The goal of spiritual life is self-abnegation.
This can be achieved only by gradually effacing and
eventually completely annihilating one’s ego.
One has to do selfless work. This is imperative since all suffering
is caused by the presence of two attitudes the sense of doer-ship and the sense
of enjoyer-ship.
As long as one has either of these attitudes, that of
assertion and possession, one is bound to suffer. By doing selfless work, one tries
to get rid of the attachment one has to the results of a work.
If one is not at all affected by the results of a work, then
the sense of possession gradually fades and ceases to exist. If one is
established in the practice of selfless work and does not expect any result,
then one stops having ideas like ‘This is mine’, ‘I have to acquire that’, or
‘That belonged to me once’. Thus, the idea of possession or the idea of enjoyer
ship is removed.
Even after the removal of the idea of possession, the idea
that one has to perform some activity remains, albeit in a weak form. This
arises out of the idea of assertion or the idea of doer-ship. The idea of
doer-ship can be transcended only when one realizes the futility of action or the
vanity of thinking, ‘I do this’, ‘I have to do this’, or ‘I did this’.
Source - Prabuddha Bharata magazine editorial June 2017
Source - Prabuddha Bharata magazine editorial June 2017