Work Culture and Ethics in Work
Work culture means vigorous and arduous effort in pursuit of a given or chosen task. When Bhagawan Sri Krishna rebukes Arjuna in the strongest words for his unmanliness and imbecility in recoiling from his righteous duty it is nothing but a clarion call for the highest work culture. Poor work culture is the result of tamasic guna overtaking one’s mindset. Bhagawan’s stinging rebuke is to bring out the temporarily dormant rajasic guna in Arjuna. In Chapter 16 of the Gita Sri Krishna elaborates on two types of Work Ethic viz. daivi sampat or divine work culture and asuri sampat or demonic work culture.
1. Daivi work culture. - means fearlessness, purity, self-control, sacrifice, straightforwardness, self-denial, calmness, absence of fault-finding, absence of greed, gentleness, modesty, absence of envy and pride.
2. Asuri work culture - means egoism, delusion, desire-centric, improper performance, work which is not oriented towards service.
It is to be noted that mere work ethic is not enough in as much as a hardened criminal has also a very good work culture. What is needed is a work ethic conditioned by ethics in work. It is in this light that the wisest counsel enunciated in the Gita ‘yogah karmasu kausalam’ should be understood.
Kausalam means skill or method or technique of work which is an indispensable component of work ethic. Yogah is defined in the Gita itself as ‘samatvam yogah uchyate’ meaning unchanging equipoise of mind. Tilak tells us that performing actions with the special device of an equable mind is Yoga. By making the equable mind as the bed-rock of all actions Gita evolved the goal of unification of work ethic with ethics in work, for wiihout ethical process no mind can attain equipoise. Adi Sankara says that the skill in performance of one’s duty consists in maintaining the evenness of mind in success and failure because the calm mind in failure will lead him to deeper introspection and see clearly where the process went wrong so that corrective steps could be taken to avoid such shortcomings in future.
The principle of reducing our attachment to personal gains from the work done or controlling the aversion to personal losses enunciated in Ch.2 Verse 47 of the Gita is the foolproof prescription for attaining equanimity. The common apprehension about this principle that it will lead to lack of incentive for effort and work, striking at the very root of work ethic, is not valid because the advice is to. Be judged as relevant to man’s overriding quest for true mental happiness.
Tilak explains the import of this theory by saying that if any work is done with the sole idea of reaping personal benefit out of such work, and thereafter if there is any obstruction in the matter of getting the desired result or benefit, then the chain of misery starts. Thus while the common place theories on motivation lead us to bondage, the Gita theory takes us to freedom and real happiness.
Work Results
The Gita further explains the theory of non- attachment to the results of work in Ch.18 Verses 13-15 the import of which is as under:
If the result of sincere effort is a success, the entire credit should not be appropriated by the doer alone.
If the result of sincere effort is a failure, then too the entire blame does not accrue to the doer.
The former attitude mollifies arrogance and conceit while the latter prevents excessive despondency, de-motivation and self-pity. Thus both these dispositions safeguard the doer against psychological vulnerability which is the cause for the modem managers’ companions like Diabetes, High B.P. etc.
Assimilation of the ideas behind 2.47 and 18.13-15 of the Gita leads us to the wider spectrum of lokasamgraha or general welfare. There is also another dimension in the work ethic. If the karma yoga is blended with bhaktiyoga then the work itself becomes worship, seva yoga. A Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda are illustrations.