The Art of Dishwahing.

I have been doing the dishes for the Restaurant downstairs for the pas few weeks and ever since i returned here, it is a very good practice for me to keep my mind occupied and less thinking of non sensible issues that produces nothing but more vexations at the end of the day. Doing the dishes is one of those not too well sought after vocations in life and often enough it has been considered something one does if one cannot pay for the meals one has eaten., but to me doing the dishes was at one time as i might have related somewhere in this blog a source of enlightenment or should i say Satori, a mini awakening while i was living at the Zen Center in Sausalito, California. It was the time i witnessed the transformation of a tray of white China bowls into a White lotus of a thousand petals and it was also witnessed by my Practice Teacher who was standing right facing me and the flower without my realizing his presence. Although it lasted a few seconds long enough for my Teacher to look at me and uttered, "It happens dosn't it? and bowed to me and walked away. As he was gone so was the flower which turned back into a tray of white China bowls.
Mahatma Ghandi brought the British Empire in India to an end with his spinning wheel a tedious task that produced the home spun cloth which almost the whole of the Hindu population wore and inadvertently, inadvertently (without knowledge or intention) brought the British Fabric industry at the time to its knees.In essence the most down to earth of vocations that a man can do if done with sincerity and mindfulness can become a great source of meditation practice and a great cure for slothfulness and stupor.a state of near-unconsciousness or insensibility. Often times enough we do get into this state of mind and knows not how to get out of it other than through drinking or drugs or worse beating up our spouses or ;loved ones. But putting oneself through the ringer so to speak can be a source of potent cure, doing what one would normally despise doing., like doing the laundry or ironing or cleaning up the room. Work is a natural healing process for the mind stuck in a rut!

"Karma Yoga is selfless service unto humanity. "Your duty is to work incessantly but not to expect the fruits thereof." This is the central teaching of the Gita.
In the third chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna's opening question, "If, O Janardana, you say knowledge is superior to action, then why do you enjoin on me this terrible action ?" To this Sri Krishna answered, "The twofold path was given by me, O sinless one, to the world in the beginning - the path of knowledge to the discerning, the path of work to the active." (3 : 2) Most people think that if you want to attain realization of God, it would be better to sit and think of him only. However, there is one problem here: the mind is like a monkey. When you try to control this playful trickster, it just jumps from one branch of thought to another. To train this monkey requires constant discipline, which is eventually integrated into one's nature."

The Essence of Karma Yoga :Swami Muktibodhananda Saraswati

To most work is a means to earn a living and in most instances  working entails time clocks and  wages and as the job becomes routine and  the employee is well versed in his duties there is the tendencies to try to do as little and accomplish as much while the rest of the tie can be spent wasted in doing what has nothing to do with the job specification.  Work becomes a tedium and  there is even a sense of rebelliousness that later comes into  the work place where employees have become sick and tired of doing the same thing throughout their entire career. This is how we work most of our lives and calls it earning a living to justify our very existence. We work harder to earn more and we excel at what we do in order to earn a higher position where we do less and earn more and often times we become competitive and in the struggle to gain a better position for ourselves we are willing to destroy anyone that stands in our way, we step over others and  by hook or by crook climb our way to the top and call ourselves successful

Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh wrote,

"To practice Right Livelihood ( samyag ajiva ), you have to find a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion. The way you support yourself can be an expression of your deepest self, or it can be a source of suffering for you and others. " ... Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or erode them. We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living.. from The Heart of Buddha's Teachings

"Three persons who will certainly face God's displeasure on the Day of Judgment are: one who dies without fulfilling his commitment to God; one who sells a free person and enjoys the price; and one who engages a laborer, receives due work from him but does not pay him his wage." (Al-Bukhari)

This hadith, by placing the exploitation of labor and the enslaving of a free person on an equal footing, suggests how averse Islam is to exploitation of labor.

Fulfilling  his commitment to God is paramount in Islam followed by slavery and work ethics and what is this fulfillment to God? It is to serve His creations, to serve humanity. Man, in my understanding was not placed on this planet to serve himself but to serve others and most Muslims i know does not understand this virtue and consider work to be a means of achieving a higher status in life or the ability to visit the Holy land as many times than most simply because one can afford to do so.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to earn as much money as one possibly can in this life but from a spiritual point of view it is imperative that working for a living does not entail neglecting the primal cause of our being here and that is to worship God and servitude is the essence of worship for through serving we find our salvation, our sense of Compassion, our sense of Loving Kindness, our sense of Divinity. We come closer to God when we serve His creatures, His environment, His sanctity. (the state or quality of being holy, sacred, or saintly).