[cratermoon]

No Work, No Food

Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labor with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds, and pruning the trees.

The pupils felt sorry to see the old teacher working so hard, but they knew he would not listen to their advice to stop, so they hid away his tools.

That day the master did not eat. The next day he did not eat, nor the next. "He may be angry because we have hidden his tools," the pupils surmised. "We had better put them back."

The day they did, the teacher worked and ate the same as before. In the evening he instructed them: "No work, no food."

[adrianN]

What a brutal philosophy.

[DaoVeles]

To be fair, cleaning the grounds and pruning the trees is not exactly brutal work. Like most koans, look at the broader message here.

[adrianN]

The broader message seems to be that the frail, the disabled and others who are unable to work don’t deserve food.

[cratermoon]

And the people doing no work taking food from the people who did the work to farm it? What do you call that?

[locopati]

a society that takes care of its people

[BriggyDwiggs42]

If they take it, theft. If its willingly given, charity.

[psychoslave]

One have to recognize that manufacturing consent, including consent to give away to their threateners, is not necessarily always the most trivial job.

[BriggyDwiggs42]

I genuinely do not understand what you’re saying, but my guess is that you’re saying charity sometimes isn’t charity because they’re manipulated into giving or something? In the parent story though, the person who would be given food is an old man for whom physical labor is difficult. It’s not manipulation, but kindness from someone who finds the work much easier to do.

I want to throw you a question. If one man grows twice as much food as he can eat before the food will spoil (and has nothing to do with it etc.), but then refuses to give any to a hungry beggar, is he committing an immoral act?

[harimau777]

Society

[cratermoon]

What's brutal though? The master chose not to accept the fruits of community labor he didn't personally contribute towards. Contrast that with a society in which aggregating the surplus labor of the community to persons that didn't contribute is celebrated and rewarded. Which is the brutal philosophy?