Latest Posts

July 2010
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Jun
	1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Treat every task as a sacrament

This post was written by DoctorJay on December 4, 2009
Posted Under: Karma, ease of life, meditation

A man in the thirteenth century talks to three masons working on a building site. He asked each one what he was doing. The first man replied, “I am cutting stones to make a living for so my wife and children can have a roof over our heads, clothes to keep us warm and food to stop us from being hungry.”

The second man said, “I am using my trade to cut stones and build a beautiful building.”

The third one smiled and proudly said, “I am a small part of a great team building a cathedral. We are doing this for the glory of God. We thank God for all the bounty he gives us each day.”

All three were doing the same task. Their attitudes were totally different. In the same way you can approach each task in three ways:

The task must be done. It is a means to an end.
You are a professional and take pride in the task itself
The task is a sacrament. You are doing it as a meditation. The task becomes a spiritual exercise.

I remembered this story the other day, when I had to wash a pot of a week old chicken soup. It had served its purpose. It had been tasty but now the very end of the soup had to be thrown away and the pot washed.

At first I approached it as a chore I did not want to do but had to do. I was not complaining about doing it but I was not relishing it either.

However, as I was washing the pot the thought came to me, “This is a meditation.” As I changed my attitude to one of an unconditionally loving being in the here and now, I found myself enjoying what I was doing. This was fun.

Actually as I reread this I realize that this a perfect example of karma yoga. Yoga means yoke or union with the Ultimate Reality (God or whatever your name for it is). Karma means action (hence the meaning of karma as cause and effect). So karma yoga is union with the Godhead through work or action. There are eight different limbs of yoga and asana yoga (yoga of posture – the yoga known as yoga in the West) is only one of the eight limbs or paths of union with the Truth.

By the way the Latin root of religion means yoke so religion and yoga have exactly the same ultimate meaning.

Anyway, by treating tasks that we have to do as sacraments we can have fun doing anything the way I had fun cleaning the week old pot.