General Labor
After 20 years of school and a 15 year professional career in high tech, I wait in a line as “general labor” at the work circle in Tassajara awaiting my assignment for the day. I have no skills save eagerness.
Tassajara is a retreat center. It functions both as a monastery for students practicing Zen Buddhism and a hot springs resort for affluent guests in the summer.
During the spring and fall shoulder seasons there is a work period which lets “work guests” stay in exchange for their toil. It’s a great deal: you get to stay somewhere extraordinary, eat rightly famous food and learn a bit about Zen, if you want. All that’s required is to work 6 hours a day four days out of five.
Priority is given to those with skill. Skills useful to a monastery and resort. Cooks. Plumbers. Carpenters. Construction. Gardeners. Everything needed to keep a small community running.
I have none of those skills. Thus despite my extravagant education and long years managing and implementing software, I am simply “general labor”. So each day at the work circle, after the announcements are made, I queue up to find out what sorts of odd jobs need help today while those with useful skills get right to work.
They’re not wrong to view me as unskilled. Though I could spiff up their Web site or debug their kernel drivers, none of that helps the dozens of people living here now nor does it help prepare for the paying guests arriving shortly. So I’m best used on tasks requiring no training: cleaning cabins, raking leaves and chopping onions.
Despite being much more intellectually monotonous 1 than the intricate world of software, it’s at least as satisfying. Perhaps it’s more satisfying: my work produces a tangible change in the world and I can see people enjoying it almost immediately. A nicely raked path. A clean dining hall. A meal I had a small hand in preparing.
Work Period was a unique opportunity to try a bunch of different jobs which have in common only that they directly benefit a community right away. This is of course the point: work as part of the Zen practice without attachment to the form of the work. Meditation within the activities themselves: repetitive chores requiring concentration invite the possibility of watching the mind. For those of us coming from other fields, it’s also a chance to let go of our work identities.
Staying at Tassajara also gave me a bit of an insight into another way lifestyle, that of a monk. Retreating from the commercial world to pursue freedom wholeheartedly.
As I meander through the process of figuring out what I want to do in the next part of my life, the Tassajara work period was a special way to gain some perspective, to get out of the familiar patterns of thought about what livelihoods are sensible. It was exactly the kind of thing I’m seeking these days and another signpost along the way, pointing me to different, new, lives.