Dr. Brilliant Vs. the Devil of Ambition

This Just In: Your Soul Is Not Dead.

We advise you not to try stepping over it on your way to someplace else.

There is a little book of Hindu scripture that is called the Bhagavad-Gita. The book says, in effect, that work is a form of ecstasy -- if you twist your mind into the right position. Think of the Gita as the Kama Sutra of work.

The Gita tells the story of a brilliant warrior named Arjuna who mysteriously loses his will to fight at the worst possible moment: the morning of battle. At dawn, he walks the battlefield and sees arrayed on the other side brothers, fathers, uncles. He has no appetite for killing them. But he is a trained fighter. It's his dharma; he must fight. His guru, Krishna, reminds him that ambition must be focused on one thing only: duty. The satisfaction is in doing what you are supposed to do, not in doing what you want to do.

"I experienced Arjuna's dejection," Brilliant says. "It happens at the time that we confront why we exist, why you, particularly, exist. Not why we but why I exist. I exist to do this work? I felt that dark night of the soul so many times when I was working in the smallpox program. I would say to myself, 'God, you have chosen poorly. You've chosen me, and I'm a piece of shit. Any god who would choose me for such an important position can't be God.' "

The Gita teaches you to think differently about ambition and about its unnecessary limitations. "Early on," says Brilliant, "I had this problem with a government secretary. I placed an order for 200 four-wheel-drive Mahendra jeeps which would be used to deliver the vaccine into the most remote villages. It was the monsoon season, and many of those places were tough to reach. I went to see the secretary, who said, 'You have to change your order. You have to have the two-wheel-drive jeeps.' I knew the four-wheel-drive jeeps were the only ones that could reach the villages. He said, 'But if you buy the two-wheel-drive jeeps, you'll have my support. The two-wheel-drive jeeps are made in a factory that is owned by my brother.'

"I thought, now I'm carrying this burden of 'Do I piss off this secretary? Or do I buy jeeps that can't do the job?' I'm 28 years old, I've never even bought a jeep for myself, and here I have to make such a big decision. I agonized over that, and then I read the Bhagavad-Gita, which says, 'Don't take yourself too seriously; don't get attached.' But I was carrying such a heavy burden. I wondered how I could detach myself from this burden in order to see clearly. I told my guru about my problem. On one hand, if I bought the wrong jeeps, hundreds of thousands of kids would die because we wouldn't be able to get medicine to them. On the other hand, if I screwed up my relationship with this secretary, I didn't know if we would ever get help from him. And if I bribed him, my hands would be dirtied.

"My guru sent me to Lama Govinda, who said, 'Think things through very clearly. Ask yourself, number one, are you exaggerating? Are you exaggerating the importance of this decision and of your role in it? Are you milking the melodrama?' Whoops! I thought to myself, 'How does this guy know?'

"Then Govinda said, 'Once you've satisfied yourself that you're not milking the melodrama, then choose the decision that's best for the kids -- and don't worry about your hands.' And that's what the Gita says: Use the tools of spiritualism to clarify the mirror of your mind so that it's not fogged over, so that you see things as they really are. Don't let the melodrama of how seductive your importance is, or of how great the power of your decision is, beguile you into losing your ability to think things through. Then do the right thing -- and to hell with everything else.

"That's all at a very rational level. But here's the magic: I sat down alone and cleared my mind. I concluded that yes, I had psyched myself up, sipping my own whiskey and getting into it, as I'm wont to do. But I also decided that it really mattered that I get the government of India on my side. I could always raise more money for more jeeps, but if I antagonized that powerful secretary, he could kick the smallpox program out of India. I was prepared to give the secretary a bribe, which was something I had never done in my life. I drove to the secretary's office, only to find when I arrived that he had been transferred two hours earlier. The new guy said, 'Oh, four-wheel-drive jeeps? No problem.'

"That's the magic part of it. That's the inexplicable part of clearing your mind and of knowing just what to do. So now you can begin to sip your own whiskey again. Now you say, 'God created this lucky incident just for me.' "

When you sober up again, you remember that you're entitled to the joy of work, you're just not entitled to the results. "As long as you devote the outcome to God, and you don't get confused about who the actor is, you're going to be fine. This message is brutal.

"Lao Tzu says that the Tao -- your life's way, or path -- is easy for one who has no preferences," Brilliant says. "Your preferences get you into trouble. If you believe that there is no difference between going to the left and going to the right, you won't have any trouble. You'll find the right way. That's fate, which is a good thing to accept."