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in other things?
Spacing out is unhealthy. If you want to think of Muhammad Ali, you can sit silently and think of Muhammad Ali. At least it will be one-pointedness. But people are doing many things at a time, and they think that this is some achievement.
Just in front of my house in India, was one woman I used to see every day. She had a small child. So the child was put in a rocking chair, and she would be sitting in front of the child, and she would go on pushing the rocking chair with her leg, because the child cannot manage that. So the chair would go on rocking, and the child would remain silent.
And she was continuously making something for the child, because the winter was coming: a sweater, socks, a hat. So with her hands she was engaged with the sweater, and with her eyes she was always reading the newspaper. A multipurpose woman!
And I don't think this was all; this was outside so you could see. What was going on in her head nobody knows, because when she can manage three things simultaneously outside, in the mind she can manage three hundred things.
These people go on missing the moment -- its purity, its life, its joy -- because they are not there. And they will never be anywhere if this becomes their habit -- which has become the habit of the whole humanity.
And you ask me what is work and worship.
Work is when you space out. You do the work, but you are not totally there. If you are totally there, it is worship.
Then the work is not only work; then the work takes a new flavor: of silence, of meditativeness, of joy -- just the wind passing by, the sunrays falling on you, you chopping wood, and the perspiration coming to your forehead. And all is in utter silence; you are simply chopping wood. You are not going anywhere; you are here.
One of the emperors of Japan had gone to see a great Zen master, Nan Yin. He asked Nan Yin, "What have you learned that makes you a great master, known all over the country?"
Nan Yin said, "Very simple: when I chop wood, I simply chop wood; and when I carry the water from the well, I simply carry the water from the well."
The emperor said, "I
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