A life of Zen as a life of wholeness.

     It is common in any center that trains in Zen practice to ask serious students over the course of their training years to assume each of the roles that help maintain the center. In addition to the roles for conducting formal practice in the zendo and administrative roles to maintain the organization, there are the cook and kitchen helpers, the housecleaner and helpers, the groundskeeper, the guestmaster, work leader, sewing teacher.  And no role is considered higher or lower. An example of this is the tradition of assigning senior students to clean the toilets, as a way of embodying this realization. All are the whole of practice, of equal value.
The tradition is necessary and practical for a householder sangha to take up, since much of our life is involved in maintaining our homes and work places, as well as the zen center. We may subscribe to a mistaken notion that some part of our lives distracts from practice. But that’s impossible in a practice such as ours — the practice of wholeness. Every task, every motion and use of the body is where we realize and manifest the Way. Nothing is left out. Nothing is more part of the whole, nothing is less. Regarding a life of Zen as a life of wholeness is one and the same as expressing the whole of our life in every moment or activity.