Carry Water & Chop Wood - The Secret to Achievement & Beyond
We taught a really great lesson this past week:
The Story
The Student walks up the mountain where he heard a very wise teacher who has reached enlightenment lives because he wanted to learn from him the secret to achieve enlightenment.
The student asks the teacher “how do I achieve enlightenment?” the wise teacher replies “carry water and chop wood”
The student thinks for a moment and then asks the teacher a second question, “what comes after enlightenment”. The Teacher replies “carry water and chop wood”
The Context
In the old days one must engage in menial tasks for daily living such as carry water to the house from the river for cooking and cleaning because there was no running water in the homes. Also, to chop wood for cooking over a fire and for heating the home, menial work that was vital to survival and daily living.
The Lesson
Sometimes people want to skip the process and get to the accomplishment, but it is the process that allows us to get to the accomplishment. Once we accomplish it, we must keep doing “the process” to maintain the accomplishment otherwise, we loose it.
Certainly this allows us to get to the higher levels once we get the fundamentals down for that you can only build as high as your foundation is strong enough to build upon and if the foundation crumbles the whole structure falls. This is why we practice so earnestly to the level of black belt and why we keep practicing so earnestly (if not more) once we achieve black belt, so we don't loose what we built up.
We must never loose sight of the importance of the basics.
What are the essential basics for life? What are some fundamental principles that allow us to advance and evolve to unleash our human potential? Character Strengths such as trust, trustworthiness, respect, focus, discipline, perseverance, self-control, grit, curiosity, creativity might some of the basics that without them we may not achieve or sustain the achievement. At TheDOJO in our martial arts education of intelligent curriculum this is exactly what we do at every class.
