‘Work’ is an everyday concept with symbolic and real life significance. It means focus, precision, and accomplishment in the intellectual world. We’re taught to ‘get to work’ and ‘get ahead’, to be serious, show ambition, produce, improve. In the practical, objective realm, work is necessary for ‘making ends meet’ and ‘keeping body and soul together’: there’s shopping and cooking, laundry and child and elder care to do, dental appointments and home repairs to pay for, music lessons to provide.
Spiritually, working implies virtuous devotion and the attainment and accumulation of many blessings, and verbs like ascending and transcending and elevating are used to describe and to encourage spiritual advancement. It’s an upward climb, with no slips or falls, no sidetracking. Labour is sanctified in certain cultures, and industriousness stimulates the soul’s redemption.
But, as a Zen story tells, glimpses of enlightened reality and our true nature are infrequent and hard work doesn’t create them. Duty or striving causes awareness to disappear. Awakening behaves like a secretive wild animal or a rare bird: when you approach, it turns away; when you back off, it becomes curious, sidles closer, and may even show itself. Dedication helps. Vulnerability helps. Self-kindness, patience, and relaxation help. Moments of insight cannot be manufactured by trying. They simply appear, unbidden, shining, golden and precious, while we’re quietly doing nothing.
Zhaozhou asked his teacher Nanquan, ‘What is the way?’
Nanquan replied, ‘Ordinary mind is the way.’
Zhaozhou pushed, ‘Should I direct myself toward it, or not?’
Nanquan responded, ‘If you try to turn toward it, you betray your practice.’
Frustrated, Zhaozhou asked, ‘How can I understand the way if I don’t turn toward it?’
Nanquan explained, ‘The way does not belong to the realms of knowing or not-knowing. Knowing is delusion. Not-knowing is blankness.
When you have discovered the way, you will find it as vast as outer space. How can this be approached in terms of right and wrong?’
Please join us and reapply your most open, curious, and loving approach to work to ordinary, everyday yoga this fall.