SadhanaOriental Meditation and Christian Prayer
Contemplation in action
ーIn relation with othersー
[2]Without quitting “working”
The shortest way to be blessed with “contemplation in daily activities” is to try not to lose the fruit from prayers.
Plentiful prayers lead to peace of mind, profound calmness, hopeful feeling, loving feeling, joy, and so on.
It would be wonderful if we could maintain the above internal fruit even after we finish praying.
This tends to be achieved when we try not to quit “working.”
We may want to direct ourselves not to quit working in the following cases, for example:
“I am tired now and I want to take a rest.” “I got bored because I worked for a long time. It is high time to stop.” “I want to have fun with my friends instead of working so hard.”
In such cases, we could choose the following directions:
“I am tired now, but if I continue loving and serving people, more good things are delivered to them.” “I got bored after working for a long time, but if I continue loving and serving people, more good things are delivered to them.” “I want to stop working in order to have fun with my friends, but if I continue this, more good things are delivered to people.”
We could say this is a path to look for and seek God by breaking out of our shell and entering poverty instead of being satisfied with ourselves and enjoying comfortable life.
God the Creator is asking us human beings to cooperate in his creative activities. When we work in the manufacturing and service industries, we play a role to make the human society better. The more we work, the more beneficial it is for someone. We can continue working while talking with God, “God, I will continue trying because I can still keep working to produce something good.”
By doing so, it is easier to maintain the fruit from prayers and keep staying with God.
The point is to feel poverty and keep working. We should not choose a way of working that is too much for our abilities, avariciously trying to get holy feeling on our own. Let’s try not to rush to excessive action plans urged by evil thoughts.
When we seek a path of not quitting working, simply trying to love God and people, we can often feel deep in our heart and mind that we are working, filled with great consolation, indescribable inspiration, tears of gratitude, and so on.