I sit at my desk early today and have a moment to sit quietly and listen to the question. Is there a craft method of work that is available not only to the worker in his workshop, but also to the worker wherever he works, whatever his job may be – in a factory or a bank, in a manager’s office or in many children’s homes? even here in a noisy advertising agency?
Today, I myself want to know if there is another way of working that would not only support me physically, but would also support this inner hunger that I feel now: the hunger to actually be here at work, to be awake, instead of dreaming about it, carried me from one small crisis to another, from paycheck to paycheck.
New York drama critic Walter Kerr seems to speak my mind when The decline of joyHe writes: “The work we do is more or less the work we’ve done in life (but) it doesn’t give us the sense of accomplishment we expect… If I had to put my own explanation of the state of our hearts, minds, and nerves into a single sentence, I’d do it like this: we’re vaguely miserable, semi-miserable. Half of our minds are actively involved in making contact with the universe around us.”
This is part of my problem now: this half-heartedness, the half-heartedness with which I live my only life. It seems to be related to the triviality of the work I do, and I want to place the blame for my dissatisfaction squarely here. I begin to dream of a fulfilling job: maybe in a hospital; in some use of myself that would satisfy this hunger. Still, what I do is the work I do now. This is my livelihood; must be done. I would like to find a way to deal with it more creatively, or at least more carefully, so that it feels more like an exchange: they give and take.
I remember the story of two Zen monks, both amazing smokers. They agreed to consult with their superiors about the issue of smoking during their prayer time. While one received a stern rebuke from his abbot, the other received encouragement. Embarrassed, the unfortunate man asked his friend exactly how he had phrased his question. “I asked,” replied the second monk, “if it is permissible to pray while smoking.”
Maybe this is the kind of care my work needs. Praying while typing, while talking on the phone – a completely different way of praying would be needed; What Zen monks must achieve in their training—something like the wordless plea one discovers when trying to drive a car on an icy road, or doing any demanding job under all-but-impossible conditions?
I once looked up the origin of the word “prayer” and found out that it has Latin roots more uncertain— “obtained by request”, so it means uncertainty and risk. The plain truth is that I don’t feel anything unsafe or risky in my usual way of working. Nothing is really at stake. Today, for reasons beyond my understanding, I feel that something huge and mysterious is at stake, something only I know and only I care about. I can only call it my being. It’s as if my usual way of working serves to separate me from my being, from this new and fragile sense of myself that is now inside this typewriter.
Before I can continue to study my own work, perhaps I need to reflect on the meaning of work in general – in other times and ours – and as I ponder. I feel a kinship between the words “work” and “worship”. I am beginning to suspect that man is physically organized exactly as he is, only so that he has to work in order to live; and it seems possible that the material necessary for his own transformation and for the maintenance of the universe is produced as a direct result of his work.
“In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” said God to Adam, and if man did not actually have to work to feed, shelter, and clothe himself, in fact to survive, then perhaps this basic substance, whatever it is, would never be created. Perhaps, because man was created exactly as he is—exactly such a breathing, digesting, thinking, feeling organism—there is a precisely defined way of working and living to serve a universal purpose.
It is a fresh thought for me, the idea that the working man is the one who serves the universe in a special way; and sheds new light on the possible meaning of the craftsman’s way. No matter how much the attention of the cathedral builders was sometimes diverted from the spiritual side of their work (because surely diseases, family problems, all the complications of the human condition plague these people, just like us), their inner hunger must have been fed by their work methods, as indicated by their priests and guild masters, who constantly reminded them that the service of their work was not of a higher order. in itself.
With what heart they could work then, entrusting themselves to this higher power! – perhaps to the same “heart” that juxtaposed the golden harp (certainly a symbol of the joy of work) with the golden tools that archaeologists discovered in the Sumerian city of Ur. The inhabitant of the Golden Age or the Age of Faith seems to have understood that he was living a kind of double life, one in the visible world and one in the invisible. The traditional man was apparently taught from infancy that all that he manifested in his daily life vibrated invisibly in another dimension, and that his voluntary attempts to participate in his hidden dimension set him apart from other living beings—that was what made him, in fact, a transformative, a human being.
With what heart they could work then, entrusting themselves to this higher authority!
But where are such teachers today? Where are our priests? Are we wise? Now I try to imagine what it would be like to be a member of a guild; to be an apprentice in a workshop headed by a master in the original sense of the word: a man whose craft was truly his own, in hand, heart, and bones; a person who was able to convey the internal and external elements of this craft to those working under him not only by words and example, but also by his presence.
It is said that the guild members began their day with the master praying to the patron saint of the guild before going to work, and prayers of one sort or another would unfold throughout the day. During the day, there was the closeness of people, the feeling of each other’s existence, the exchange between experienced workers and beginners: meeting eyes, pointing and watching, talking and listening. How different it is from the factories and workplaces we are used to today, where little is “passed” from person to person, where eyes rarely meet, and the human voice cannot always rise above the noise of the machines; where men isolated from each other begin to feel a kinship only with their respective machines – a truck driver with his truck, a printer with his printing press, even a copywriter with his typewriter.
Now there is a moment when I feel the limitations of this kind of kinship and wonder how we ever lost touch with each other and our sacred heritage. How did we separate from the other dimension in which our ancestors felt their common humanity and the common authority of their lives? As workers today, our discontent must stem from this incredible mistake: this mass forgetfulness that we are under a higher authority than our boss, be it the factory manager, the company president, or yourself.
Oh, for the orderly structure of the guild workshop! The master’s strong, clear voice “reminds” me in the true sense of the word to return to silence. So many of the rituals of traditional societies must have come about because of the call to inner silence. The beating of drums, the ringing of the Angel’s bell, the sounding of the ram’s horn, the repetition of sacred syllables in any language, the ceremonial dances—all these mysterious activities, which up to this moment seemed to me like so many strange customs, must have been intended only for this reminder. And at this moment, I am shocked to discover the life inside me: the breath comes and goes; the wonderful heartbeat. I am here; the thought is here; and a kind of feeling. Here I am in this very mundane place with a minute of mundane advertising to write, but it’s my job and it requires me.
What I keep forgetting is that I always have my place. It’s right where I am. Where else could it be? Here is this life that is uniquely mine, a whole unity of creation that is entirely my place and my responsibility.
I feel a great desire not to lose touch with this feeling-thought that I have this morning. I’ve felt it before: wanting something more for myself or from myself. Is there a master in me that I can turn to if – like the people in fairy tales – I can wish hard enough? I don’t know, but something that I read comes to life in me now: “Wood and stone teach you what you can’t hear from the master’s teaching.”
I have neither wood nor stone, but I have my work; this is my reality for now. “To take what one has and use it,” wrote Henry James many years ago, “without waiting forever in vain for prejudice—to dig deep into reality and get something out of it—is undoubtedly the right way to live.” A thought from Father Robert Capon’s writing moves me energetically. “Adam,” he wrote, speaking of twentieth-century Adams like you and me, “is the priest of Creation. His truest work is to offer reality itself, not a heady abstraction of it.”
It seems I may be here, still in this super-automated, super-franchised, polluted, synthetic era, to begin the school year; here, now, in this attitude to see what we have. Maybe it’s the elusive way of working that makes all the difference between a craftsman and a slave – it’s just a realignment of my energies because that’s how I want to work, because I have to, because I have to. The authority is still there. Despite our forgetfulness, they do not forget us, because the laws of nature, unlike the decrees of temporal power, never change. It is the constancy of these laws that offers us both challenge and hope. He leaves me something; it’s my job to find a way to reconnect with these laws. It is even a duty, if Simone Weil was right when she said that the work of our time is to create a civilization “based on the spiritual nature of work.”
Perhaps with a lifelong attitude of “seeing” everyday, the noisy, chaotic activity I call my work could become a support for my attention, rather than a distraction. Maybe if I pay attention to the reality in front of me from moment to moment – phone, machine, pencil, boss, coffee – I constantly fail, accept failure and start again – this completely ordinary work that I do can become extraordinary work, even my craft.
The phone is ringing now. My first colleague has arrived to answer. The question I started with remains:
Is there a way of working that supports the need I really feel to be here in my work?
I am sure that the answer is not to be found in my head or in any book, but simply in the deepening of the question itself.
I face the outlines I left on my desk last Friday and get to work.
♦
adapted from The everyday magic of meditation © 2026 edited by John Welwood. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com
