Joe Mazzella
You can sometimes find a lot of wisdom in just a few words. There is an old Zen proverb that goes: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” These words truly speak to me now because as a teenager I literally had to do a lot of chopping wood and carrying water.
I can still remember riding in the back of Dad’s beat-up old pick-up truck up a hill to where he had cut down a tree for our winter firewood. My Dad had an injured back so my older brother and I were the muscle of the operation.
We would throw the wood into the back of the truck and take it to the wood splitter to be cut up further into usable pieces. Then we would spend hours stacking them into cords for the winter months to come.
We also had well water that was full of sulfur and iron so each day I would carry two five gallon jugs out to a little mountain spring near our home, fill them up, and carry them back so we could have clean water to drink and cook with.
The funny thing is I can’t remember ever complaining about this work. It was just stuff that had to be done so I accepted it and did my wood chopping and water carrying with a smile. Maybe I was more enlightened as a youth than as a young man because even after I got city water and electric heat I can remember complaining more about the other work I had to do. It took me a lot of years to get my “enlightenment” back. It took me a long time to again take whatever life gave me with a smile.
It took me quite a while to realize that life is best lived in acceptance, thankfulness, peace, and love.
God gives each of us “wood to chop and water to carry.” But God also gives each of us Love to share and Light to shine. Enlightenment is doing it all with a smiling face and a joyful heart.