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enlightened?"
He said, "I used to chop wood and carry water from the well."
And the man asked, "Now, now that you are enlightened, what do you do?"
He said, "The same thing -- chopping wood and carrying water from the well."
The man was puzzled. He said, "I cannot understand. Then what is the difference? Then what is the POINT of becoming enlightened? Before you used to chop wood and carry water, now you continue the same thing. Then what is the difference?"
And Rinzai laughed. He said, "The difference is: before I was doing it because I HAD to do it, it was a duty; now it is a joy. The quality has changed -- the work is the same! "
You eat, the religious person eats, but the quality is different. In the Upanishads it is said: ANNAM BRAHM, "food is God. " The religious person eats as if he is eating God, because all is God. He drinks as if he is drinking God, because all is God. To you he is just sipping tea -- he is sipping God!
Hence the Zen tea temple and the tea ceremony. The Zen Master gathers his disciples, prepares tea, and they sit silently listening to the samovar and its humming sound, and the aroma of the tea fills the small room. And the room is made in the garden by a pond. Birds are singing outside, the air is fragrant, and they are all sitting silently. The Master pours the tea; they receive it with great gratitude, with deep love. It is a gift from the Master -- it is no more ordinary tea, it is not tea at all -- as if the Master has poured his own being in their cups. Then silently, meditatively, prayerfully, they drink the tea.
When Christian missionaries came to know about it they could not believe how tea -- drinking could be called meditative. In a Christian church if you start drinking tea and coffee or smoking cigarettes you will be thrown out. "What are you doing?" Even in a Hindu temple you will not be allowed to drink tea. "This is a temple," they will say, "a sacred place, and you are doing such a mundane activity! Go to some hotel -- this is not a hotel."
But I agree with the Zen people: the small things of life have to be transformed by your inner transformation. This I call
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