We need hardly say that from the traditional point of view there could hardly be found a stronger condemnation of the present social order than in the fact that the man at work is no longer doing what he likes best, but rather what he must, and in the general belief that a man can only be really happy when he “gets away” and is at play. For even if we mean by “happy” to enjoy the “higher things of life,” it is a cruel error to pretend that this can be done at leisure if it has not been done at work. For “the man devoted to his own vocation finds perfection… That man whose prayer and praise of God are in the doing of his own work perfects himself.” [Bhagavad Gita] It is this way of life that our civilization denies to the vast majority of men, and in this respect that it is notably inferior to even the most primitive or savage societies with which it can be contrasted.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, p. 26Â
(ellipsis in the original)