Effort and Effortlessness

Anything that is natural does not require effort. You bathe in the morning. Do you bathe with a lot of interest? Do you brush your teeth with a lot of interest? No, you don’t. Just because you have to do it, you do it! It’s natural and effortless!

Like when you are smiling naturally, that smile is effortless. But if you are asked to smile then that becomes a difficult task. Doing an action that requires effort is aasakti. However, doing work that comes naturally and gives you inner peace is done in nirasakti.

If you ask those who prepare food every day, they would be able to prepare it without much effort. However, if the same task is handed to a person who never cooks, he will flip through the pages of a recipe book again and again, to prepare the same food. He will keep tasting the food to check the balance of spices. So wherever effort is applied, the job is done with aasakti, and this leads to feverishness.

You being feverish about going to, for example, Mysore is aasakti; and effortlessly driving your car to Mysore is nirasakti. Nirasakti is not disinterestedness or depression; it is just an effortless attitude. The next effortless thing is meditation. If you put effort into meditation, that is it! You will not be able to do it. Meditation happens effortlessly.

All other things need effort – memorising anything requires effort, learning skills need effort. If you want to learn the computer, it takes you some time to adjust to the keyboard! If you want to learn some sport, you have to give 100% effort. If you want to play the sitar, you have to put in effort. And if you need to tell a lie? – 500% effort! This is because when you tell a lie, you forget what you have told, and it needs a lot of effort to keep it in mind!

Life is a combination of effort and effortlessness and they are complementary. If you work dynamically, you sleep well. If you have memorised well, you remember automatically. If you are doing service, you are able to love more, because there is satisfaction and your heart is opening up. If you can see beauty everywhere, you can appreciate beauty!

When you can do this, things become effortless; even jobs requiring effort, will not be strenuous. Do you see? When you want to do something, when the heart is in it, when there is an appreciation of beauty, then even effort is not strenuous.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji