The Task At Hand

In Zen all labor is viewed with the eye of equality, for it is nothing but the workings of a dualistically ensnared mind that discriminates between agreeable and disagreeable jobs, between creative and uncreative work. It is to root out this weighing and judging that Zen novices are set to work pulling weeds by hand, licking envelops, or doing other seemingly unimportant "non-creative" work at the start of their training, and why the abbot himself often cleans toilets. For true creativity is possible only when the mind is empty and totally absorbed in the task at hand. Only at the point where one is freed of the weight of self-consciousness in the complete identification with work is there transcendence and the joy of fulfillment. In this type of creativity our intuitive wisdom and joy are naturally brought into play.

All this does not mean, of course, that attempts at bettering working conditions and making work more meaningful...are worthless. But for a worker constantly to resent his work or his superiors, for him to become sloppy and slothful in his working habits, for him to become embittered toward life--these attitudes do most harm to the worker himself and serve little to change his working conditions. When it's time to work, nothing held back; when it's time to make changes one makes changes; when it's time to revolt one even revolts. In Zen everything is in the doing, not in the contemplating.

---Philip Kapleau---