My friend told me he once did a month at a Buddhist ‘retreat’ in Taiwan. He told me that he spent the whole time cleaning.

This morning I had the honour of helping to clean Daishobo pilgrim lodge’s Shinden, the sacred altar. Only select people are even allowed to do this, and it is a very important task, what with the huge number of artifacts and the history of the place. This cleaning is not part of training, although I guess you could consider it as such. This task is known as ご奉仕Gohoshi, donating your time and effort in dedication to a place.

This simple task has such a deep lesson. If you can be content with cleaning, honestly, you should be able to be content with anything.