure in this life; wanting to be, as we have sometimes said at Kripalu, an “expanded self.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. It is just too damned much work to be an expanded self. Couldn’t I just be an ordinary self?

  The great twentieth-century monk Thomas Merton encountered precisely the same spiritual exhaustion partway through his life. The chief source of this exhaustion, he writes, “is the selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a sparkling success in our own eyes and in the eyes of other men.” His vision of the possibility of relief from this burden occurred to me as brilliant: “We can only get rid of this anxiety by being content to miss something in almost everything we do.”

  What? Miss something in almost everything we do? That is allowed?

  Merton says it is: “We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us—whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need.”

  This has the feel of truth to me. A difficult truth. But a truth that may free me from the obviously false hope that I can have everything—indeed, from the view that I must have everything in order to have a fulfilling life.

  Authentic dharma frees us from this false hope. Merton sees deeply into the nature of this freedom: “… the fulfillment of every individual vocation demands not only the renouncement of what is evil in itself, but also of all the precise goods that are not willed for us by God.” We are not called to everything. We are just called to what we’re called to. It is inevitable that authentically good parts of ourselves will not be fulfilled. What a relief.

  “We can do no great things,” wrote the nineteenth-century French saint, Teresa, “only small things with great love.”

  Thomas Merton—who struggled through his whole life with his longing to be considered a great author—writes of this: “… we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. It is, therefore, a very great thing to be little, which is to say: to be ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.”

  Merton here catches exactly the spirit of Thoreau and Anthony and Tubman—and all the others. These great exemplars of dharma each took a craftsmanlike view toward life: Do your daily duty, and let the rest go. Poke away systematically at your little calling. Tend the garden a little bit every day. You do not have to exhaust yourself with great acts. Show up for your duty, for your dharma. Then let it go.

  In monasteries of old, the monk’s dharma, his purpose in life, was said to be this: to support the choir. In Latin, propter chorum. Literally, his life was lived “in support of the choir.” He was not a soloist. He was not a diva. He was part of a magnificent whole.

  5

  The holy dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna is at an end. It has been so powerful that it has transformed all who have listened to it. Sanjaya himself—the narrator of “the wondrous dialogue”—has been changed by it. Just recalling the scene of their dialogue lights him up with ecstasy. “The wonder of it makes my hair stand on end!” he exclaims.

  “Whenever I remember these wonderful, holy words between Krishna and Arjuna, I am filled with joy,” he says. “And when I remember the breathtaking form of Krishna, I am filled with wonder and my joy overflows.”

  Sanjaya speaks the final words: “Wherever the divine Krishn
a and the mighty Arjuna are, there will be prosperity, victory, happiness, and sound judgment. Of this I am sure!”

  Dedicated to my earliest mentors,

  Wilson Martindale Compton

  and Helen Harrington Compton,

  who demonstrated in their lives the nobility of work

  NOTES

  Epigraph

  1 “Every man has a vocation” Thomas Merton. No Man Is an Island. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York, 1978, p. 133.

  Introduction

  1 “What you fear is” Thomas Merton. A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo. HarperCollins: New York, p. 178.

  2 “If you bring forth” “The Gospel of Thomas” 45: 29–33, see Elaine Pagels. The Gnostic Gospels. Vintage: New York, 1989, p. xv.

  3 “All that is worthwhile” Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in For the Time Being, Annie Dillard. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1999, p. 105.

  PART I: Krishna’s Counsel on the Field of Battle

  1 “I see omens of chaos” Barbara Stoler Miller. The Bhagavad Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War. Bantam: New York, 1986, I.31, p. 25.

  2 “Krishna, halt my chariot” ibid., I.21, 22, pp. 23–24.

  3 “fathers, grandfathers, teachers” ibid., I.26, p. 24.

  4 “Conflicting sacred duties” ibid., 2.7, p. 30.

  5 “We don’t know which” ibid., 2.6, p. 30.

  6 “My limbs sink” ibid., I.29, 30, p. 25.

  7 “I cannot fight” Author’s translation of, The Bhagavad Gita, 2.9.

  ONE

  1 “Doubt afflicts the person” Author’s translation, Gita, 4.40.

  2 “Doubt is a state in which” Charles B. Herbermann et al, eds. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 5. Robert Appleton Company: New York, 1909, p. 141.

  3 “Doubt is opposed to certitude” ibid., p. 141.

  4 “Krishna, my delusion is destroyed” Stoler Miller, Gita, 18.73, p. 153.

  5 “No one exists” ibid., 3.5, p. 41.

  6 “OK … so I cannot” Occasionally, as in this case, the author has imagined or paraphrased a statement by Arjuna.

  7 “Arjuna, look to” Author’s translation, Gita, 2.31.

  8 “There is a certain” The author imagines this speech, based on the text.

  9 “Look to your” Stoler Miller, Gita, 2.31, p. 34.

  10 “Relinquish the fruits” Author’s translation, Gita, 18.2, p. 143.

  11 “It is better” ibid., 3.35, p. 46.

  12 “Dedicate your actions” ibid., 3.30, p. 33.

  PART II: The First Pillar: “Look to Your Dharma”

  1 “Dharma is the essential” René Guénon. Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines. Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, NY, 2001, p. 146.

  TWO

  1 “The gentlest thing” Stephen Mitchell. Tao te Ching. Harper Perennial: New York, 1991, saying 43.

  2 “One of my tasks” Jane Goodall. Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey. Warner Books: New York, 2000, p. 6.

  3 “At last, a hen” ibid., p. 6.

  4 “despite her worry” ibid., pp. 6–7.

  5 “I was lucky” ibid., p. 7.

  6 “assumed, upon depositing” paraphrase, based on ibid., p. 61.

  7 “Little did they” ibid., p. 61.

  8 “I had a mother” ibid., p. 4.

  9 “The attempt to live” author’s paraphrase.

  10 “As David and I sat” Goodall, Hope, p. 81.

  11 “More and more” ibid., p. 81.

  12 “Each one of us” ibid., p. 266.

  13 “Of course, it is” ibid., p. 267.

  14 “I always have” ibid., p. 267.

  15 “The youth gets together” Henry David Thoreau, from his Journal, July 14, 1852.

  16 “Play comes after” paraphrased from Walden, Chapter I.

  THREE

  1 “Be resolutely and faithfully” Henry David Thoreau. Journal, ed. John C. Broderick et al. Vol. I. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1981, p. 225.

  2 “Depend upon it” Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Stoler Miller, Gita, p. 161.

  3 “A man tracks himself” Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Robert T. Richardson, Jr. Henry Thoreau, A Life of the Mind. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1986, p. 291.

  4 “A man’s own calling” Henry David Thoreau, quoting Krishna, in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, quoted in Stoler Miller, Gita, p. 156.

  5 “an irresponsible idler” Richardson, Thoreau, p. 298.

  6 “Thoreau is as ugly” Nathaniel Hawthorne, from American Notebooks, September 1, 1842, quoted in Bloom’s Classic Critical Views: Henry David Thoreau. Bloom’s Literary Criticism: New York, 2008, p. 8.

  7 “Think of the small as large” Mitchell, Tao te Ching, Saying 63.

  8 “See yourself as a grain of sand” paraphrased from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation. Shambhala: Boston, 1976, p. 9.

  9 “human nature in general” Richardson, Thoreau, p. 74.

  10 “Self-emancipation in the” Thoreau, from his Journal, quoted in Richardson, Thoreau, p. 152.

  11 “The whole is in each man” ibid., Thoreau, p. 22.

  12 “Imagine this web” Alan Watts, from Alan Watts Podcast: Following the Middle Way #3, alanwattspodcast.com

  13 “Every object” Sir Charles Eliot, quoted in David Mumford. Indra’s Pearls: The Vision of Felix Klein. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2002, p. xix.

  14 “Dharma upholds” The Mahabharata, 12.110.11.

  15 “[Thoreau] produced” Richardson, Thoreau, p. 154.

  16 “I am a mystic” Thoreau, ibid., Thoreau, p. 285.

  17 “Do what you love!” Thoreau, ibid., p. 188.

  18 “If I knew for a certainty” Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Jeffrey S. Cramer. Walden: A fully annotated edition. Yale University Press: New Haven, 2004, p. 71.

  FOUR

  1 The Civil War “saved” This chapter relies heavily throughout on the argument made by Roy Morris, Jr. in his brilliant examination of Whitman’s life as a volunteer in the hospitals of the Civil War, presented in his The Better Angel. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000, p. 3.

  2 “Guilty of that horrible” Jerome Loving. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1999, pp. 184–185.

  3 “I only gave myself” Whitman, quoted in Morris, Angel, p. 5.

  4 “launch of a great” Emerson, quoted in Justin Kaplan. Walt Whitman: A Life. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1979, p. 203.

  5 “I celebrate myself” Walt Whitman in Lawrence Clark Powell. Poems of Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. Thomas Y. Crowell Company: New York, 1964, p. 72.

  6 “I loaf and invite” Whitman in Powell, Leaves, p. 72.

  7 “I go around from” Walt Whitman, Walter Loenfels, Nan Braymer. Walt Whitman’s Civil War. DaCapo Press: New York, 1989, p. 101.

  8 “his glassy eyes” Whitman, quoted in Morris, Angel, p. 86

  9 “I sat down by him” Whitman, Loenfels, Braymer, Whitman, p. 90.

  10 “I cannot give up” Walt Whitman, Edward Haviland Miller, Selected Letters of Walt Whitman. University of Iowa Press: Des Moines, 1990, p. 49.

  11 “fortifying myself with” Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works: Walt Whitman. [1897] Cornell University Library: Ithaca, 2009, p. 62.

  12 “Behold, I do not give” Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. Sherman and Co: New York, 1881, p. 66.

  13 “a silent dark-skinn’d” Whitman, quoted in Morris, Angel, p. 127.

  14 “Many nights I sat” Walt Whitman, Edward Haviland Miller. Selected Letters of Walt Whitman. University of Iowa Press: Des Moines, 1990, p. 78.

  15 “I write you this” Walt
Whitman, John Harmon McElroy. The Sacrificial Years: A Chronicle of Walt Whitman’s Experiences in the Civil War. David R. Godine, Publisher, 1999, p. 54.

  16 “to express in a poem” Whitman, Haviland, Whitman, p. 109.

  17 “I see behind each mask” Whitman, Leaves, p. 251.

  18 “Our bodies are known” Stoler Miller, Gita, 2.18, p. 32.

  19 “Weapons do not cut” ibid., 2.23, p. 32.

  20 “it is enduring” ibid., 2.24, p. 33.

  21 “Old men ought to be” T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, in Sunil Kumar Sarker. T. S. Eliot: Poetry, Plays and Prose. Atlantic: New Delhi, 1995, 2008, p. 140.

  22 “Our bodies are known” Stoler Miller, Gita, 2.18, p. 32.

  23 “He was assassinated” Whitman, quoted in Morris, Angel, p. 221.

  24 “Come lovely and” Whitman in Harold Bloom. Walt Whitman: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. Chelsea House: New York, 2006, p. 104.

  25 “Strive constantly to serve” The Bhagavad Gita: Translated for the Modern Reader by Eknath Easwaran. Nilgiri Press: Tomales, California, 1985, 3.19, p. 77.

  26 “There were years” David S. Reynolds. Walt Whitman. Oxford University Press: USA, 2005, p. 127.

  PART III: The Second Pillar: “Do It Full Out!”

  1 “From around the age of” Hokusai, quoted in Seiji Nagata. Hokusai: Genius of the Japanese Ukiyo-e. Kodansha International: Tokyo, 2000, p. 87.

  2 “I became an artist” Hokusai, in Nagata, Hokusai, p. 87.

  3 “If only heaven” Hokusai, quoted in George Newnes. The Strand Magazine, Vol. 15, Jan 1898 No. 85. George Newnes, Ltd: London, 1898, p. 562.

  4 “Considering your dharma” Easwaran, Gita, 2.31, p. 64.

  5 “The ignorant, indecisive” ibid., 4.40, p. 89.

  6 “Don’t waste time” Guan Yin Tzu, quoted in Timothy Freke. Taoist Wisdom: Daily Teachings from the Taoist Master. Sterling: NY, 2002, p. 123.