Starting with simple, repetitive tasks, and gradually increasing their complexity, we learn to see how our minds respond to the task at hand. At the Austin Zen Center we offer a short daily care-taking period (Soji) each morning to begin to explore labor that is nourishing to ourselves and others. Work as practice is an indispensable way in which our Zen training must move off the cushion and into the sacred activity of living and being in the wider world. The founder of our Soto lineage in America, Suzuki Roshi, valued work so highly as to say, “First clean, then zazen.” It’s not just WORKING, it’s JUST working. But Zen training takes work far beyond this narrow point of view. It is pretty conventional notion to see work as merely a means to an end, something that has to be done now in order to do what we really want to do later. These same practices form a core part of Zen training: the practice of zazen (sitting meditation), face-to-face meetings with a teacher, and work-practice. Dōgen was puzzled by the distinguished monk and asked him, “Venerable Tenzo, in your advanced years why don’t you wholeheartedly engage the Way by doing zazen or studying the sutras instead of troubling yourself by being Tenzo and just working? What is that good for?” The Tenzo laughed loudly and said, “Oh good friend from a foreign country, it is clear you have no idea what it means to whole-heartedly engage in the Way!” When Master Dōgen returned to Japan, he brought with him several distinct practices of Chinese Zen training. There he met an old Tenzo (Head Cook) who had walked 12 miles to buy some Japanese mushrooms brought over on Dōgen’s ship. In another famous story from 13th century Japan, Dōgen Zenji (the founder of Sōtō Zen) traveled to China to study Buddhism. This saying became very famous in Zen circles, and to this day the Zen schools are noted for taking up work as an integral part of their practice. Old Abbot Baizhang, after his students hid his tools to spare his aging body the rigors of farm work, refused to eat, shouting, “a day without work is a day without food!” His students quickly returned his tools. Each member was expected to contribute their labor for the support of the community, monastic or otherwise. This was especially true in the Zen tradition. To the Chinese it did not make sense that one group would not work and be supported by others. While for centuries Indian Buddhist monks were prohibited from working and were completely supported by the generosity of their neighborhood lay community, this shifted when Buddhism spread into China, where people were unresponsive to the value of monastic rules against working as a form of renunciation. In Zen practice, our work itself is an essential avenue for waking up.
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