Pure Motivation

   As I was conferring with a colleague at work today, I had noticed a tiny sticky note stuck to her monitor, which read "If your motivation is pure, you will get the best results." When I see this kind of thing, I reflect on the miracle of being surrounded by Dharma teachings. Indeed, the idea that pure motivation brings about good results seems a very 'on the spot' Dharma teaching, if I have ever experienced one.
    Of course, like most spiritual teachings, this one takes time to understand and embody. And the concept can be a bit mysterious to unpack. For example, what exactly does 'pure motivation' entail, anyway, and how can it be achieved in a fast-paced workplace where profit and measurable achievements seem to be the bottom line? I reflected on a couple of things on the bus ride home. The first is that having this kind of message can be empowering and uplifting, because it reminds me to focus on why the organization for which I work exists in the first place and who it aspires to serve. In the end, most business organizations are designed to serve something or someone, so there is always an altruistic and interconnected aspect to every business. Even when a business has the mandate to ruthlessly pursue profits, it still relies on inter-being for its survival. There isn't a single business out there I know of that pursues productivity and products only for their own sake. All products need to have a purpose which connects the business to others. This being said, the 'pure' motivation could be thought of as none other than the authentic goal of the organization: what it is trying to do for a community or an ecosystem. By going deeply into this kind of motivation, I am bound to be much more motivated to be productive. After all, work no longer becomes about me feeling good. Rather, it is about the beings I am serving. When I take this approach, it is much easier and more motivating to be mindful, because I am no longer just serving my feelings of the moment.
    I notice that most books about the psychology of work rarely delve deeply into the why of work, especially related to the organization. It's as though a person working for Nike has the same purpose as someone working for Sony. Yet, if these organizations are serving completely different purposes, how can it be said that all workers have the same purpose in different companies? Yet, in a sense, every organization has its own soul, and this is the engine that rives the organization toward a specific path. That soul expresses itself in deeply different ways, from the company's vision to the aesthetic look of the office or general work environments.
     If I were to take this to heart, I would say that unless an individual sees and is convinced of the greater purpose of the company or organization for whom she works, it will be hard to have a pure motivation. Instead of taking pride in the company and striving to deliver the  highest quality, such a person only ends up working for her or himself if she cannot find the meaning of the organization as a totality. 
    But, as I am reading these words, I am also sensing the dangers of attaching purity to form, such as the form in which one works or an organization's character. After all, from a certain perspective, no phenomena are either pure or impure. It's only mind's attachment that makes phenomena pure and impure. So what would 'pure motivation' mean then? I think at that point, the pure motivation has nothing to do with individual vs. company, company vs. community, self vs. other...as these are all distinctions created in the mind. Rather, the pure motivation would simply be viewing the phenomena as having no self attached to it: no self-importance, no self-edification, no self-clinging. Okay, but what does this mean? I think it means that no matter what happens at work, I am not clinging  to a self. If there is a criticism or a mistake,  I don't need to congeal it around myself, or foist it onto someone else as an object of blame. Rather, the work just becomes the totality of my moment, and there is just no separating an 'I' from it when I deeply involve myself with work. I take the work to be mind, rather than separating work from individual self. I don't even need to judge me as being pure/impure at that point, since that remains is the doing of work. Once things cease to become markers of success/failure of the self, there is just the ability to act in the moment according to the emerging causes and conditions. At that point, the pure mind is not attached to any notion of purity or impurity, at which point it realizes the natural state of things.