It Came to Pass…†
It came to pass that an aspirant was deposited at a Zen monastery. The master brought him through the gate and took him to a small, empty temple. In the center of the floor was a bucket of water with a brush beside it. The master pointed to them and said, “You will clean this temple. It is all you will do. You will stop only for the food brought to you, to sleep on the floor, and to perform your ablutions.” Then he turned and left.
In the Confucian world of the monastery disobedience was unthinkable, so the novice began to clean. It was drudgerous work, but the temple was not large and he had completed a circuit before his first night’s sleep. Surely the job was done, and the master would tell him he could stop in the morning. Breakfast came, but no visit from the master, so he started again. And again, he finished within the day. He was sore and tired, but felt sure he had cleaned the temple well and would be released from this chore.
He awoke to a tap at the door to find a tray of food, but no visitor with it. So he started again. Having cleaned the small temple end to end twice, it held no surprise of shape or form or color, and his body did the work with mind unencumbered. He was baffled and angry. Why? Why would they abandon him to this pointless labor? He raged as he worked, and the following day he petulantly stopped bathing.
Two days later he was empty of even anger. He bathed. He ate. He cleaned. And finally, he began to think. Why would the master have put him to this task? Why would they go to the trouble of feeding him in such careful isolation? Why would they forgo this beautiful little temple for so long?
Two weeks and two days after the master first pointed to the bucket and brush, the novice stood up. He put the brush in the bucket and took them outside. He rinsed them with clean water and put them away, and then he went to wait outside the master’s door. The master came out and asked, “Why aren’t you cleaning the temple?” The novice answered, “Because the task is complete. Its purpose has been served.” To which the master replied, “So it has.”
Footnotes
† ↩︎ I wrote this on the spur of the moment as part of an argument about the Paperclip Apocalypse and didn’t really know what to do with it, so it ended up here.