No Work, No Food
Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labor with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds, and pruning the trees.
The pupils felt sorry to see the old teacher working so hard, but they knew he would not listen to their advice to stop, so they hid away his tools.
That day the master did not eat. The next day he did not eat, nor the next. “He may be angry because we have hidden his tools,” the pupils surmised. “We had better put than back.”
The day they did, the teacher worked and ate the same as before. In the evening he instructed them: “No work, no food.”
From: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A collection of Zen and pre-Zen writings.
In a previous post, I quoted Thoreau’s observation “The cost of something is the amount of life I exchange for it.” I referred to these words to throw into relief the ways in which some institutions payout handsome salaries in exchange for near absolute claim over their employees’ time. In a monetized culture, this economic totalization of life signals success and prestige, but in the unfolding process of humanization, it is abject impoverishment. In this post, I would like to stand on another other side and speak about the significance of work as a domain of development that is central to project of becoming human.
Work actuates and refines our own agency, reaffirms our purpose in the world, and ushers us deeper into engagement with community, where our efforts and talents are affirmed in meeting others’ needs, thus transporting us beyond the narrowness of self-concern and accompanies us into communion with the wider world.
For many, “work” refers to a suite of activities that we undertake in exchange for monetary recompense. Under this definition, work denotes a job, a position, employment, a career, a profession that affords us a certain standard of living. Sometimes, “work” is counterpoised by “vocation,” which denotes a calling, a dedication to ideals within and without, a commitment to pursuits both noble and humane. Work and vocation are not mutually exclusive; many fortunate souls are happily employed in work that feeds both their mouths and their souls. However, in a modern economy, many people are not able to enjoy the marriage between work and vocation. Economic necessities dictate the terms of employment, and many must toil in positions that desiccate their inner selves while leaving their passions for private hours.
For the purposes of this post, I want to use a broader conception of “work.” I shall reserve the economic side of labour for the term “employment” and speak of work as a fundamental function of human agency. In this way, work is a manifestation of my effectiveness, unique strengths and talents, usefulness as a member of society, and innate autonomy. This capacity for creativity and engagement, to affect consequences large and small, is inherent in one’s own vitality. Work is my way of living out my power as an animate being. In tending to a garden, tidying up the counter, I am exercising the rudimentary powers of agency. Watching the fruits of my labour, I also witness my own effectiveness and reaffirm the powers available to me by the fact of being alive. In this way, to be alive is to work. In refining my skills and proficiencies in work, I am also burnishing my life’s possibilities, becoming better acquainted with the arc of practice that shape the self. Work consists in the active response to the invitations of everyday life. In learning to paint a house, building a fence, knitting a sweater, I am shaping not only the materials in my hands but the texture of my own character, the confidence in my skill, the faith in my own potential. Thus, in living out the shape of work, life itself becomes a work, an ouvre that showcases the skill and patience of the living subject.
Modern economic realities have imposed a different mentality. When work is synonymous with employment, the listicle of activities that comprise a job description, we look upon our labour with dread, something done out of obligation. Worse, when work is counterbalanced with leisure (as if work cannot be leisure and leisure cannot be work), there arises a competing tension between the two. We exhaust ourselves trying to mete out compromises, or we are condemned to oblige the former while delaying the latter. Neither “living to work” nor “working to live” are good options because they presuppose a transactional view of work and leisure, a zero-sum game in which the two are in locked in stalemate: one side does not gain without loss for the other.
This transactional view of life and work finds stark expression in the concept of retirement, a curious invention of the modern industrial age. Many people see retirement as a liberation, a golden age when they let slip the fetters of servitude, professional and financial, and bask in the joy of unconstrained leisure. Not all forms of retirement leisure are indulgent. Many will take up forms of voluntary service or pursue skills and interest that expand and deepen their lives. However, we often enact a cultural artifact left by the institution of employment: the bifurcation between work and recreation, the division between a period of economic obligation followed by an unmolested leisure, with the former serving as the financial warrant for the latter. The effect of this bifurcation is profound: in dreaming of a more perfect leisure, we are prone to think of our present as a state of suspension, a form of purgatory that eventually gives way to pleasure and repose. Retirement becomes another way of deferring life, of holding off deeper longings in deference to pressing duties. This fundamental bifurcation plays on the premise that work is primarily an economic arrangement that buys us what we need in life, including the time we use to pursue our leisure. Such a premise does not recognize the possibility that work – beyond its monetary compensation – can nourish life itself, that it renews life’s energies in ways that we think only leisure can. Retirement becomes the site of hope: when I retire, I’ll be able to do what I really want to do. Thus, we section off one period of ourselves and defer greater wholeness for a later time.
There are those whose profession is their vocation, but they are worn down by the rigours of their labour. The ponderousness of bureaucracy, the bitterness of workplace politics, and the cruelty of the grind can wear down the heartiest of souls. Those who serve in the health care are often motivated by noble aims, but even great passions cannot survive institutional and systemic flaws that leave people over-worked and under-compensated. For these reasons, many people look to retirement as a salvation that relieves their heavy burdens. This is also an unfortunate consequence of institutions and bureaucracies, which grind down conscientious people who are keen on doing vital work. When good people quit doing good work because of a broken system, everyone suffers as a result.
The heart itself is a sojourner. We embark with excitement on one leg of a journey, only to find ourselves waking at dawn, steeped in a different terrain. Our passions evolve, our skills and concerns shift with time. The ongoing challenge of maturation lies in the ongoing discernment of where our lives find nourishment, where hard-earned knowledge and skills meet the world’s need. And so a vocation is rarely settled once and for all. The struggle to discern one’s calling, a task that vexes so many young people, requires our ongoing attention throughout our lives. Our employment might change, but the drive to actualize and express our agency persists throughout our various positions and careers. The expression of autonomy can be even more vital in that cultural invention we call “retirement,” when we are under no obligation to sell our labour and time, when we are free to enjoy our work (and its fruits) purely for its own good and benefit. In the space of freedom, we can see deeper into the preciousness of work as primal energy emanating in creativity.
Hyakujo insisted: no work, no food. He knew that work is not an economic transaction, but rather a feature of a life that pulsates with vibrancy. To deny one’s capacity for work is to deny life itself.