The joy of caring

 
“We become compassionate not from altruism, which denies the self for the sake of the other, but from the insight that sees and feels one IS the other.”

—Huston Smith
 

t was early morning, and the night before there was a huge rainstorm. A light mist was still falling when I approached the monastery’s main building. From just behind the hill I could make out that there were several other monks, still in their raincoats, walking back and forth along the porch. I could see they were doing something unusual. They were kneeling down to pick something up off the porch and put it into a bucket. As I got closer, I could see they were collecting the earthworms that crawled up onto the tiles from the courtyard.
 
I wiped my shoes on the mat and proceeded to the coat rack to unload my backpack. One of the monks in a yellow coat approached me, bowed to me, and showed me a note. I returned the bow and realized it was the Guestmaster. The soggy note said, “We are collecting worms from the porch and putting them into the bucket. Please assist. In lovingkindness, Guestmaster.” I bowed to acknowledge that I had read the note and moved in with the rest of the monks. I picked up the remaining stray worms off the porch and put them into the bucket of soil. As I saw how frail the worms were and how kind the monks were to them, I began to cry. Where on the planet could I have ever gone to see people who were stopping to help a creature that seemed so insignificant?
 
I continued to see and participate in similar acts of kindness during my training. A baby bat that had fallen from the eaves was assisted back up to its mother. Tadpoles trapped in a puddle while we were building the pond in our courtyard were relocated to a bucket of water. Wild animals that were injured or sick were driven to the local vet for care.
 
While I was at the monastery, I learned the joy of caring. I experienced that caring was not a duty, obligation, or tedious chore to be done but rather an opportunity to open my heart and serve at a deeper level.
 
Caring for the earthworms for the sake of the earthworms. Caring for the bats for the sake of the bats. Caring for the carrots for the sake of the carrots.
 
In caring for them, I cared for myself. No deed there was, no doer thereof. I was not separate from all of life. Everything was a mirror for my relationship with myself. I saw how putting a stamp neatly into the corner of an envelope deliberately was a metaphor for how I treated myself.
 
Nothing was insignificant.
 

In lovingkindness,

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, Living the Zen Life: Practicing Conscious, Compassionate Awareness (Volume One).

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, Living the Zen Life: Practicing Conscious, Compassionate Awareness (Volume Two).

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, Living the Zen Life: Practicing Conscious, Compassionate Awareness (Volume Three).

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, A Shift to Love: Zen Stories and Lessons by Alex Mill.

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, Meditation and Reinventing Yourself.

If you enjoyed this article, you can find a version of it in my book, The Zen Life: Spiritual Training for Modern Times.

 

  Alex Mill trained in a Zen Buddhist monastery for nearly 14 years. He now offers his extensive experience to transform people’s lives and businesses through timeless Zen principles.

He is the creator of three powerful 30-day programs, Heart-to-Heart: Compassionate Self-Mentoring, Help Yourself to Change, and Your Practice, as well as the online Zen meditation workshop, Taming Your Inner Noise (now offered as The FREE Zen Workshop).

Alex has also written seven books on Zen awareness practice. The latest are entitled A Shift to Love: Zen Stories and Lessons (Get it for FREE here) and the 3-book series Living the Zen Life: Practicing Conscious, Compassionate Awareness.

He is a full-time Zen Life Coach who offers guidance and life-changing support to his private clients worldwide. Book a call.