Are you practising Dharma if you do not take responsibility for your work?

[WoselTenzin]

There are people who refuse to take responsibility for their work.  They do their barest minimum and most of the time ask for help, delegate their work and push their responsibility to others. Sometimes they even take all the credit when the work is done.  The sum of this all is what we call not taking ownership or responsibility.

If a person is supposed to be Buddhist and he/she falls under the above category, is he/she practising Dharma?
 

[Rihanna]

When one truly practices the dharma, it gives you strength and fortitude to face obstacles. Those who constantly pushes away responsibility, takes credit for other's work, etc think that they have won by taking the easy way out but unfortunately they fail because when faced with an obstacle they are unable to get out of it. How long can they fool others?

[valeriecheung]

I believe all this lack of resposibility people is all around us which we unable to change them , i think also practising dharma how to accept them and let them realize their bad attitude. Hahah...

[pgdharma]

A true practitioner will never be selective or push their work to others.  They will take full responsibility for their work.

[Tenzin K]

Personally to me whether you practice dharma, in general we should take responsibility for all our work. To me this is a very common and universal. If we are a dharma practitioner taking responsibility should not even a question.

Doing our work well by not letting other people have to redo our work is responsibility and is dharma.

Dharma teaches us to benefit people. If other people have to spend so much time to redo or do correction to our work that is selfish, waste the time for others to do better things for benefiting others.

If we can't even be responsible to our own work how can we be responsible to help others and how can we be a dharma practitioner…..

[triesa]

Obviously one is not ptactising dharma if one does not take responsibility for their work.

I have also heard that, if there are many works available, normally one would choose the work that is easy and less troublesome to do, but for a really good dharma practitioner, he/she would let the others choose the easy tasks and pick the most difficult one, ot he pick the one no one will choose....

It is almost like you have all the good food on the table, and you let everyone have their go for their favourite pick first and then you pick what is left.

[WoselTenzin]

Doing our work well by not letting other people have to redo our work is responsibility and is dharma.

Dharma teaches us to benefit people. If other people have to spend so much time to redo or do correction to our work that is selfish, waste the time for others to do better things for benefiting others.

If we can't even be responsible to our own work how can we be responsible to help others and how can we be a dharma practitioner…..

What you said is so true Tenzin K.  Everything boils down to whether our actions benefit others or cause others more problems. 

Taking responsibility for our work, doing it all the way and not pushing it onto others is definitely Dharma because we do not burden others and create problems for them. This is one way of benefiting others. 

However, if we do not take responsibility for our work, push it onto other or make errors that others have to correct, we are burdening others and and taking their time away from doing what could have been more productive and beneficial for them.  In this instance, not only we are not benefiting others, we create problems for others.  In such instances, we are definitely not practising Dharma.

 

[pgdharma]

Doing our work well by not letting other people have to redo our work is responsibility and is dharma.

Dharma teaches us to benefit people. If other people have to spend so much time to redo or do correction to our work that is selfish, waste the time for others to do better things for benefiting others.

If we can't even be responsible to our own work how can we be responsible to help others and how can we be a dharma practitioner…..

What you said is so true Tenzin K.  Everything boils down to whether our actions benefit others or cause others more problems. 

Taking responsibility for our work, doing it all the way and not pushing it onto others is definitely Dharma because we do not burden others and create problems for them. This is one way of benefiting others. 

However, if we do not take responsibility for our work, push it onto other or make errors that others have to correct, we are burdening others and and taking their time away from doing what could have been more productive and beneficial for them.  In this instance, not only we are not benefiting others, we create problems for others.  In such instances, we are definitely not practising Dharma.

 

Totally agreed with you. When we take responsibility for our work, it is real dharma practice. If we are sloppy and neglect what we are supposed to do, it shows that we are not putting effort in our pursuit for our spiritual growth. When we are  lazy, laid back or irresponsible we are definitely creating problems and not benefiting others.Thus we should change ourselves first to be responsible before we can help and transform others.

[sahara]

If we practicing dharma,we should resposibility for our work don't let your teacher or other people to push u and doing halfway.....If we do not take resposibility for our work, we also create the problems to others too  So, we should do it all the way.... to take this resposibility to become a good Dharma practitioner.......

[diamond girl]

There are people who refuse to take responsibility for their work.  They do their barest minimum and most of the time ask for help, delegate their work and push their responsibility to others. Sometimes they even take all the credit when the work is done.  The sum of this all is what we call not taking ownership or responsibility.

If a person is supposed to be Buddhist and he/she falls under the above category, is he/she practising Dharma?
 

Very simply the answer to the question is NO.

[Reena Searl]

Taking responsibility , to take charge of our work, not to push the responsibility to others is an act of mindfulness and gaining respect.
if we truly practicing dharma, then TAKE RESPONSIBILITY should not be an issue.

[Reena Searl]

To me, If you do not take responsibility for your work and burden others is UNREAL, FATE dharma.
Always wanting people to push or remind on the work simply because lacking care and selfish act..

[Positive Change]

The answer to this question is a definitive NO. Why? The way I understand it is, if we are practising Dharma, we are ultimately trying to help others... hence if we do not take responsibility for our work, we create extra work for others and ourselves and hence it is counter productive to what we are trying to achieve.

Being responsible for our work is not simply just making sure our work is done but also taking ownership of the overall vision of our Dharma practice. What does this mean? Very simply thinking out of the box, focusing out more and seeing things as a totality and not just what is on our plates. Easier said then done? Not really... because it really means caring more and that should be innate. It is just that we have been so conditioned with our bad habituations of the self, we have "forgotten" to care...

[Klein]

Doing our work well by not letting other people have to redo our work is responsibility and is dharma.

Dharma teaches us to benefit people. If other people have to spend so much time to redo or do correction to our work that is selfish, waste the time for others to do better things for benefiting others.

If we can't even be responsible to our own work how can we be responsible to help others and how can we be a dharma practitioner…..

What you said is so true Tenzin K.  Everything boils down to whether our actions benefit others or cause others more problems. 

Taking responsibility for our work, doing it all the way and not pushing it onto others is definitely Dharma because we do not burden others and create problems for them. This is one way of benefiting others. 

However, if we do not take responsibility for our work, push it onto other or make errors that others have to correct, we are burdening others and and taking their time away from doing what could have been more productive and beneficial for them.  In this instance, not only we are not benefiting others, we create problems for others.  In such instances, we are definitely not practising Dharma.

 

I totally agree with you WoselTenzin. Burdening others is not an act of compassion. Hence it is not practising dharma. There is no doubt to this.

Many people nowadays do not see the problems they create for themselves when they continue to be irresponsible. As time goes by, they will create more problems for people around them and for themselves. At the end of the day, no one wants to be around them. So they become old, lonely and bitter. By that time, it's even more difficult to change their selfish ways as their bad habits are deeply ingrained.

It's best to arrest our selfish and irresponsible ways now before it becomes almost impossible to change for the better.

[Poonlarp]

When people is not taking responsible to their work, they don't really have the motivation to practice Dharma, and if these people are working in Dharma environment, it's very ridiculous. I came across some people like these and my question to them is "Why you join dharma work?", some of their answer are "to have peace of mind". In my heart I laugh because I think you will not have a peace of mind if you join Dharma to have a peace of mind. You will have much more problems than secular work as you are bringing a peace of mind to people, so the problems you face will be double, it includes ours and others people problems.

I totally agree with valeriecheung said, it's also our practice to work around people who has no responsibility in work, hehe...maybe in our previous life we caused these problems to people, so it's time to purify the negative karma now.