Complete your action, and carry no expectation || Acharya Prashant on Lao Tzu (2015)

“Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.”

― Lao Tzu

Question: Lao Tzu says, “Do your work, then step back.” What does he mean?

Speaker: We don’t step back. Do we? Like a salesman who has come to deliver goods to our house, we remain standing on the customer’s door steps. We don’t step back. We say, “We won’t step back till we get the payment.”

“I did something, now I want the result. How can I step back? Where is the fruit of my action? How can I step back? The circle is not yet complete, how can I step back? How can I step back?” We don’t step back.

We wait and wait, and this waiting creates time, this waiting creates future, this waiting is hope and expectations. And there is no suffering worse than hope. There is no torture, worse than, looking at future, in expectation.