Mindful Chores

[Maddie]

I have always hated doing chores, running errands and other routine tasks like this. I think I heard there is a Zen practice of making doing chores a type of practice. Is anyone familiar with this, and if so what the correct approach is? 

[wandelaar]

Apparently the chores aren't mindless because they bother you even when you're not doing them. When you succeed in just watching the discomfort and thoughts that go with the chores without getting actively involved in further boosting those thoughts en complaints about the chores than the total discomfort will become much less. You might even start to value doing the chores as a test and spiritual training.

 

I don't know if this is the official approach, but it seems consistent with Zen to me.

Edited March 9, 2023 by wandelaar

[Maddie]

22 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

Apparently the chores aren't mindless because they bother you even when you're not doing them. When you succeed in just watching the discomfort and thoughts that go with the chores without getting actively involved in further boosting those thoughts en complaints about the chores than the total discomfort will become much less. You might even start to value doing the chores as a test en spiritual training.

 

I don't know if this is the official approach, but it seems consistent with Zen to me.

 

I don't recall calling chores mindless but I do agree with you about approach which is what I am currently doing, which is what made me aware enough of the situation to make a post about it lol. 

[C T]

Much of Thich Nhat Hanh's Zen teachings center on offering practitioners insight into the inseparability between the mundane and the transcendent. 

 

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

[steve]

Reminds me of a favorite line from the short story, A Girl I Knew  -

“She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”

J.D. Salinger

[Mark Foote]

On 3/9/2023 at 9:20 AM, Maddie said:

I have always hated doing chores, running errands and other routine tasks like this. I think I heard there is a Zen practice of making doing chores a type of practice. Is anyone familiar with this, and if so what the correct approach is? 

 

A friend responded to a post of mine:
 

I cannot see the connection to life, cleaning cat boxes, cooking, shopping, driving, bathing....

Let me try to make that connection explicit, here.
 

Gautama the Buddha said that he returned to “that first characteristic of concentration in which I ever constantly abide” after he lectured, and that first characteristic is likely to be “one-pointedness of mind”....  “One-pointedness of mind” does seem like something one could strive to take into everyday life. However, although Gautama implied that he returned to “one-pointedness of mind” after he spoke, he nonetheless described the initial concentration as a state wherein thought is “applied and sustained”.
 

Thought “applied and sustained” is seldom mentioned in Buddhist teaching these days. Zen teachers mostly recommend that beginning meditators focus on the breath in or out, and they will sometimes advise counting the breaths as a method to calm the mind.  So far as I know, Zen teachers never recommend that thoughts be “applied and sustained”. Even the Theravadin Buddhist teachers of Southeast Asia, who follow the teachings of Gautama’s sermons more closely, don’t recommend “thought applied and sustained” to their students–instead, they emphasize something along the lines of the “bare attention” now taught in the West as the practice of mindfulness.
 

A central theme of Gautama’s teaching was the cessation of “determinate thought” (AN III 414) in action, meaning the cessation of the exercise of will or volition in action.  A cessation of the exercise of will could be attained, said Gautama, through the induction of various successive states of concentration. As to the initial induction of concentration, Gautama declared that “making self-surrender the object of thought, one lays hold of concentration, one lays hold of one-pointedness of mind”.
 

I begin with making the surrender of volition in activity related to the movement of breath the object of thought.  For me, that necessitates thought applied and sustained with regard to relaxation of the activity of the body, with regard to the exercise of calm in the stretch of ligaments, with regard to the detachment of mind, and with regard to the presence of mind.  I find that a presence of mind from one breath to the next can precipitate “one-pointedness of mind”, but laying hold of “one-pointedness of mind” requires a surrender of willful activity in the body much like falling asleep.
 

It’s possible to experience “one-pointedness of mind” and the movement of “one-pointed” mind in the body without experiencing a freedom of that movement in full.  I’ve written about the analogies Gautama provided for the cultivation of “one-pointedness of mind” (The Early Record), and I would say that it’s only in the concentration where the body is suffused with “purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind” that the mind really moves freely. Gautama pointed out that with that concentration, “determinate thought” in action of the body ceases, in particular volition that affects the movement of inhalation or exhalation ceases.
 

That doesn’t mean that action of the body can’t take place, only that the exercise of will or volition is not involved.  I have many times quoted a remark I heard Zen teacher Kobun Chino Otogawa make at the end of one of his lectures at the San Francisco Zen Center:
 

You know, sometimes zazen gets up and walks around.

 

If a person “takes the attitude of someone who… lets go of both hands and feet” (as Dogen instructed), then perhaps there will come a moment when the hands and feet walk around.  At that moment, there will be new meaning to be had in cleaning cat boxes, cooking, shopping, driving, and bathing, though these experiences might not involve the attitude that advances from the top of a 100-foot pole throughout.

 

Having said that, I have to add that it’s my belief that not every Zen teacher has experienced the zazen that gets up and walks around.  That doesn’t say that they haven’t experienced the cessation of volition in action of the body, or that they are not qualified to teach Zen, but I think they must have a different perspective on the relationship of practice to the actions of everyday life.

 

 

That's all from a post on my own site, Response to "Not the Wind, Not the Flag”. 

I remember at a Kobun memorial in the Santa Cruz mountains, Blanche Hartman from the San Francisco Zen Center confessed as to how she set out to teach a class on mindfulness one morning, and discovered she had buttoned her blouse one button off.  The moral of the story, for me at least, was that I was ok to let mindfulness in daily life grow with my sitting practice, and not try to force it.  

It is possible to experience the zazen that gets up and walks around without much of a sitting practice, and it does change one's perspective on daily living. 

Gautama spoke of a particular set of sixteen thoughts to be applied and sustained in connection with the in-breath, or the out-breath, and of how that was his way of living before and after enlightenment--I think that way of living, which includes at least the thought of a cessation of volition in the activity of the body, is the best thing to pursue.

The cessation of volition in activity of the body, in particular in the activity of inhalation and exhalation, is just a matter of letting awareness center from the singular place that allows the breath to move autonomically, while simultaneously allowing the entire body "with no particle left out" to inform the location of that place.  

Edited March 30, 2023 by Mark Foote

[Lairg]

3 minutes ago, Mark Foote said:

A friend responded to a post of mine:
 

I cannot see the connection to life, cleaning cat boxes, cooking, shopping, driving, bathing....

 

 

Many years ago I lived in a spiritual community with a building for 100+ guests.  Members living in that building were put on a kitchen cleanup roster.  I ran the Sunday crew.

 

Pot wash was 2 deep sinks in a dark corner.  The job was 90 minutes or more of scrubbing pots.   After a while, anyone that wanted pot wash had to be there 15 minutes early.  The crew had discovered that the harder you scrubbed the pots, the better you felt, no matter how unhappy you were at the start.

 

The 100 year old tile floor in the commercial scale kitchen was only mopped in a cursory fashion.   So I got out a deck scrubber and scouring powder and away I went.  After a few weeks women in the crew would come and take the scrubber off me so that they could do it.  They got joy from bringing orderliness and cleanliness to the ancient floor.

 

There is a deeper layer too, with the feng shui of the placement of furniture etc.

 

There is a yet deeper layer with the human consciousness progressively transforming the energy of the building and its parts.

 

 

[Inner Alchemy]

My Buddhist teacher, a Tibetan lama who travels around the US and India lecturing, told me in a private meeting that the whole foundation of the Buddhist path can be simplified into two elements: mindfulness, and bodhicitta.  If we do our chores with awareness/mindfulness, it can certainly be part of the path to enlightenment - perhaps even an integral part.  Venerable Tan Jagaro, when he stayed at my house last month, told me that it's important to remember that mindfulness has two aspects: 1) awareness/attention to what we're doing, and 2) awareness of the mind: being able to reign in the mind so that we are better able to choose positive thoughts and limit destructive thoughts.

Edited July 4, 2023 by Inner Alchemy

[S:C]

I’d recommend a book by Jack Kornfield for the matter at hand: After ecstasy the laundry. 

Obviously build on a proverb, which exchanges ecstasy with enlightenment. There seems to be some confusion on the two concepts, nevertheless…

He expands on the topic, draws from different sources with personal experience from people. The approach might be the other way round (to stay grounded after having had the floor swept under one’s  feet) but if I remember correctly the practice can also be used to get somewhere, if you don’t have an intention to get anywhere…

It could help at least to prepare for accidents, I‘d suppose? Shouldn’t hurt to read it.

 

Edited July 4, 2023 by stellarwindbubble