Gem's from Bhagavan: Renunciation

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Why should your occupation or duties in life interfere with your spiritual

effort? For instance, there is a difference between your activities at home

and in the office. In your office activities you are detached, and so long

as you do your duty you do not care what happens, or whether it results in

gain or loss to the employer. But your duties at home are performed with

attachment and you are all the time anxious as to whether they will bring

advantage or disadvantage to you and your family. It is possible to perform

all the activities of life with detachment and regard only the Self as real.

It is wrong to suppose that if one is fixed in the Self, one's duties in

life will not be performed properly. It is like an actor. He dresses, acts

and even feels the part he is playing, but he knows that he is really not

that character but someone else in real life. In the same way, why should

the body-consciousness or the feeling 'I am the body' disturb you once you

know for certain that you are not the body but the Self. Nothing that the

body does should shake you from abidance in the Self. Such abidance will

never interfere with the proper and effective discharge of whatever duties

the body has, any more than the actor's being aware of his real status in

life interferes with his acting a part on stage.

 

 

(Gems from Bhagavan, selected by A. Devaraja Mudaliar)