Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.                                                                                                                                                    Buddha

Years ago I conducted a series of workshops entitled, “Work as Worship,” which later became, “Bringing Work to Life.”  The point of our small group meetings was to explore with each other ways of finding what the Buddha called, “right livelihood.”  We would ask each other about hopes, dreams and aspirations and how you might begin to move toward them. We focused as little as possible on the current mire of disappointment.

The reason I began doing the workshops was because I wanted to find right livelihood for myself.  I was tired of being disillusioned and frustrated by having to live out the desires and demands of others. I learned along the way that, for me, there will always be demands from others, but now I have more freedom to pick and choose the ones I accept.

A generation later, I find that I’ve done what I set out to do.  It came to me as a jolt, a shock almost, just in the past year.  I finally realized that, along the way, I found or created work that, in keeping with Buddhist tradition, is “freely chosen, done with mindfulness and care, leading to enlightenment.”  While work is still work, now it has meaning and has become not just a job, but a calling.