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well."
The emperor said, "I had come to listen to something spiritual. What nonsense are you talking? Chopping wood, you simply chop wood? Everybody does it; what is special in it? Carrying water from the well, you carry the water from the well? I have come a long distance, and I am your country's emperor. You should at least give me some spiritual advice."
Nan Yin said, "That was my spiritual advice, and I want to make it clear to you that everybody is not doing that. It took me years to chop wood without any thoughts: to just be there, chopping.
"And it is tremendously beautiful: the sound in the valley, the chips of the wood flying all over, the wind blowing through the trees, their song, their music. And I am utterly silent, just chopping wood. Carrying water from the well is the same.
"My whole day is the same. I have given you, in short, my basic approach of life. Be where you are. Don't let mind go away."
Work immediately becomes worship -- if you have understood Nan Yin's statement.
Things are not complex, things are very simple. You just have to be a little alert and watch what is happening within you: whether it is singlemindedness, whether it is spacing out, whether it is work, whether it is worship. Just watch.
And your goal should be that everything becomes worship: walking, or sitting, or even doing nothing. If you are there, absolutely there -- nothing is moving in your mind, all movement has stopped -- then your whole life is worship.
Then your whole life is meditation.
Christians go to the church on Sunday. Their religion is Sunday religion. One hour there, listening to the same boring sermon -- but they have to listen to it, because they are afraid of falling in hell. This boring sermon is okay; for a few years you listen to it, and you will go to heaven.
But they don't know that in heaven you will have all the saints for eternity giving you the same sermon. They will bore you so much, because the time is so long. And Sunday is not Sunday there; it is every day, the whole day, and for eternity.
And suicide is not possible in paradise -- at least I have not come across
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