The title of this essay comes from a spoken word routine by Henry Rollins, the former front man for Black Flag turned commenter on all things alternative. In the piece, he’s talking about how awful it would be if TV mirrored real life. He remarks that the worst reality TV show would be called “Your Shitty Job” and it would just show someone sitting at a desk, looking bored, and occasionally sighing. Whether he meant to or not, Rollins brings up a point which is that all jobs at some point or another become just a j.o.b. as my mother likes to put it. I’m sure there are days that even the biggest Hollywood stars don’t feel like being on set or that video game streamers just don’t feel like picking up a controller. I imagine that even being an adult film star can “chafe” from time to time...sorry for the pun. We get romantic visions in our head of what such and such a job must be like, astronaut, race car driver, rock star, etc…, and then start to think that “if only” we had one of those kinds of jobs that we would be happy. Unfortunately, as one of the Ramones put it, being a rock star was a pretty good job, but in the end it also sucks just like any other job.
Life decided to really slap me in the face with this concept not too long ago. I was out walking the dog trying to figure out what I was going to talk about for a dharma talk. I turned on Audible and randomly started listening to Hardcore Zen for probably the tenth time. Brad was in the middle of talking about how once he landed his dream job that he found it wasn’t as amazing as he thought. At that moment, it struck me that I was having a similar experience about leading a Zen group. Growing up around my uncle, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and also seeing other teachers and spiritual leaders, I painted a picture of what that life must be like. People come to you for advice and you get to dispense it while sounding all wise and profound. You don’t have to worry about money or schedules or any of that mundane stuff because you are the enlightened master. Fast forward a number of years and here I am trying to figure out what the hell I want to talk about each week. I still have bills and schedules and petty annoyances. You could argue that is because I’m just a nobody and that when you get to a certain level it all gets better, but my sense is that that just isn’t the case. Poor people have poor people problems, rich people have rich people problems, and spiritual people have spiritual problems. Jundo Cohen said to me once, “Isn’t it nice that you have just enough problems?”
When it comes to our vocations, I think the best we can do is to take the approach of doing our jobs to the best of our abilities while putting 100% of ourselves into the work. Focus on what you do and do it well. Enjoy the good stuff and try not to get too bogged down in the stuff you don’t like. When the Buddha said that all life is unsatisfactory, he didn’t specify whether he was talking about work life or personal life. He said all life. And just to be clear, I’m not saying that if something is REALLY wrong at your work that it shouldn’t be addressed or improved. I’m saying that a lot of our suffering and dissatisfaction comes not from things that are actually bad, but instead from the fact that things aren’t the way we wish them to be. And even if they are bad and need to be changed, we often put a lot of extra emotional energy into being upset about it before, during, and after we take steps to fix the situation.
Dogen points out in the Shobogenzo that doing a job is one way to exercise free giving and to give back to those around us. So do your shitty job to the best of your ability and try to make the world at least a little bit better in the process. No matter how insignificant it may seem, everyone’s actions contribute to shaping the world in which we all live.
Gassho,
Daishin
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