Now and then a book comes along that captures the yearnings of a generation. In my lifetime, Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge was such a novel. Published toward the end of World War II, it spoke to a war-weary world in a way the author could never have imagined.

I discovered The Razor’s Edge soon after the war was over. India had won independence, and I was embarking on my teaching career. The timing was perfect, for although I did not know it, I was about to be plunged into the same search the story describes.

Maugham takes his title from a line in the Katha Upanishad, one of India’s most profound scriptures: “Sharp like the razor’s edge, the sages say, is the path to Self-realization.” His central character is an American named Larry, whom he claimed to have met through acquaintances in the United States. Whatever the truth about Larry’s identity, we recognize ourselves in his story; to that extent he is as real as you or I.

As a very young airman Larry sees his best friend die in battle, and the casual way in which life is snuffed out plunges him into a search for meaning. He studies the world’s great writers and philosophers, but they only feed his rage to know. In Europe he stays awhile at a Benedictine monastery, where a monk observes insightfully, “You are a deeply religious man who doesn’t believe in God. God will seek you out. . . . Whether here or elsewhere, only God can tell.”

Eventually Larry makes his way to India, where he learns to meditate. When Maugham meets him next, he has returned to Europe. Noticing a subtle but profound transformation in his friend, Maugham asks him, “Have you found what you were looking for?”

“Yes,” Larry replies quietly.

“And what was that?”

“Peace.”

“And what will you do,” Maugham asks a bit skeptically, “now that you have found it?”

“Live,” Larry says with a smile. “With calmness, forbearance, compassion, and selflessness.” He adds, “Of course I’ll work.” He plans to get a job in a garage, he explains, and save enough to buy a taxi.

Maugham is dumbfounded. “Can you for a moment imagine that you, one man, can have any effect?”

“I can try,” Larry replies. “Nothing that happens is without effect.” When even one person tries to lead a spiritual life, “the influence of his character spreads. . . . It may be that if I lead the life I’ve planned for myself it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than the ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another, and that one a third; it’s just possible that a few people will see that my way of life offers happiness and peace, and that they in their turn will teach what they have learnt to others.”

Our unique contribution

In a small way, you and I are like Larry. The mere fact that I am writing this and you are reading it places us in the company of seekers like that young airman poring over the works of the world’s great thinkers in the library. And Larry’s choice at the end of the book points to a profound truth: the influence each of us has in the world depends not so much on the work we do as on the kindness, patience, and compassion we show in the details of everyday life.

In other words, it is not enough if we make progress in meditation. We have also to make sure that we share the fruits of our efforts with everyone around us, helping them to move from sickness into health, from despair into hope, from hatred into love, from a wasted life into a life that is precious to themselves and those around. And the very best way to do this is through our personal example.

Here the Bhagavad Gita, which Mahatma Gandhi called his “spiritual reference book,” offers some very practical advice: whoever we are, we can improve our contribution to the world simply by giving complete attention to the job at hand in a spirit of detachment. We don’t have to compare our lives or work with others’. All that is expected of us is that we give our very best to whatever responsibilities come our way. As our capacity to contribute increases, greater responsibilities will come to us. That is the way spiritual growth has always taken place down the centuries.

I like to illustrate this from the life of Mahatma Gandhi. We are so used to thinking of Gandhi on a world stage that it is easy to forget how he got there. Even when he goes to South Africa at the age of twenty-four, an unknown failure, what we remember is that dramatic incident when he is thrown of the train because of the color of his skin. It took years after that for Gandhi to find his direction. Yet, looking back, we can see that he began to remake himself quite unconsciously, simply by giving full attention to the responsibilities at hand.

His tasks were mundane, far below his training as a barrister. He learned from them to focus his attention and keep the welfare of the whole in mind instead of personal gain. Gradually, that quiet example attracted people to him. People of all races and religions learned that they could trust him. By the time the separatist challenge to Indian immigrants came, a full thirteen years later, both Gandhi and his community were ready for the great experiment of nonviolent resistance.

Even in my own small example, this is the pattern that emerged. When I began to meditate, I don’t think it ever occurred to me to change jobs or to try to make a “spiritual” contribution with my writing. I simply gave more and more attention to my teaching – to my colleagues and especially to my students. I was meditating every day on the words of the Bhagavad Gita, where Sri Krishna counsels: “Do your best; then leave the results to me.”

It is helpful to keep each of these three aspects in mind – attention, detachment, and the job at hand. But before I comment on them, I want to emphasize that they are really not separate. They are three elements of a single skill. When you dedicate yourself to the task at hand with complete concentration and without any trace of egotistic involvement, you are learning to live completely in the present. You are making yourself whole, undivided, which is the goal of the spiritual life and the meaning of that much-misunderstood word yoga.

In reality, all these three amount to unifying our attention. We don’t usually think in these terms, but when we ignore responsibilities, we are actually dividing our attention. When we postpone or neglect a task that needs doing, we are dividing attention. When we do a job half-heartedly, we are dividing attention. Even when we get personally entangled in our activities, we are dividing our attention. And if “dividing attention” sounds abstract, let me assure you it is utterly practical. When we divide our attention, we split ourselves, which weakens everything we do. In this sense, perhaps the simplest expression of our goal in meditation is that we are trying to make ourselves whole.

With this in mind, let me offer a few practical suggestions from my own experience.

The job at hand

First, when the Gita talks about doing our best with the job at hand, it is talking about responsibilities – duties. “Duty” is not a very popular word today, so it is important to understand what it means for a spiritual aspirant. From the perspective of meditation, everything life sets before us can be seen as an educational opportunity – a chance to grow. If we accept that responsibility, we grow spiritually; if we shun it or ignore it, the lesson will go unlearned, and we will have to face the same kind of responsibility again – often when the burden is greater.

Every station in life – husband or wife, parent, child, sibling, student, professional – has its characteristic responsibilities, which the Gita calls our own personal dharma. Other people’s lives may appear more attractive, more creative, even more “spiritual,” but we can never grow spiritually, the Gita says, until we attend to our own duties first. Then, as Gandhi’s life illustrates, greater opportunities and challenges will open.

The Gita asks, very practically, Is there any task that is one hundred percent perfect? Is there any job where you do only what you want, where you want, only with people that you like? Just as there is always smoke where there is fire, Sri Krishna says, there is no job without drudgery, disciplines, conflicts, unpleasantness, and a certain amount of just plain slogging to get the work done.

Further, over time, every job becomes routine. For a year or two everything seems new; every task presents an interesting challenge. But after a few years, it’s “Oh, another patient, another client, another performance, another report.” New things have a way of becoming old; new hats become old hat; everything becomes passé. That’s the way life is: as Ecclesiastes observed thousands of years ago, there is nothing new under the sun. The answer is not to change jobs, drop out, or walk away, but to give more attention and do the very best we can. Interest does not lie in the job; it is a function of the attention we give. With complete attention, everything in life becomes fresh.

Therefore, the Gita says, don’t ask, “Is this interesting? Is this exciting?” If a job is exciting today, it’s going to be depressing later. Unless it is at the expense of life, give it your very best. Doing a routine job well, with concentration, is the greatest challenge I can imagine. You’re not just doing a job but learning a skill: the skill of improving concentration, which pays rich dividends in every aspect of life.

For the welfare of all

Finally, in attending to the task at hand, the Gita urges us never to get attached to personal pleasure or profit. Whatever the job, do it as a service to others. Don’t do it to gain credit or prestige or to win attention. And please don’t ever compare yourself with others, saying things like “If only I had that person’s job.” Jealousy can be terrible anywhere, but it is especially terrible in work. It not only separates people; it actually sets you back in your spiritual growth. That is why the Gita advises us to give our best with the welfare of all in mind, in which our own welfare is included.

This is the essence of the Gita’s message. Interest in personal gain is what gets us entangled. We get stuck in a particular groove, and that handicaps our performance; eventually we can’t do the job well, we can’t see that we aren’t doing it well, and we can’t let go of it. We get so entangled in one particular aspect that we forget all other aspects – forget, for example, that people are waiting, or that bills are going up.

This advice applies even to personal ambition. To most of us today, excellence without personal ambition seems a contradiction. From the Gita’s perspective, however, you can’t have one and keep the other. The key word here is “personal.” I am terribly ambitious where the world is concerned, but I would suggest that none of us try to be ambitious where our own small self is concerned. If we can forget ourselves and give full attention to the job at hand, we cannot help but excel.

Through many, many years of unremitting effort based on the practice of meditation, we can train the mind to be detached from every attempt to cling for security to anything outside. That’s what detachment means: you need nothing from anything or anyone outside you; you are complete. As this kind of detachment grows, all the desires that have been flowing towards money and material possessions and prestige and power begin to flow back into your own hands, bringing a tremendous consolidation of vitality, love, and wisdom to everything you do.

Make it an offering

In the language of the Gita, work done in this spirit as an offering to him who pervades the universe, who is in my heart and yours.

If we grasp this great truth – that the Lord lives in each and every one of us, previous page regardless of who we are – we will never be discourteous to others, we will never be unkind, we will never try to avoid people, we will always be glad to work in harmony with those around us. Then it becomes impossible to quarrel, to be angry, to hurt others, to move away.

This doesn’t mean weakening your convictions or diluting your principles. Disagreeing without being disagreeable is one of the arts of civilized living. This is what Gandhi means by nonviolence, and he calls it the most active force in the world. You don’t retaliate, you don’t retire; you just stand where you are, firmly rooted – rooted in wisdom, rooted in love, unshakably kind in the face of criticism, opposition, calumny, or slander.

If life offers so many opportunities to practice this today, it is because all of us have been so conditioned to focus on ourselves. Because of this, we have become so impatient that we burst out at the slightest provocation – not only mentally, not only verbally, but with our heart, our lungs, our whole nervous system. Not to be provoked, not to be frightened, not to retaliate requires a lot of stability inside so that these passing storms do not upset us.

Most of us refrain from lashing out physically when we are provoked, but I think our whole society would benefit immensely if we could all learn to use kind words. During my stay in this country, extending almost half a century, I have seen a sad deterioration in the way people express their opinions and frustrations. Millions of people today believe that unkind, hurtful language is a necessary part of communication. I feel very deeply, but I never use an unkind word. I have very strong convictions, but I never express them in language that would be harmful. I think it is Gandhi who pointed out that those who get angry when opposed or contradicted have no faith in themselves. When you have faith in your convictions, you won’t get angry. I can listen to opposition with sympathy, and yet I will stand by my own convictions whatever the opposition is.

This is the most demanding way of life that can be presented to any human being – and in terms of giving our best to the job at hand, the Gita would maintain that everyone’s real job is to be kind. Nothing we do could have a more beneficial influence on those around us than remaining calm and considerate in the midst of ups and downs. It’s a challenging career that lasts a lifetime, and there are opportunities every day. When people are impolite to you, that’s the time to be exceptionally polite.When people are discourteous to you, that’s the time to be more courteous. By your continuing courtesy and kindness, you are educating that person.

Character is a continuing process; personality is being formed continuously. Therefore, it can be changed. It can be improved. It can be ennobled. And almost all of life, at home, at work, or even at play, provides opportunities for us not only to improve our own character, but – by our example – to encourage others to improve too.

In this way every one of us is capable of making our life a thing of beauty, which will benefit our family, our society, wherever we work, whatever we do.