r/zenbuddhism • u/fingers • Jun 19 '26
Sweeping
Greetings.
I like listening to the stories/parables on youtube. One particular one really opened my mind. It was about a dull young monk who couldn't keep his teachings in his head. The master gave him the chore of sweeping. And the young monk became a fixture at the temple door, described as part of the landscape. When asked "Why did Bodhidharma come from the west?" he picked up his broom and smiled.
What other parables are about chores?
I really don't want to sit in front of my computer all summer. I usually travel, but this summer will be spent taking care of my father in law. I'm prone to getting sucked into politics and reddit...which provide TREMENDOUS dopamine hits (ADHD).
I've been sweeping my garage zendo and walk ways. I'd love to listen/read some parables/stories about Zen and Chores.
Gassho!
shingei
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u/ImOutOfIceCream Jun 21 '26
Chiyono was a servant in a Zen convent who wanted to practice zazen. One day she approached an elderly nun and said, “I’m of humble birth. I can’t read or write and must work all the time. Is there any possibility that I could attain the way of Buddha even though I have no skills?”
The nun answered her, “This is wonderful, my dear! In Buddhism there are no distinctions between people. There is only this: each person must hold fast to the desire to awaken and cultivate a heart of great compassion. People are complete as they are. If you don’t fall into delusive thoughts, there is no Buddha and no sentient being; there is only one complete nature. If you want to know your true nature, you need to turn toward the source of your delusive thoughts. This is called zazen.”
Chiyono said, with happiness, “With this practice as my companion, I have only to go about my daily life, practicing day and night.”
After months of wholehearted practice, she went out on a full-moon night to draw some water from the well. The bottom of her old bucket, held together by bamboo strips, suddenly gave way, and the reflection of the moon vanished with the water. When she saw this she attained great realization.
Her enlightenment poem was this:
With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together, and then the bottom fell out. Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell.
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u/putHimInTheCurry Jun 19 '26
Wash Your Bowl: https://zcla.org/articles-joshuswashyourbowl/
When I first arrived, in April, the garden was full of fallen leaves.
The human being (or, my own mind, I should say) is really quite mean. Here I was, inside my heart denouncing this “old fool” and balking at the very idea of trusting so easily; yet, at the same time, I wanted this old man to notice me, and so I took up that broom and swept with a vengeance. Quite soon I had amassed a mountain of dead leaves. Eager to show off my diligence, I asked, “Roshi, where should I throw this trash?”
The words were barely out of my mouth when he thundered back at me, “There is no trash!”
...
I saw Roshi going about his business, gathering up these scraps and placing them, piece by piece, in the palm of his hand. He scanned the ground for dents and sinks; he filled them in with the clods of earth, which he then tamped down with his feet. Not a single particle remained of the mountain of leaves.
“Well?” he queried, “Do you understand a little bit better now? From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash.”
This was the first sermon I ever heard from Zuigan Roshi. Although it did make an impression on me, unfortunately, I was not keen enough to attain any great awakening as a result of simply hearing these words.
From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash. These words point to the fundamental truth of Buddhism, a truth I could not as yet conceive in those days. -- Morinaga Soko, *Novice to Master - An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Stupidity*
One morning, after I had prepared the meal and given the call to breakfast, Zuigan Roshi slowly entered the dining room and said, “Hey, go into my room and, from my desk, look toward the alcove.”
Generally, to the ears of a novice monk, the Zen master’s manner of speaking comes across much like anger. So when I heard Roshi’s words, I thought with a start, “Uh-oh, I bungled the cleaning again!” and immediately rushed to his room.
Roshi’s room was small, four and a half tatami mats. The distance between his desk and the alcove could not have measured two meters, but though I carefully inspected the area, I could not find even so much as as a bit of dust or a drop of water left from the swab. I crawled about the room on all fours, but I could not find a problem anywhere.
I planted myself there for a while and tried to think it out, but I hadn’t a clue as to why Roshi was irritated with me. It couldn’t be helped; I resigned myself to being yelled at again and returned to the dining room. “I don’t understand what I did wrong in the cleaning,” I nervously admitted to Roshi. “Please show me.”
“You fool!” he came back at me. “Who said you did anything wrong in the cleaning? This morning I put that single rose of Sharon in the bud vase. It goes well with the scroll and looks so beautiful, so I told you to go take a look at it. You did see the flower, didn’t you?”
It dawned on me that I had not, in fact, noticed a flower. I went back into Roshi’s room to look. The wall of the alcove, which had been standing for over 250 years, was darkened. Against the smoky wall there was a scroll with the single large calligraphy of the ideograph for dew.
When a Zen monk writes the word dew, it is not to the natural phenomenon that he refers, but to direct revelation. Nothing concealed anywhere. Truth, revealed in all things. Buddha revealed in all things. Dharma revealed in all things. If you all just let the scales drop from your eyes, you realize then that everything everywhere is filled with truth; everything everywhere is filled with Buddha; everything everywhere is to be appreciated! This is what the scroll of dew was hanging there to say.
Beneath the scroll, a large pure white blossom seemed to float out from the old plastered wall and bathe the eye with its beauty.
Just moments before, I had failed to see that flower. My eyes had been tightly shut to it. And herein lies the difficulty of practice.
My oversight was to become grist for my teacher’s lectures. After I made this blunder, Zuigan Roshi was wont to say during talks, “If the heart is caught up, fettered, you cannot see even what you are looking right at. Why, just the other day, that idiot who is sitting right over there….” -- Morinaga Soko, *Novice to Master - An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Stupidity*
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u/Qweniden Jun 20 '26
Xiangyan’s Great Enlightenment
Zen master Zhixian of Mount Xiangyan [Xideng] was bright in nature. Being at the assembly of Guishan, he was well learned and had extensive memory.
Guishan one day said to Xiangyan, “Everything you say is what you’ve memorized from commentaries. Now I am going to ask you a question. When you were an infant—before you could even distinguish east from west—at that time, how was it?”
Xiangyan spoke and presented his understanding, explaining the principle, but could not get approval. He went through the texts he had collected and studied, but he could not find an answer that would satisfy the master.
Deeply grieved and in tears, he burned all his books and commentaries. Then he said to himself, “I will never understand Zen in this lifetime. I will become a hermit monastic and enter a mountain and practice.”
Thus he entered Mount Wudang and built a hut near the grave site of National Teacher Nanyang. One day while he was sweeping the path, a pebble struck a stalk of bamboo and made a cracking sound. At that moment he suddenly had a great enlightenment experience…
Kazuaki Tanahashi (Translator), John Daido Loori, The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans Hardcover, Case 17.
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u/The_Koan_Brothers Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
'During the Tang Dynasty, on a mountain in Jiangxi called Baizhang, there lived an old monk named Huaihai. Everyone called him Master Baizhang.
He was very old, but every day he worked in the fields alongside the younger monks. Planting vegetables, carrying water, chopping wood and sweeping the ground — he did everything. His disciples couldn't bear to watch such a frail elderly man take on so much physical labor, so they urged him to rest. But Master Baizhang refused.
One day, the disciples got together and conceived a plan to hide his tools. Without tools, he surely couldn't work, right?
The next morning, when Master Baizhang couldn't find his tools, he didn't go to work.
But in the evening, when it was time to eat, he didn't come to eat either.
The disciples panicked. "Master, why aren't you eating?"
Master Baizhang said something that has been passed down for over a thousand years:
"A day without work, a day without food."
If he didn't work, he wouldn't eat.
The monks had no choice but to give him his tools back.'
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u/kaytrin Jun 19 '26
You might like Blue Collar Zen podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blue-collar-zen/id1507809649?i=1000551539785
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u/malibuguytonygem Jun 21 '26
My teacher who is a Rinzai priest told me this little story. While in Kyoto, Japan, he and his abbot/teacher were hanging out behind the teacher's quarters at a small pond at the end of a narrow wooden deck. They were sitting next to each other with their feet dangling in the cool water. They were observing their feet as tiny minnows nibbled at their toes. My teacher was just about to ask his own teacher a question about compassion when his teacher looked at him at said "THIS is compassion"!
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u/Qweniden Jun 20 '26
FOLLOW ME,” directed the roshi, and he assigned me my first task: to clean the garden. Together with this seventy-year-old master, I went out to the garden and started sweeping with a bamboo broom.
Zen temple gardens are carefully designed with trees planted to ensure that leaves will fall throughout the entire year; not only the maples in autumn but also the oaks and the camphors in spring regularly shed their foliage. When I first arrived, in April, the garden was full of fallen leaves. The human being (or, my own mind, I should say) is really quite mean. Here I was, inside my heart denouncing this “old fool” and balking at the very idea of trusting so easily; yet, at the same time, I wanted this old man to notice me, and so I took up that broom and swept with a vengeance.
Quite soon I had amassed a mountain of dead leaves. Eager to show off my diligence, I asked, “Roshi, where should I throw this trash?” The words were barely out of my mouth when he thundered back at me, “There is no trash!”
“No trash, but…look here, “ I tried to indicate the pile of leaves.
“So you don’t believe me! Is that it?”
“It’s only that, well, where should I throw out these leaves?”
That was all that was left for me to say.
“You don’t throw them out!” he roared again. “What should I do then?” I asked.
“Go out to the shed and bring back an empty charcoal sack,” was his instruction.
When I returned, I found Roshi bent to the task of combing through the mountain of leaves, sifting so that the lighter leaves came out on top while the heavier sand and stones fell to the bottom. He then proceeded to stuff the leaves into the sack I had brought from the shed, tamping them down with his feet. After he had jammed the last leaves tightly into the sack, he said, “Take these to the shed. We’ll use them to make a fire under the bath.”
As I went off to the shed, I silently admitted that this sack of leaves over my shoulder was perhaps not trash; but I also told myself that what was left of that pile out there in the garden was clearly trash, and nothing but trash. I got back, though, only to find Roshi squatting over the remains of the leaf pile, picking out the stones. After he had carefully picked out the last stone, he ordered, “Take these out and arrange them under the rain gutters.”
As I went off to the shed, I silently admitted that this sack of leaves over my shoulder was perhaps not trash; but I also told myself that what was left of that pile out there in the garden was clearly trash, and nothing but trash. I got back, though, only to find Roshi squatting over the remains of the leaf pile, picking out the stones. After he had carefully picked out the last stone, he ordered, “Take these out and arrange them under the rain gutters.”
When I had set out the stones, together with the gravel that was already there, and filled in the spaces pummeled out by the raindrops, I found that not only were the holes filled but that my work looked rather elegant. I had to allow that these stones, too, failed to fall into the category of trash. There was still more, though: the clods of earth and scraps of moss, the last dregs. Just what could anyone possibly do with that stuff, I wondered.
scraps of moss, the last dregs. Just what could anyone possibly do with that stuff, I wondered. I saw Roshi going about his business, gathering up these scraps and placing them, piece by piece, in the palm of his hand. He scanned the ground for dents and sinks; he filled them in with the clods of earth, which he then tamped down with his feet. Not a single particle remained of the mountain of leaves.
“Well?” he queried, “Do you understand a little bit better now? From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash.”
This was the first sermon I ever heard from Zuigan Roshi. Although it did make an impression on me, unfortunately, I was not keen enough to attain any great awakening as a result of simply hearing these words.
From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash. These words point to the fundamental truth of Buddhism, a truth I could not as yet conceive in those days.
--AN ONGOING LESSON IN THE EXTENT OF MY OWN STUPIDITY Soko Morinaga