When he leaves, somebody new will take his place.
Huineng (638-713 CE) was an hardworking monk who quietly followed all the Temple lifestyle rules. His job was to gather firewood to use in the kitchen or elsewhere at the Temple. He pulled a little cart and gathered sticks, driftwood, wood donations, and downed limbs. He sawed, split up, and cut up dried wood to give to the cooks in the Temple kitchen or others tending fires. He did this humble task well for many years.
Huineng is remembered for emphasizing the power of simple useful work activities as a valid path to enlightenment (e.g., gardening, Temple maintenance, cooking, chores, firewood working, samu = work, transcribing, etc.) Huineng became enlightened while chopping up bamboo. He later became a leading Zen Master featured in many stories.
Also, we all have roles, duties, work, and responsibilities to others and to ourselves. This is an underlying reality.
"The kitchen was a hell of heat. Woks large enough to bathe a child in sat on roaring, wood-burning brick stoves. Young monks fed the insatiable fires, while others stirred the boiling rice. Some chopped vegetables or prepared them for pickling. They were all under the direction of a senior priest, who was known only as "the Old Cook.""
- By Deng Ming Dao;, Chronicles of Tao, p. 166
The Kitchen of a Daoist Temple Monastery in the Huashan Mountains of China, circa 1930's.
Somebody is still chopping wood for a fireplace stove, or providing you with the electricity or gas or coal for you kitchen ovens and stoves and cooking appliances.
Without the fire in the kitchen for cooking we could not survive.
So, who chops the firewood for your kitchen stove?
Comments, Sources
Refer to Cases ??? in Koan Classics. OK. find any?
Refer to my Cloud Hands Blog Posts on the topic of Koans/Mondos/Tests
Pulling Onions Over 1,043 One-line Sayings by Mike Garofalo
Chinese Chan Buddhist and Taoist Stories and Koans
The Fireplace Records By Michael P. Garofalo
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