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impossible! These are mundane activities; these are for the worldly people. But Zen Masters make no distinctions. You can find the Zen Master chopping wood, cooking food, carrying water from the well, digging a hole in the garden, planting trees -- all kinds of ordinary activities. But if you watch him you will see the difference.
The difference is tremendous, but it is not of quantity: it is of quality. He works with such awareness, with such silence, with such joy and celebration that he transforms the whole activity.
The Jain, the Hindu, they escape from the world. The Zen Master lives in the world and transforms it. There is a great message for the future of humanity -- this is going to be the way of a future religiousness. The old idea of renouncing the world has totally failed, entirely failed. It is basically wrong and impractical too. How many people can renounce the world? -- only a very minor proportion because they have to depend on the world. The Jain monk may not do anything; that simply means other people are doing things for him. The Hindu saint may live in a cave far away in the Himalayas but somebody carries food for him from the village, clothes come to him and everything that he needs.
If the whole world lives like monks and nuns, who is going to take care of these people? That will be a global suicide! They will starve and die. That is a very impractical idea for transforming the world into a religious kind of living.
Zen is very pragmatic, practical. It says that is stupid; renouncing is simply unintelligent -- transform! Be wherever you are, but be in a new way. And what is that new way? Be non-competitive. To be competitive is to be worldly. Remember the emphasis: it is not a question of living in the world or going to the mountains -- to be competitive is to be worldly. You can go in the caves, but there are other saints living in other caves and there will be competition; then you have created another world. Then they will be talking who is achieving new siddhis, new powers, who can fast more, who can torture himself more, who can lie down on a bed of nails, who can live without clothes in the cold winter who
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