A Brief Reflection on Balancing Work and Rest

A Brief Discussion of Balancing Work and Rest
I. Rhythm and Cadence
(1) Chill
The most important thing in life is balancing work and rest -> rhythm and cadence -> slowing down and being chill. If you keep pushing yourself to stay tense, you will inevitably neglect rest, and your efficiency will not be particularly high either. Slowing down makes it easier to notice fatigue and a disrupted rhythm, and the need to rest.
(2) Working Well and Resting Well: The more you balance work and rest on the right path, the more inner tranquility you have, and the better things become
Conversely, the more you are disturbed and interrupted by karmic obstructions, the more you wander in confusion, and the more you flail about and indulge in harmful ways, the worse things become.
Working well and resting well, proceeding straight along the right path: a very simple principle, but few people put it into practice.
Zhuangzi: Talent vs. Lack of Talent, Usefulness vs. Uselessness
(1) Talent vs. Lack of Talent
The Inner Chapters of the *Zhuangzi* discuss the way of “uselessness.” In the Outer Chapters, his followers wrote a story about “talent and lack of talent”: Zhuangzi’s disciples asked him why a great tree was able to survive because it was useless, while a goose was stewed in an iron pot because it was useless. Should one be useful or useless?
Zhuangzi smiled and said, “I would place myself between having talent and lacking it.” But this, too, is no good solution. Ride upon the Way and virtue and roam freely, transforming with the times, without committing yourself exclusively to any one course. Roam with the ancestor of all things; treat things as things without being made into a thing by them. Acting with an agenda and seeking something will bring frustration and humiliation.
This is the central dilemma of Zhuangzi’s followers: without working for a living, you starve; working for a living, you cannot roam free. What are you supposed to do?
Marx said that a human being is the sum of social relations. Can people be exempt from society, from labor, from being useful? No.
Life is forever within the dialectic between “usefulness and uselessness,” between “labor and inactivity.” This is what balancing work and rest means.
If someone were exempt from labor, from disturbances and karmic obstructions, with nothing left but leisure, they would be an immortal. There have been very few of those in thousands of years.
(2) Zhuangzi’s Art of Making a Living
The *Zhuangzi* contains stories about Liezi raising pigs, Gengsang Chu farming, and Zhuangzi borrowing money. These are all very practical matters of labor, putting food on the table, and survival. The way of making a living advocated in the *Zhuangzi* is not to abstain from productive work, attain immortality through cultivation, and wait for others to support you. That is a crooked path.
Zhuangzi dragged his tail through the mud; Liezi considered himself to have attained nothing; when some villagers wanted to make offerings to Gengsang Chu, he hurried away to avoid becoming entangled in chains of cause and effect. Without displaying ability or contrived action, without desires or demands, and without a fondness for setting oneself up as a teacher.
Marx made a living contributing popular explanatory articles to American newspapers, and when he was desperately poor, he even considered applying for an office job. Engels worked at a textile mill. They were simply going along with their circumstances.
III. Fate
A person’s brief life slips quietly by amid this balancing of work and rest. No different from swimming fish, flying birds, or other animals.
Just a few dozen ripenings of the wheat.
Both work and rest have their limits. Marx labored all his life without finishing all three volumes of *Capital*, nor did he establish any Soviet state.
Take circumstances as they come. A person is finite; they simply adapt to the situation, live in the present, and balance work and rest. Are other people, external events, and the circumstances of the times things you can control?
IV. When We Fail to Balance Work and Rest
(1) Being Accustomed to Tension, Seeing Tension and Unease as Safety
East Asians are accustomed to tension and see tension and unease as safety. What a contradiction. They bind tension and unease to effort, striving, and progress.
(2) Being Accustomed to Inefficiency and Poor Functioning, Lacking Awareness
(3) Overthinking
Overthinking is a common failure to balance work and rest. It receives little attention in everyday life, though spiritual cultivation circles pay attention to it.
I will discuss it separately in a dedicated article.
(4) How Karmic Obstructions Suppress the Instinct to Rest
“The inner self possesses innate wholeness” is an axiom, a starting point from which to derive other things.
One of the most important formulations concerns how karmic obstructions lead people to suppress their instincts and move away from health.
For example, in my earlier article, “‘Self-Discipline Brings Freedom’ Is a False Concept; Freedom Brings Self-Discipline,” self-discipline is a human instinct. How does “a lack of self-discipline” overcome people’s instincts?
Today’s discussion concerns balancing work and rest as needed, and taking breaks. The Pomodoro Technique reflects a human instinct: after being busy for thirty or forty minutes, people feel the need to move around a little. Yet people often remain stuck and rigid.
(5) Afraid of Being Interrupted—What Is Being Interrupted?
True mindfulness and high efficiency are unafraid of interruption.
Karmic obstructions and the ego fear interruption. The ego has finally managed to take on a tangible life of its own and is drawing in dark energy.
We see that healthy people are always lively and responsive, while unhealthy people are rigid. Behind this lies the corpse poison of karmic obstructions.
(6) Stimulants and Fatigue-Inducing Agents
By middle age, excitement, busyness, mindfulness, and results are not difficult to achieve. Rest and relaxation are somewhat harder, and put one’s cultivation to a greater test.
I do not want stimulants; I want something that makes me tired. Walking and strolling, for example, offer relaxation and rest as well as exercise. They can also bring just the right degree of physical and mental fatigue, using up excessive physical and mental excitement and agitation. No wonder walking has been philosophers’ favorite activity throughout the ages.
Life is neither a sprint nor a long-distance race. It is flying and roaming free.