No Work, No Food!

Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labour with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds and pruning the trees.

The pupils felt sorry to see the old teacher working so hard, but they knew he would not listen to their requests to stop, so they hid away his tools.

That day the master did not eat. The next day he did not eat, nor the next. “He may be angry because we have hidden his tools,” the pupils surmised. “We had better put them back.”

The day they did so, the teacher worked and ate the same as before. In the evening he instructed them, “No work, No Food.”

How wonderful it would be if all of us made a similar commitment with ourselves. How many of us just while away the day in eating, drinking and sleeping. This is not life; this is just ‘existing’. Make life meaningful by doing something that makes life worthwhile. Don’t just ‘pass time’ but do something constructive and meaningful with your time, so that when you look back at life, you can smile and not cry for having wasted life.