Notes from The Edge of The Path
Roberto Borrebach Klaui (FB Post May 2026)
In Zen, practice does not end when the bell rings. Very often, that is where it begins again, with a broom in the hand, a knife on the chopping board, a rag over the shoulder, or a bucket of water carried across a cold courtyard before the sun has fully risen.
Samu is the Zen word for work practice. It means sweeping paths, washing bowls, cleaning toilets, chopping vegetables, carrying firewood, tending the garden, polishing the floor, repairing a gate, or doing whatever happens to be needed. Nothing glamorous. Nothing elevated. No spiritual perfume sprayed over ordinary chores. Just the work right in front of you, met completely, with care and full attention.
In a monastery, this is not treated as a break from practice. It is practice. After zazen, the monks do not float away into some refined spiritual atmosphere. They stand up, bow, and enter the next form of zazen: the kitchen, the garden, the toilet block, the wood shed, the long silent corridor where dust gathers again no matter how often it has been swept.
At dawn, the monastery is not only a place of stillness. It is a place of sounds. The wooden clapper. The bell. Feet moving over old floors. Robes brushing against door frames. Water poured into basins. Rice being washed. Knives touching chopping boards. A rake moving slowly over gravel. Somewhere, someone coughing in the cold morning air. Somewhere else, someone scrubbing a stain that does not want to disappear.
This is the monastery most people do not imagine when they dream of Zen. They imagine silence, incense, wisdom, and perhaps some old master saying one unforgettable sentence under a pine tree. But most of the day may be much more ordinary than that. A monk is told to clean the latrine. Another one carries compost. Another one washes pots blackened by fire. Another one peels carrots for an hour, not as a punishment, not as a spiritual exercise in disguise, but because people need to eat.
And there, right there, Zen becomes mercilessly honest.
Because when you sit on a cushion, you can still imagine yourself as a serious practitioner. But when you are kneeling on the floor, wiping up someone else’s mess, the fantasy gets thinner. The mind starts muttering. Why me? I did this yesterday. This is boring. This is beneath me. I came here for awakening, not for buckets and rags.
Good. That is where the practice has teeth.
Samu exposes what zazen exposes, but sometimes even more directly. The wandering mind appears in the missed corner. The impatient mind appears in the half-washed bowl. The self-important mind appears in the resistance to lowly tasks. The distracted mind appears in the dropped cup, the uneven cut, the broom pushed without care. Nothing mystical is required. The work shows you exactly where you are.
Shunryū Suzuki once said:
“When you do something, burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.”
That is samu in one sentence. Not doing the task while secretly waiting for it to be over. Not using the work as a technique to become calm. Not performing humility while hoping someone notices how humble you are. Just burning completely in the act itself, so that nothing extra remains.
Dōgen understood this deeply. In his monastic instructions, he gave careful attention to the kitchen, utensils, rice, water, bowls, and the way things were handled. He did not treat the temple kitchen as secondary to the meditation hall. He saw that the Way is either alive in the rice pot or it is not alive at all. He wrote that utensils should be treated with the same care as one’s own eyes. That is not sentimental language. It is a direct blow against carelessness.
When washing rice, just wash rice. When drying a bowl, just dry the bowl. When placing a spoon down, place it down completely. Not because the spoon is holy in some decorative sense, but because this moment has no spare part. This bowl, this hand, this water, this movement, where else do we think awakening is going to appear?
Alan Watts put it in his own simple way, or at least the line is often attributed to him:
“When you are peeling potatoes, simply peel potatoes.”
That is the essence of samu. Not doing the task while thinking about the next task. Not using the work as background while the mind continues its private cinema. Just being so absorbed in what is being done that the one doing it is no longer standing apart, commenting on the performance.
Sometimes this is very ordinary. You start cleaning, repairing something, chopping vegetables, writing, gardening, and only when the work is finished do you notice that several hours have passed. You were not trying to be spiritual. You were simply not divided. The job was being done, and for a while the story of “me doing it” had gone quiet.
Ikkyū Sōjun, that wild old troublemaker of Zen, did not have much patience for spiritual decoration. He tore holes in religious respectability wherever he found it. He had no interest in a Zen that lived only in polished temples and correct phrases. His sharpest teaching may be the simplest one attributed to him:
“Attention. Attention. Attention.”
Not attention as tension. Not the clenched attention of someone trying to become enlightened by force. Just attention as complete presence. This. Here. Now. The bowl. The broom. The face in front of you. The step you are taking. The onion under the knife. The email you are writing. The floor under your feet.
Attention, attention, attention!
That is samu.
It is not about sacred walls. It is not about Japanese robes, monastery bells, or old wooden halls hidden in mountain mist. Those things may help create a certain atmosphere, but the mystery is not hiding behind them. The mystery is not elsewhere. It is not locked inside temples, scriptures, rituals, or the private language of monks.
The mystery is much closer than that. It is in plain sight. So close we keep missing it.
It is in brushing your teeth, answering a message, washing a cup, opening a door, making the bed, cleaning the counter, taking out the trash, or doing the same dull task for the thousandth time without turning it into a personal drama.
We do not need to romanticize it. Sometimes work is boring. Sometimes the broom feels heavy. Sometimes the back hurts. Sometimes the mind keeps complaining. Sometimes the task is unpleasant, and the last thing we want is to hear some Zen sentence about presence. But samu does not ask us to like everything. It asks whether we can meet what is here without immediately escaping into commentary.
This is where the phrase “practice as if your hair were on fire” comes in. Of course, in my case that image has become slightly theoretical, since there is not much hair left to burn. But the point remains. Practice is not something to postpone until the right mood, the right silence, the right retreat, the right teacher, the right cushion, the right view, the right stage of life. This moment is already burning. Birth and death are already here. The broom is already in the hand.
So sweep.
Not tomorrow.
Not after understanding Zen.
Not after the mind becomes quiet.
Sweep now.
And when sweeping is finished, put the broom away.
That too is practice.
Samu is work without self-importance, but not without care. It is ordinary activity without the usual inner noise of ownership. The strange thing is that when the work is entered completely, the worker becomes harder to find. There is movement, pressure, breath, sound, contact, rhythm. The hand moves. The rag wipes. The knife cuts. The floor dries. For a moment, the whole burden of “me doing my life” may loosen.
This is why samu is so easily misunderstood. It is not “mindfulness at work” as a productivity trick. It is not a way to make chores more pleasant. It is not a spiritual method to become a calmer and more efficient person. It is much more radical and much more ordinary than that. It is the collapse of the imagined gap between practice and life.
Because the real monastery has no walls.
It may look like your kitchen.
It may look like your bathroom.
It may look like your desk.
It may look like a supermarket queue, a sink full of dishes, a message you do not want to answer, or a floor that needs sweeping again though you swept it yesterday.
Dust returns. So you sweep again.
The bowl gets dirty. So you wash it again.
The mind complains. So you notice the complaining and keep moving.
There is something quietly faithful in that repetition. Not faithful to a belief, not faithful to a doctrine, but faithful to the simple fact of being alive and participating in what is directly in front of us.
Samu does not lead away from the world. It brings us into it without the usual escape routes.
No cushion needed. No special state required. No sacred wall between Zen and life.
Just these hands. This broom. This breath. This ordinary, unavoidable moment.
Attention! Attention! Attention!
-Notes from The Edge of The Path
