"No Work, No Food” 83
Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labor 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 advice 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, the teacher worked and ate the same as before. In the evening he instructed them: “No work, no food.”
In life, people take many things for granted, whether it is how we play with our children, or what kind of job we do, or just simply having fun. For the older generation, taking things for granted wasn’t an option. In this simple passage, trying to convince someone to take it easy proved to be a very valuable lesson for some youngsters.
When life gets to ruff, normally we tend to slow down a bit. Often the younger generation, healthy and strong, perceives that the older generation should take it easier than normal. However, in China, the Chinese Zen master doesn’t seem to fit this scenario. They seem to carry the philosophy that each carries their own weight no matter what the consequence. The younger pupils felt the Master was working extremely to hard and knew that he would not to a break. Having this information, they concocted a plan to hide his work tools so he would have no choice but to take a break.
As the day slowly elapsed into darkness, they realized the Zen master hadn’t eaten. This carried into the 3rd day and finally the pupils felt he was angry so they returned them to their original place and that evening, they noticed the master eating again.
He then made his daily coffee and toast and took it to the living room sofa, he hated sitting on the table. The
Carolyn Foster Segal, a Pennsylvanian English teacher, wrote “The Dog Ate My Flash Drive, and Other Tales of Woe.” Segal explains that her students don’t follow her class syllabus and sign on her door about late work. Her students insist on putting their efforts into making excuses rather than doing the work. She mentions that there are certain topics that the excuses fall under. Segal begins to list different scenarios that her students have come up with. She mentions that she has had excuses from coughing up blood, to relatives dying, to a chainsaw accident.
According to Streetwise of Street News Services (2010), the first reported instances of homelessness dates as far back as 1640, in some of the larger cities in the original 13 colonies. At this time, there were wars being fought between settlers and Native Americans, and people were left with no shelter in both sides (Street News Service, 2010). Later, the industrial revolution caused more homelessness, industrial accidents left many former hard-working families with a dead provider, or with severe disabilities, and then the economy entered a recession in the same time period (Street News Service, 2010). Wars always left a large number of veterans homeless. Later, in 1927, there was an astronomical flood along the Mississippi River, across multiple state, leaving about 1.3 million people without a home (Street News Service, 2010). Natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, the Asian tsunami in 2004, and the earthquake early this year in Japan are still a major cause of homelessness.
The old man suspected nothing. During the day, the narrator continued to perform his usual duties, and even dared to ask each morning how the old man had passed the night; however, at midnight, the nightly ritual continued.
Food insecurity is an issue faced by millions of Americans every day, and the biggest group affected by this is working families with children. Food insecurity is so big that the United States government has now recognized it and provided a definition for it. The United States government has defined food insecurity as “a household level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food” (USDA.gov). Food banks and anti-hunger advocates agree that some of the causes of food insecurity are stagnant wages, increase in housing costs, unemployment, and inflation of the cost of food. These factors have caused food banks to see a change in the groups of people needing assistance. Doug O’Brien, director of public policy and research at Chicago-based Second Harvest says “’we’ve seen a real shift in who we serve. A decade ago, it was almost always homeless, single men and chronic substance abusers. Now we have children and working families at soup kitchens’” (Koch). These families that are feeling the effects of food insecurity will not be only ones affected by it, but all of America. Studies have shown that there is a link between food security, performance in the classroom, and obesity. If this issue is not faced head on, America will have a generation of children not fully prepared for the workforce and high health insurance rates due to obesity health issues.
I think that what the author was trying to imply in this passage was that in his personal experience, he has noticed that many people take many things for granted and that they don’t live their lives according to what they want and need to do. So much is wasted during one’s lifetime, and people just allow their lives to pass them by.
Hunger days for them began to be long and draining, a lot of times they would sleep so they wouldn’t have to feel the hunger pains. Every so often their mother would come with a couple bags of groceries that would always have the king vitamin and corn flakes cereal, farina, powder milk, can milk, a can of fruit cocktail and potted pork, two if they were lucky. To them it was a delicious meal but to their mom it was poor man’s food.
In order for a Zen to call themselves a Zen Buddhist they must overcome the excessive amounts
Why do we take the way we live for granted? If we sit back and look at all the things that we are fortunate enough to have, we realize how much we actually take for granted. It will amaze you once you look beyond the surface. I remember back in 2010 when I was just fourteen years old. My grandmother gave me the chance to travel with her to her birthplace Navojoa Sonora. Sonora is a state in Mexico which is where my mom’s side of the family lives. It’s sad to say but my mom’s side of the family is very poor. Once I finally got there I traveled for almost 19 hours. This is when I realized that we took even the simplest things for granted. Like electricity water and food. I stayed there for two weeks and let me tell you it made me appreciate my way of living a lot more than I did.
The garden of Kinkaku-Ji is laid out in a Zen-Buddhist style that reflects on Chinese influence. Ideas were borrowed from Taoism philosophy. Zen Buddhism emerged from ch...
One day when I was thirteen, I was at my sister’s apartment in June. I had just woken up at 7:30am, and the kids were still sleeping. That day was the first day I took care of my nephew Adrian, and my nieces Sophia and Penelope. They were still sleeping, so I let them sleep. I sat there wondering how bad they would be when they woke up. When they did wake up it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but they did wake up hungry.
Prior to my enrollment in this class, I did not have exposure or any type of familiarity with the Zen tradition. The uniquely Japanese branch of Buddhism has indeed flourished, and focuses on eliminating the sources of human suffering, or in other words, dukkha. On its simplest level, the effect on the development of this Japanese-Buddhist culture continues to resonate among its followers, as it did approximately 2500 years ago. However, there is a question that remains to an even larger extent. How actually did Zen come to influence not only the worlds of art, literature, and architecture, but also popular culture and Western life? The connection involving Zen and art is incredibly mystifying, because upon examination Zen art itself appears to be very modern. Shunryu Suzuki explains that “Zen practice is the direct expression of our true nature” (32). He also mentions “when you practice Zen, you become one with Zen” (49). Fully exposing ourselves to foreign notions may be strange, but at which point is it that Zen transcends into art?
BWOM predominantly targets the Adult population, whom are struggling with substance abuse issues and chronic homelessness. The majority of the clients at BWOM is men with a long history of instability, mental/physical health issues and also has contracted the HIV/AID virus. As implies earlier, a large number of the male clients as well as female clients have suffered with ongoing trauma that have planted a seed of hopelessness and despair for most of them. As a result, their addiction have landing them in countless jails, institutions, and nil death situations. Moreover, these men come from diverse backgrounds; however, they all share a commonality which is they do not know how to live life on life terms (Life on life’s terms, 2016). Furthermore,
The change in our society from having rich, middle, and poor economic statuses has caused our society to crumble. The increase of low waged workers has increased tremendously. The decline in wages cause parents to work 2-3 jobs just to make the bills, which in turn has caused parents and children’s relationships to fail, which also in turn cause the children to have behavioral issues, which in turn cause violence rates to increase. Every time you turn on the television, all you observe and hear about is violence in our world. Our society is crumbling out of control due to the low wage jobs and inequality of wages among workers and if not addressed and improved our future will not survive.
In life, many things are taken for granted on a customary basis. For example, we wake up in the morning and routinely expect to see and hear from certain people. Most people live daily life with the unsighted notion that every important individual in their lives at the moment, will exist there tomorrow. However, in actuality, such is not the case. I too fell victim to the routine familiarity of expectation, until the day reality taught me otherwise.