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Treating All Work as Karma Yoga · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  When the spiritual aspiration awakens in an individual, he
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  often feels like he has to leave his employment and take up some
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  work that is more spiritual. He tends to equate the type of
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  work with some I'll defined spiritual nature.
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  Thus we frequently see spiritual people and organizations take up
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  work to feed the hungry, heal the sick, etcetera.
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  This of course, is very positive and needed work and we honour
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  those who make that commitment. Such efforts, however, are not
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  always immediately feasible for an individual, particularly if
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  he is living and working in the society, managing the needs of a
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  family and taking the employment that he is able to get.
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  He may wind up in restaurant service or assembly line action,
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  or working in a warehouse moving products around, etcetera.
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  From an external standpoint, there's nothing spiritual about
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  these things. What makes them spiritual or not
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  is the attitude and effort put into any work.
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  When 1 takes up a line of work, even if it is simply as a means
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  to supporting the family, it can be turned into a practice of the
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  yoga of works by giving the job full and careful attention,
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  doing the best possible, and making the situation one that
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  enhances 1's own Interstate of spiritual development through
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  that dedicated action. The story of the devotee at the
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  Sri Rabindra Ashram who was given the task of drying plates
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  after they were washed is one that illustrates this concept.
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  There's also the famous story from the ancient texts about the
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  youth who came to a teacher and asked for becoming a disciple to
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  learn the science of spirituality.
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  The teacher gave him 2 cattle and told him to take them into
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  the forest and when they were a herd of 1000, he should return
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  and would obtain the teachings. How many years of dedicated and
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  focused effort went into succeeding at the task?
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  When the youth eventually returned, the teacher vacated
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  his own seat for the student and told him that he was now the
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  teacher. As he glowed with the knowledge
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  of the divine, the mundane everyday tasks of looking after
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  cattle, nurturing, feeding and protecting them were turned by
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  the devoted young person into the means of his realization.
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  During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of people went
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  to the Oroville project in South India to help build the
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  community. Many of them were engaged in
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  hard manual labor, constructing the matra mandir or various
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  other facilities, planting and tending trees, cooking food,
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  etcetera. The work in and of itself was
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  not inherently what would traditionally be called
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  spiritual, but the dedication and consecrated action based on
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  a deep aspiration is what transformed the hard work into a
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  means of spiritual progress for many.
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  Sri Aurobindo notes quote. One must take it work done in
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  the world as a training and do it in the spirit of karma yoga.
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  What matters there is not the nature of the work in itself,
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  but the spirit in which it is done.
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  It must be in the spirit of the Gita, without desire, with
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  detachment, without repulsion, but doing it as perfectly as
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  possible, not for the sake of the family or promotion or to
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  please the superiors, but simply because it is the thing that has
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  been given in the hand to do. It is a field of inner training,
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  nothing else. One has to learn in it these
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  things, equality, desirelessness, dedication.
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  It is not the work as a thing for its own sake, but one's
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  doing of it and one's way of doing it that one has to
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  dedicate to the Divine. Done in that spirit it does not
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  matter what the work is. End Quote.
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  Reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother, Looking from Within,
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  Chapter 3, Action and Work, pages 63 to 64.