The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling (4 page)

ONE

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 could transmit it to the girls in small doses. When she visualizes this new dharma, she feels the possibility of living once again. But then the fear comes. Maybe she won’t get invited to all the important powwows about the future of the school. Maybe they’ll think of her as washed-up—consigned to the oblivion of the educational North Forty. And then she thinks, “Perhaps I should stick it out for another year. There will be just a little more in my retirement package, too.” Katherine has been paralyzed by this conflict for more than three years, and she is not a happy woman. “Living a lie,” she has even said to me after several glasses of wine.

Katherine is stuck. She might well say with Arjuna, “Conflicting sacred duties confound my reason!”

3

There are many ways to be quietly paralyzed by doubt. We might call Katherine’s version Fear of Closing the Door. I see this version quite frequently. Someone has had a profound taste of living their dharma, maybe even for decades. But now that particular dharma is used up—lived out. You can smell it. This person knows that a certain dharma moment is over but has only the vaguest sense of what must be next. It increasingly begins to dawn on her that in order to find that next expression of dharma she is going to have to take a leap of some kind. She knows that she is going to have to close a door behind her before she will find the next door to open. And gradually she comes to the edge of a cliff, where she knows a leap of faith will be required. This is where she sets down in her folding chair. Will she ever get up?