Underneath the tapestry, there is a mesh of various rough threads.
--John O'Donohue
Borrowing from the words displayed on the banner in front of Ficino's Florentine academy, we all seem to have adopted his Epicurean motto-Pleasure in the Present-without studying what the philosopher really meant. So we eat as much as we want, pursue our sexual interests, seek excitement all the time, spend money, possess things, and expand our leisure time. We even take his advice literally: "Let your meditation walk no further than pleasure, and even a little behind." This may seem an utterly hedonistic philosophy until we find out how Epicurus spent his life. For his pleasure was eating very little, and then only vegetables, spending his time in gardening, reading books, and being with friends.
Happiness doesn't mean gratification of all the senses, or constant and frenzied pursuit of excitement. We overvalue leisure time, and some people even try to figure out ways to rest during working hours. They keep complaining about their work and lack of sufficient time for relaxation. Yet if they allow themselves even greater leisure time, they experience deeper unhappiness. This is because the problem is not with the insufficiency of leisure time but with the concept of leisure itself. The fact is that leisure is enjoyable only if it follows work. A person who is genuinely engaged in his work is not preoccupied with whether he is happy or not.
Freud was once asked what he thought a happy, normal person would be able to do well. The questioner no doubt expected a complex and profound answer. Instead Freud's response was perhaps deceptively simple; he said, "Arbeiten und Lieben" ("to work and to love"). And if you love your work, the Sufis would go one step further and say, that is your faith. Dip your bread in your sweat, says another. Work is liber mundi, "book of the world," say Catholic monks, a life literacy, expressing the monks' religious duties, which are closely intertwined with their daily chores. Both activities are paths to divinity, provided they are carried out with the same profound soulfulness. Although contemporary secular work is a far cry from early monastic chores, it could be equally sacred if we could accept and deliver it with love and devotion. St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a nineteenth-century Carmelite nun, believed that God could be served best through small acts, thus advocating that care, compassion, and joy be brought to the little everyday tasks of life.
Every act of labor, no matter how ordinary and trivial it may seem, if attended with a depth of devotion and true imagination, will open a path for contemplation and holiness. But it must be true and real. The grandiose unrealistic and capricious kinds of imaginings that a person may cultivate are quite different from devotional and simple thoughts and reflections, which do not spin into aimless and groundless fantasies. Willigis Jager's Search for the Meaning of Life portrays a man's grasping his "authenticity" as he goes deeper and deeper into his soul.
A man chopped underbrush at the edge of the forest, sold it, and lived on the modest profits. One day a hermit came out of the forest and advised him: "Go deeper into the forest!" The man went deeper into the forest and found wonderful trees, which he sold as timber. He became rich, but he suddenly recalled the advice of the hermit: "Go deeper into the forest!" And so he went deeper into the forest and found a silver mine. He worked it and became still more wealthy, but again the hermit's words occurred to him: "God deeper into the forest!" Silver in hand, he walked on and on. Suddenly, at dawn he found himself again at the edge of the forest. So he took his axe and chopped the underbrush and sold it to his fellows.
The soul is in simplicity, in the details of everyday chores, whether chopping wood, cleaning house or cooking a meal, washing dishes, typing, driving a bus, or just getting up and going to work. In his Jewish Meditation, Aryeh Kaplan shows how the simple task of dishwashing can be a transformation of the ordinary to soulfulness:
You are concentrating on the act of washing, clearing the mind of all other thoughts. Any other thought that enters the mind is gently pushed aside, so that the task at hand totally fills the mind. You are totally aware of the act you are doing. When a person develops such awareness, then even the most mundane act can become an intimate experience of the Divine.
In our daily work, we are in that process of creativity, as an extension of God. We are created and we create. And that requires working and competence. As Mary McDermott Shideler puts it in her book Spirituality,
For example, our answer to "What is the meaning of life?" will not solve the question of which type and size of nail to use in laying a floor, how to adjust a cake recipe for high altitudes, or what fingering is right for playing a particular musical phrase. No spiritual intention or achievement can compensate for technical incompetence.
Soulfulness is relevant to every aspect of the real world, from the most widely general to the most minutely detailed, from the loftiest to the most mundane, from games to skilled labor, artistic endeavors, the raising of children, scientific investigations, or any other domain. The extent to which we are aware of the relevance of soulfulness will depend upon both our competence and our willingness to make a commitment.
Different domains all have their own procedures and standards. That is, even if we play a game, we play by its rules. And even though our attitude toward our opponent or the game itself may be influenced by our general value system, the actual moves we make in play reflect our knowledge of the game's specific rules and strategies, and our commitments to the game at hand. Our failures in life are related not necessarily to assumed handicaps or a lack of value systems but to our real handicaps: the lack of full commitment to a specific task. Beethoven wrote the timeless and sweeping melodic "Ode to Joy" when he was totally deaf.
Executing insurance forms could have been fulfilling, rewarding, and enlightening if the person pays attention to the meaning of his/her activity: brokering a serious contract between two parties who trusted him to be fair, just, and true. That is no doubt why the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki (Suzuki Roshi) tells us that there is no such thing as an enlightened person, just enlightened activity.
Enlightened activities are not only in the rituals of the temple but in the hard work of ordinary tasks. Rituals of the church and the faithful acts of the worshiper also need to be transported to the commonplace (liturgy means "the labor of laity"). Life that pivots around the temple remains as an example of the fullest divine intent. Nevertheless, the intention is not to differentiate between the sacred and the secular but to bring a reverence to everyday living. Whether the activity is in medicine or engineering or secretarial work or making furniture, we can bring to it soulful rituals, reminding us of the potential sacredness of all activities.
The ancient Greeks knew that the gods presided over every kind of work. For example, Hephaestus was the god of jewelry making. Japanese Buddhists still celebrate "needle memorial day" every February 8, a day on which the activity of sewing is honored.
It is not that some activities are soulful and others are not; it is about finding your own soulful activity. Wendell Johnson, in his People in Quandaries, tells the story of a man who played the bass violin, but in his own way.
The man's instrument had only one string, and he always kept his fingers in the same place while he bowed the single string. He repeatedly played this way daily until his wife became completely exasperated. "Jack," she reprimanded, "why don't you play the bass violin the way other people do? Haven't you noticed that they have many strings on their bass violins, and that they keep moving their fingers up and down as they play their instrument?" "Of course they do," agreed her husband, then went on bowing." The reason is that they're looking for the place. But, I've found it!"
