Awake at Work
If you are like most people, you spend at least forty hours or more each week at your job. You also spend time commuting back and forth to that job. The time devoted to work is roughly half of your waking life. How do you want to spend this time? If you live your life waiting for the weekends and vacations to “really live,” then you are spending your life waiting and not living. The Buddha's message provides a way to be fully engaged with whatever you are doing, and this means, most of the time, your job. Being awake at work is one of the more challenging places to be awake. There are petty tyrant bosses, mindless colleagues, and not much evidence of the Noble Eight-Fold Path in action. If you are not awake at work, work will be stressful.
Stress is one of the most pervasive and insidious problems facing the workplace today. In fact, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has declared stress a hazard of the workplace. It is estimated that stress costs American corporations $300 billion annually, or $7,500 per worker per year when lost hours due to absenteeism, reduced productivity, and workers' compensation benefits are considered.
“Human beings must, in a sense, always, in order to create meaning, in order to create an ecology of belonging around them, must bring the central questions of their life into whatever they are doing most of the time.” — David Whyte
If you approach your work life as a necessity and an obligation, you might neglect its “soul” elements. The poet, corporate consultant, and Zen practitioner David Whyte suggests that connecting with your soul at work is a responsibility, not a luxury. In his three books on work life, The Heart Aroused: The Preservation of Soul in Corporate America, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as Pilgrimage of Identity, and The Three Marriages: Reimaging Self, Work, and Relationship, he identifies work as a place of sacred visibility. It is the expression of the public, community-serving self. It is the reflection of core values of competence, effectiveness, and accomplishment. If you are disconnected, dissatisfied, or disgruntled with your work experience, a significant portion of yourself may be compromised.
The workplace is the source of many conditioned reactions. Greed, hatred, and delusion are frequent visitors. Generosity, lovingkindness, and wisdom, perhaps less frequent. Today's workplace is also a place of great uncertainty. The Three Poisons have adversely impacted the economy. The financial collapse of 2008 revealed how the system was based on false assumptions and blind ignorance driven by greed. Each moment at work may be a reflection of impermanence. Mindfulness can help you to steel yourself against this uncertainty.
Work may be an unavoidable intrusion into life. For some, there is great joy in work. An October 2009 New York Times article, “How Mindfulness Can Make for Better Doctors,” described one surgeon who said, “Time in the O.R. is not work; it's play.” That's the Buddha at work!
