Has anybody ever told you that to not go the fruits of labor? A long time ago, I was told that and agreed about that but didn’t understand what it meant. I just took it whimsically and moved along in my endeavors. When you visualize it, you will understand a very important worth for the wise.
A seed grows to a tree through a process. In that process, it goes through a cycle of birth and death. This is normal in the creation of life. Through years, it goes through a process of cultivation, nourishment, resiliency, and determination. A tree can start as a youngling, yet it goes through a process of understanding through various climates, seasons, and age. Firmly rooted from the ground up, it is connected to the source of life.
When a tree bears fruit, it provides a gift of its cultivation, nourishment, resiliency, and determination. When you take a fruit from a tree, it is severed from the tree’s source. The fruit has its own source, yet compared to the tree, its birth and death cycle is fleeting in comparison. It does provide its cultivation, nourishment, resiliency, and determination, yet these qualities is more temporal than the tree itself. In a bigger scale, the tree is more temporal than the source of life itself.
When you go for the fruits (or rewards in this case), you can find satisfaction only in the fleeting temporance of life. The cycle of its birth and death has a shorter span.
It’s fine to have fruits in life. This makes life vibrant and worth living. Its just that if you only go for the fruits, you are missing a great point in life.
When you work, you can find happiness in your work. While happiness is there in the reward, it is in most cases temporary happiness. When your work becomes the source of happiness, you will be one with happiness. It could be with reward or not. It doesn’t matter so much of what it bears. You can feel genuine with reward or not. Your source is deeper than something temporary.
Set thy heart upon thy work but never on its reward. – Vyasa
Thought Lighthouse 