Does the seventy-hour work week demonstrate the teaching that work is worship?

The answer is not really. I’ll analyze this in three parts: monopolization, mistranslation, and misconception.

Monopolization
Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that work is worship, is work the only form of worship? If that were the case, wouldn’t it make the donkey the greatest worshiper? The donkey works harder than anyone else. Not only that, if the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching were simply that work is worship, then the more you work, the more worship you’d be doing. Why, then, does the Bhagavad Gita talk about so many other things?

The Bhagavad Gita talks about remembering God, practicing yoga, acquiring knowledge of the soul, and understanding the spiritual world. To claim that work is the only form of worship is a distortion of the Bhagavad Gita’s teachings. We work because we have bodies, but we are spiritual beings. The Bhagavad Gita’s worldview is inclusive, such that even work can be included in the domain of worship. But that doesn’t mean that simply doing more work will lead to more worship. In fact, more work can sometimes become a form of worship—not of the Supreme Lord as the Bhagavata recommends, but of the industrial and economic system, which reduces people to mere interchangeable parts. It can also become worship of the ego, where a person equates their self-worth with their net worth, leading to misconceptions about the self.

Mistranslation
The Bhagavad Gita does not teach that “work is worship.” The Sanskrit verse often translated as such actually states something much more nuanced and significantly different. It says that we should worship the Lord—who is the source of all existence and who pervades all of creation—through our work. So, it is not that work itself is worship, but that work can be done as worship. Work is not intrinsically worship, but it can be done with the right attitude of worship.

Why? Because the domain of God is not just the temple or the kingdom of God far away. God pervades all of existence. Therefore, our workplace is also a place where God is present, and it is through our work that we can worship God.

Mood
When we say “work as worship,” it requires a particular mood to be cultivated. When we do traditional worship, we are careful about the way we move the lamp during the aarti. But the aarti ceremony is not just about moving the arms carefully; it is about being conscious that the object being worshipped—the divinity—is accessed through the activity. The mood of humility and reverence is central to the worship. Similarly, when we say “work as worship,” it doesn’t just mean being meticulous and responsible in our work, as we would be in worship. Yes, it means that, but it also means much more.

It means being conscious that God is present even in our workplace. It is God (Krishna) who has given us the abilities with which we work. The body we have is a gift from God. The specific abilities—whether managerial, technical, or artistic—are all gifts from God. In fact, the very world in which we work is sustained by God. The opportunities we have to work are also given by Him. Thus, we are meant to perceive God’s presence and then focus on God.

Such focus requires us to bring God’s presence into our consciousness before we enter the workplace, because the workplace will not remind us of God directly—it is we who need to bring that reminder from within. To do this, we must invest time in exclusive worship activities, where we chant God’s names, study texts like the Bhagavad Gita, and pray to Krishna. When we engage in this kind of worship, our consciousness becomes infused with God’s presence. This ideally happens at the start of the day, so when we go out to work, we can carry that worshipful mood into our work.

To have time for such worship, we certainly cannot afford for our entire week to be consumed by work. A seventy-hour work week for most people will actually deplete their spirituality, consume their consciousness, and distract them from the remembrance of God. They may be so exhausted by their work that even when they try to worship directly, they will have very little energy for it.

Of course, for some people, working seventy hours might be a necessity because it’s the only way they can earn a living. For others, working seventy hours might be something they enjoy because it’s their passion. These are specific cases, but the principle remains that working seventy hours does not demonstrate the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching of “work is worship.” Rather, it is having time for worship and then bringing that worshipful mood into our work that will help us live out the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching to work in a mood of worship.

Thank you.