Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
—Wu Li, Zen Buddhism practitioner—
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Prior to achieving enlightenment, Wu Li teaches, when one strives for better or for different situations, life is filled with drudgery: an endless cycle of chopping wood and carrying water—long periods of hard work, sometimes with little reward. The mundaneness of this can be dispiriting and discouraging. Surely, one thinks, there has to be more on offer than the endless repetition of tasks.
So one works hard in the pursuit and hope of securing more comfortable and less challenging circumstances. Eventually, in some form or other, “better” situations are realised and more desirable outcomes are secured. And then, even in this state, inevitably, routine sets in.
After enlightenment, the teachings go on to say, when one has passed through more seasons of life, when wins and losses have been tallied and balanced the truth remains: one still has to chop wood and carry water—perhaps of a different kind, in a different time, and in a different way. But, always, repetitiveness and varying degrees of distraction abound.
The trick, then, lies in turning mundaneness into momentum and repetition into refinement.
During any undertaking, repetitiousness is unavoidable. There is no infinite growth, none that can come at a sustainable cost. Even if there was some alternative timeline in which growth forever moves in a forward and upward trajectory, it, too, would become tedious and unfulfilling.
The message, as far as one’s fitness is concerned, is simple. Before fitness, one needs discipline and consistency. After fitness one needs even more discipline and consistency.
Before enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.
And learn to enjoy the work.
Rémy Ngamije is an award-winning Rwandan-born Namibian author, editor, publisher, photographer, literary educator, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of The Forge.