There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do.

There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.


It’s as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. So human beings come to this world to do . That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person.
You say, ‘But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises. I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and all the rest.’ But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself.
Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don’t you will be exactly like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You’ll be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly ignoring your dignity and your purpose.

What am I to do?

“The understanding of the totality of life brings about its own action, in which there is neither drifting nor the imposition of a pattern. This totality is to be understood from moment to moment. There must be the death fo the past moment.”

Select a vocation that helps realize your ideal of compassion

Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to live. Aware that great violence and injustice have been done to our environment and society, we are committed not to live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature.

Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.

Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to live. Aware that great violence and injustice have been done to our environment and society, we are committed not to live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Right Livelihood is an element of the Noble Eightfold Path. It urges us to practice a profession that harms neither humans nor nature, physically or morally.

Practicing mindfulness at work helps us discover whether our livelihood is right or not. We live in a society where jobs are hard to find and it is difficult to practice Right Livelihood. Still, if it happens that our work entails harming life, we should try our best to find another job. We should not drown in forgetfulness. Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or it can erode them. Our work has much to do with our practice of the Way.

Satisfy the truest and highest part of yourself

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side, all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.


"Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles...." Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet, page 11

"If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for... There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living."
"The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get 'a good job,' but to perform well a certain work…Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."
‘Life Without Principle’

“Why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of action, and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and willful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment....” Spiritual Laws, 81
“Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and character, make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will never know and honor him aright.”
Spiritual Laws, 83

Satisfy the truest and highest part of yourself
“That which I call right or goodness, is the choice of my constitution; and that which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is that state or circumstance desirable to my constitution; and the action which I in all my years tend to do, is the work for my faculties. We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade? Has he not a calling in his character.”
Spiritual Laws, 81.

Work should be play. Don’t work just for money.

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, 'Blessed is the man who has found his work'? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind, Mark you, he says his work – not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.



The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.

Ordinary people with passion, vision and action

Most extraordinary things are achieved by ordinary people who have three things in common. Based on the exceptional human performance framework called "Olympian Thinking," when ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things, they are:
– Passion powered
– Vision guided
– Action oriented



‘Sir, you have this gift, and a mighty one; see that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a greater trust than ships and armies: you might cast away, if you were their captain, with less treason to your people than in casting your own glorious power away, and serving the devil with it instead of men. Ships and armies you may replace if they are lost, but a great intellect, once abused, is a curse to the earth for ever.’ John Ruskin

Live the truth that you have been given

The most important thing is to simply live the truth that you have been given. So you have been given an understanding, and it’s necessary to live that understanding. If you live that understanding, if you live that truth fully, to the deepest reality that you know, then you life is a living word, your life speaks that truth. You don’t need to do anything other than simply that. It’s true that there is a balance between doing and being, but insofar as you live your truth, you will do the truth, and you will find that balance.
You can’t live your way to the balance, you have to your way to the balance, and if you do that, then your life will reflect the truth that you know.

 

Harry is a good and wise friend of mine. Here are a few thoughts of his on what it means to have a calling.