To Live Is To Work Sun, 1st September, 2013
As someone who works in the human resources industry, this time of year is the busiest as we help employers plan and prepare for the coming benefits year. So this Labor Day, for me, it seems fitting to reflect on the importance and value of work in our lives.
Although the work each of us performs can vary greatly, our forms of labor represent the opportunity to bring our gifts, our talents, our energies, and offer them for the benefit of the greater good. I'm so grateful to have a boss (pictured here with me) who understands the value and importance of supporting and, when necessary, guiding her team to give deeply of themselves and be rewarded for that effort. Most important, she believes in her people and encourages them to bring their own life experience to the work to make it their own.
My wife has shared some of her Taoist readings with me about the value of work and craftsmanship. I'll use the balance of the space here today to quote from a powerful little book of meditations by Deng Ming-Dao called Everyday Tao.
As with every meditation, he begins with the Chinese character that represents the object of the meditation. The symbol shown here to the right is Gong, meaning work, skill or a job well done. The symbol is derived from the word for heaven. It actually derives from the idea that all work is for the benefit of the emperor who was called the "son of heaven." But I prefer to think of honest work as contributing to the creation of truth, beauty and harmony in human society—my version of heaven on earth.
Deng Ming-Dao:
When we work, we learn….We learn much more by doing. Testing oneself against the limitations of material, time and skill is critical to self-development.
It is important to do the type of work that leads not simply to production, but to skill. In other words, the most important type of work is the kind that results from one's life, not from societal or economic pressures. When we work as part of life it leaves a profound residue in our personality. It produces an attitude of accomplishment, an accumulation of working wisdom impossible to obtain any other way.
The ancients recognized this phenomenon so clearly that work came to signify skill. The kind of work one does—farm work, art work, spiritual work, or any other work—is not so important. What is important is that one performs one's work at its most profound level. In olden times, people would say that a craftsperson who had achieved great skill had realized the Tao of that art form.
And once one has realized Tao in part, the whole is not far away.
As someone who works in the human resources industry, this time of year is the busiest as we help employers plan and prepare for the coming benefits year. So this Labor Day, for me, it seems fitting to reflect on the importance and value of work in our lives.
Although the work each of us performs can vary greatly, our forms of labor represent the opportunity to bring our gifts, our talents, our energies, and offer them for the benefit of the greater good. I'm so grateful to have a boss (pictured here with me) who understands the value and importance of supporting and, when necessary, guiding her team to give deeply of themselves and be rewarded for that effort. Most important, she believes in her people and encourages them to bring their own life experience to the work to make it their own.
My wife has shared some of her Taoist readings with me about the value of work and craftsmanship. I'll use the balance of the space here today to quote from a powerful little book of meditations by Deng Ming-Dao called Everyday Tao.
As with every meditation, he begins with the Chinese character that represents the object of the meditation. The symbol shown here to the right is Gong, meaning work, skill or a job well done. The symbol is derived from the word for heaven. It actually derives from the idea that all work is for the benefit of the emperor who was called the "son of heaven." But I prefer to think of honest work as contributing to the creation of truth, beauty and harmony in human society—my version of heaven on earth.
Deng Ming-Dao:
When we work, we learn….We learn much more by doing. Testing oneself against the limitations of material, time and skill is critical to self-development.
It is important to do the type of work that leads not simply to production, but to skill. In other words, the most important type of work is the kind that results from one's life, not from societal or economic pressures. When we work as part of life it leaves a profound residue in our personality. It produces an attitude of accomplishment, an accumulation of working wisdom impossible to obtain any other way.
The ancients recognized this phenomenon so clearly that work came to signify skill. The kind of work one does—farm work, art work, spiritual work, or any other work—is not so important. What is important is that one performs one's work at its most profound level. In olden times, people would say that a craftsperson who had achieved great skill had realized the Tao of that art form.
And once one has realized Tao in part, the whole is not far away.
