Tricycle | Awake in the World

Cleaning the bathroom or chopping the onions is no less important than sitting in deep meditation. Grasping this and acting on it is called waking up.

—Janet Jiryu Abels, “Participate Fully”

"Chop wood, carry water" is a Zen saying. In other words, just do what you are doing, nothing more, nothing less.

As Yoda would say, Simple it is not. Chopping onions, I almost chopped off the tip of my left index finger. I had to wrap my hand in a tea towel and sit down, and reconsider my entire life while the tea towel bloomed red.

Chop onion. That simple directive, the one that is in every cookbook repeated about a thousand times is actually quite complicated. Nowhere does it say, "Be careful and don't chop your finger off, dumbass."

"I'm chopping an onion," is what I say now, when I'm chopping an onion. I have to really concentrate on this. I'm. Chopping. An. Onion. Who is this "I"? What is the action called chopping? And what is an onion? What is this appendage called a finger?

You can go kind of deep, but it's not necessary; what is necessary is half a cup.

Elizabeth Bastos is a stay-at-home mother of two in the Baltimore suburbs. Her work has appeared at The Smithsonian, McSweeney's, The New Yorker's Page-Turner Blog, and she is a contributor at Book Riot. She went to Smith for English and Marine Biology so she knows a thing or two about spinelessness and buoyancy. Her personal blog is Goody Bastos.

Articles by Elizabeth Bastos
"The Zen Master Goes Black Friday Shopping"
"Walking Meditation or 'How to Get the Shpilkes Out'"

Image: Justin Parmelee/Flickr