When you work, work for yourself.

Just because I feel like some people need to hear this story.

Once I stayed for some time at a small Zen temple. I got up at the proper time, 4.30 a.m. and cleaned the temple every day, but the monks were all in bed until seven or eight o’clock. I cursed them as I swept, and despised them as I washed the floor.

 

I hoped the roshi would get up and catch them slacking and find me heroically working in the darkness, but he never did. He was in bed himself.

 

I judged the monks indifferent to their duty and to the welfare and prosperity of Zen. I thought of nothing else but them and their idleness, and begrudged both my own labour and their slumbers.

 

Some time after, hearing of this from me, the roshi asked, “For whose sake do you clean the temple?”

 

This question was a puzzler. He himself answered, “For your own sake. When you work, work for yourself, not for other people.”

 

This is the meaning of 實參， When you work, just work, don’t worry about whether others are working, or whether the temple will be burned down next week or not. When you sleep, just sleep, don’t worry about whether your beard is in the bed or outside.

 

When you write a book, don’t worry about whether it will ever be published or whether anyone will ever read it. All that is God’s worry. Let him worry about it. This is the meaning of “casting all your care him.” Why did Daruma have a beard? Why did he have no beard? Why did he have five and a half beards? Here is the first step towards the answer.

(Source: R. H. Blyth, from Blyth's Mumonkan)

Submitted May 10, 2019 at 11:16PM by McNubbitz http://bit.ly/30k1tpo