• Author: Andrew Taggart
  • Full Title: Chop Wood, Carry Water
  • Tags: #Inbox #books

I would describe this as a devotional, but all about work.

And a quite good one at that.

If you sit down and read it straight through, you can get through it in under an hour. But I think this book is more properly located in the devotional--or if you don't enjoy that label--workbook genre.

I found this exercise towards the end insightful:

Try to feel what I’m about to say. “I had,” you might think in earnest, “no idea how much downright hatred I’ve been holding in my heart and for so long: hatred of ‘petty, bullshit tasks,’ of morally unscrupulous people, of shameless self-promoters, of pretentious institutions.” Now hear this same statement again, though this time with the accent mark placed on the experience of hatred–indeed, on the experience of being the hate-filled one. Go ahead and read it once more.

It aligns with experiences I've had over the past two years of being self-employed where I realized that even as I've gone to great lengths to cut out all external sources of anxiety in my life, I still carried the burden of anxiety with me. And it turns out that it was not all of those external things that were necessarily causing the anxiety--the anxiety was within me the entire time.

We (or I at least) are quite good at externalizing all our problems, pointing to external causes for why we are unhappy, and escape mentally to a place where those external things no longer exist and so we are in a state of perfect bliss. But what this book does a good job of helping you realize is how much of our suffering around work comes from within us.

Highlights

  • All this sounds amazing until one has to do the dishes, or fill out tax forms, or wait in line for hours. Thus, at our peril do contemplatives overlook two very simple facts, which can readily become places of “spiritual nesting.” The first is that action in general and work in particular are–just like thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions–appearing over and over again. (Location 55)
  • The second fact is that one is to love all beings, yet how is this possible so long as one is living in solitude? Work is that ongoing endeavor that invites me, in my dealings with others, not to treat them as other but to love them verily “as myself.” How it’s possible to overcome one’s nasty little dislikes of other beings is the subject of Chapters 7-9. (Location 60)
  • So far from the world being a hindrance, it is–if, that is, the yoga of work is properly understood–to be a helpmate. (Location 63)
  • In short, the yoga of work corrects contemplatives by empowering them, through a deeper examination of their attachments and aversions, to turn outward, at the same time that it teaches doers, by virtue of their confrontation with their own dissatisfaction, to turn inward. Both, in fact, come to discover that the real work is, in the final analysis, the inner work. The real work is to work with work in order to go beyond work. (Location 92)
  • “Before Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” (Location 117)
  • A gentle breeze–or a stiff wind–of not just overwhelm but also, and more potently, futility may be setting in. How can you not hear a faint demonic thought whispering that your efforts may be futile or that life’s tasks could be–or at least seem to be–too much for you to bear? (Location 143)
  • Pointer 1: Observe: “Life feels hard.” (Location 168)
  • Who hasn’t felt that work–whether it involves caring for children or managing a small team–is “painful toil”? (Location 172)
  • Really feel that emotion: “Life feels hard.” In this emotion is contained a precious truth about an attitude you’ve adopted, probably at various moments during the course of your life, but have almost always overlooked. The essence of this attitude is that life is an ordeal. Can you really welcome this arising, “Life feels hard,” without any judgment and without turning away from it? (Location 183)
  • Pointer 2: Observe: “In some other world, I will be happy.” (Location 190)
  • Sometimes we envision a time without or beyond work as toil while at other times we call up dream jobs, dream projects, grand callings, beautiful collaborations, and epic workscapes. Either way, we’ve momentarily slipped away from the idea that life is an ordeal. (Location 196)
  • Just as we zeroed in on the “felt sense” of life being an ordeal by allowing an ancient voice to say, “Life feels so very hard,” so too we can fine-tune our experiential grasp of dreamscapes by inviting a second voice to speak. This one says, “In some other world, I will feel happy and shall finally be whole.” (Location 199)
  • Can you let go of this particular image and be open to the possibility that your current experience, here and now and without any thoughts, is happy, complete, or at peace? See for yourself. (Location 207)
  • Pointer 3: Probe: “I’m afraid I’ll never have or be enough.” (Location 218)
  • Quite often deep, possibly revolting fear–fear either of not having enough or (in the case of one for whom work is the means by which he achieves success or recognition) of not being or becoming enough. (Location 221)

9 CLEANING UP THE MIND, PART 3: THE HUMILITY OF INSIGHT

  • Try to feel what I’m about to say. “I had,” you might think in earnest, “no idea how much downright hatred I’ve been holding in my heart and for so long: hatred of ‘petty, bullshit tasks,’ of morally unscrupulous people, of shameless self-promoters, of pretentious institutions.” Now hear this same statement again, though this time with the accent mark placed on the experience of hatred–indeed, on the experience of being the hate-filled one. Go ahead and read it once more. (Location 392)
  • You may very well feel as if you’re waking up to your life, to the rawness of living. If so, this too is a very good thing. (Location 400)
  • Humility leads to the kind of peace that’s found at the bottom of a dark, murky well. It is exquisitely beautiful down here. (Location 406)

10 THE COMPLAINT OR THE BLESSING OF THE HEART

  • What I’m calling “the complaint of the heart” is the refusal to embrace wholeheartedly the work that’s been given to you. I don’t mean that you don’t complete it, but is it not often a halfhearted endeavor? How often and in which shadowy ways have you been dragging your heels because your heart hasn’t been in it, not entirely? (Location 425)
  • As you clean up the mind, you come, in the end, to this existential choice: can I really give my entire heart to this very task, to this set of tasks, to this project, to this day, to this life? (Location 429)
  • In what I’ve written, I don’t mean to imply that you can never leave this workplace or that career path. Know that I’m speaking here only of the nature, the quality of your heart. If you can stay with an open heart, then stay. If you can leave with a resounding “Yes,” then leave. Either way, to see all as a complaint or as a blessing is what’s centrally in focus. (Location 433)
  • I’m not asking you “to love work” in the ordinary sense in which people toss around this infinitive phrase. I’m inviting you to love reality. For I want you to know this second innocence. It is, in truth, none other than the wisest, and therefore deepest, love. (Location 440)

11 CHOP WOOD, CARRY WATER

  • If we can carry on not with strain but, more and more, with gracefulness and ease, letting work unfold before it’s gently forgotten, then we’ll find loving good. (Location 490)
  • To be at ease is to accept fully, and to accept fully is to love completely. For anyone who comes to regard work not as a task but, ultimately, as a movement, a brushstroke, a flourish of reality, work can no longer sever him from whatever is blessed, holy, or complete. Work, for the sage whose heart is full, is an expression of reality just as much as any other activity. To chop wood and carry water with lightness in one’s heart is to love what is. (Location 492)
  • And this is one of the greatest truths there is: the only true love is the love of what is. (Location 495)