Deeper Dive: A Buddhist Monk on the Value of Cleaning

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Announcer: This is a Getty podcast.

[Rising, meditative music]

Lilit Sadoyan: Hi—I’m Lilit Sadoyan, the host of OMMM, Our Museum Mindfulness Meditation podcast, Getty’s first video podcast. Welcome to this Deeper Dive, where we explore the themes of our weekly episodes with experts in everything from gardening to the history of colors.

Shoukei Matsumoto: The moment you can nurture your mindfulness is not limited within the practice of, you know, fancy, zen-like sitting meditation, but any moment could be your mindfulness practice.

Sadoyan: This week, we did a cleaning meditation inspired by Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s The Laundress. I spoke with Buddhist monk Shoukei Matsumoto from his home in Japan. He’s author of A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind. We talked about his philosophy on cleaning as a meditative and caretaking practice. Now, let’s dive in.

[On video call] Shoukei, thank you so much for joining me today on this podcast.

Matsumoto: Hi, Lilit. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a real pleasure for me.

Sadoyan: And for me as well, too, thank you. So Shoukei, in your book, A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind, you discuss cleaning, and specifically, polishing floors as a means to clean the earthly dirt from your soul and to polish your heart and mind. This really resonated with me, so I was wondering if you could just speak a little bit more about that.

Matsumoto: Sure. Um, so, yeah—Let me ask a question. So do you—do you like sweeping on the floor?

Sadoyan: I actually really love sweeping. It gives me great satisfaction.

Matsumoto: Ah, so we are like-minded people. [both laugh] So I also love cleaning and sweeping because, um, it’s like a meditation in motion, right? [Sadoyan:  Mm-hmm.] So, yes, at the end of the practice, we find that the floor is clean, but the process itself has a meaning.

Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.

Matsumoto: So, uh, while I’m cleaning, I can immerse myself completely in the practice of sweeping. So this makes my mind clear.

Sadoyan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it has–it sounds like a direct impact on somebody’s mind or even their soul, their consciousness?

Matsumoto: Yes, you could say so. But at the same time, what I want to emphasize is that, you know, there is no end in the practice of cleaning. You could imagine when you visit a Japanese temple, which looks impeccably clean, okay, so monks in this temple should, uh, must do this with 100% effort to clean everything 100% impeccably. But if you practice cleaning as a finite game which has ends and, you know, in this mindset you kind of fight against the dirt, right? But at the end of the practice you’d find, oh—there is no end in this practice because once you assume, okay, this is the end of cleaning, at that moment the leaves fall. So, you never complete cleaning.

Sadoyan: Yeah, I mean, the work is never done, of course, and I think that’s why we call it a practice, essentially.

Matsumoto: Uh-huh. And the practice has no end.

Sadoyan: Right. What you’re saying is reminding me of one of the central tenets of Buddhist philosophy, which is about non-striving, right? This kind of shift from doing to being. Um, and I’m wondering if you could speak about that concept of non-striving, that philosophy of non-striving in relation to cleaning. How do we account for non-striving in our cleaning?

Matsumoto: Do you know the meaning of the word Buddha? Buddha means the one who has no attachment. But everywhere, everybody, including me, has an attachment as long as you are a human being. I’m attached to the future, I’m attached to the past. Every moment my mind is easily, um, captured with the anxiety over the future or the regrets on the past. So my monkey-mind is very naughty, [laughs] so easily, goes to the past and future.

So, you know, the meaning of cleaning practice, you know, is getting yourself grounded in this very moment, right here, right now. Right? So which makes you less attached to something. And specifically, in today’s world, we are always striving for a certain purpose, right? But, you know, essentially, the meaning to have a purpose, goal, dream, whatever, essentially it means you have something, or there is something, which you don’t have right now, right? Which is not fulfilled yet. [Sadoyan: Right.] So this way of thinking makes you far from Buddha state. So, um, essentially for the people living in today’s world, I think the practice of cleaning is keeping yourself away from goal-oriented mindset in many cases.

Sadoyan: So would you say that there, when you’re cleaning, that there are no goals associated with that part of the practice?

Matsumoto: Um, That's a good question. So, hmm. When we clean, there is a certain direction. Uh, I mean, when I give a broom to someone, nobody tried to make the state of this, you know, this room more messy, right? [laughs] So there is a certain direction, but, you know, there is a saying in a Japanese monastery, “Hachikujo”, which means, don’t make 100% effort. Just make your effort as 80%, 90%, because the notion of 100% is just illusion. The notion of 100% effort is based on finite game mindset. Right? It’s, in other words, it’s binary thinking. So—

Sadoyan: All or nothing.

Matsumoto: Yes, all or nothing.

Sadoyan: It sounds like with focusing on the 100% that there’s a lot of ego attached to that as well.

Matsumoto: Yes. Yes, indeed.

Sadoyan: And it sounds like, also, cleaning as a means to ground into the present moment, right? [Matsumoto: Mm-hmm] And ground ourselves in the present moment. So I’m wondering if you have any advice or suggestions for our listeners who would like to practice mindfulness while doing their chores.

Matsumoto: Um, okay. So if I come back to this picture, Laundress. I’m not that familiar with the art, but, you know, I guess in the time when this picture, this painting was created, the audience or the people who saw this painting was kind of noble class, right? And—

Sadoyan: Yes.

Matsumoto: But the subject of this painting itself is a kind of daily routine in the people’s class, right?

Sadoyan: Correct.

Matsumoto: Hmm. So in that sense, there is a separation, you know? The people who looked at these paintings were separated from the subject of this painting. But the beauty of this painting is the lady in this picture looks happy and strong. So, these days, many people are getting liberated from the works, thanks to AI robots maybe, you know. We have cleaners and laundry machines, and so, uh, we are getting liberated from the daily routine. But, at the end of the day, the question is okay, if you are liberated from these house chores then what do you do? Mm-hmm.

As you may know—may not—the life in the monastery in Japan is full of daily routine. The monks in a monastery doesn’t put, uh, doesn’t immerse themselves 100% with, you know, fancy mindfulness, meditation practice in sitting. But they–what they actually do is just a daily life, you know, a care of their habitat in a monastery. Of course, they put some minutes, some hours, in the practice of mindfulness sitting, but they put more time on cleaning, gardening, cooking, and so on. Right? So, these things like laundry or cleaning are not something we–I want to avoid, but I can change, I can turn any single moment in our life, whatever you are doing, into mindfulness practice as long as you do it with a focus.

Sadoyan: Yes, and intention, right?

Matsumoto: Intention, yes, yes. [Sadoyan: Mm-hmm.] Yeah, yeah. That’s a great point. You know, this is the real threat in our society, I believe. Um, in this attention economy, our attention and the intention are stolen for many hours in our everyday life. So this is a real threat.

Sadoyan: Yes, and the opportunity to practice mindfulness or the practice of mindfulness itself is a way to reclaim that attention and intention, in my mind.

Matsumoto: Yes, yes. And you remember the fact that—so the moment you can nurture your mindfulness is not limited within the practice of, you know, fancy, Zen-like, sitting meditation, [Sadoyan laughs] but any moment could be your mindfulness practice or, yeah, to retrieve your autonomy, agency, with full attention and intention in everyday life.

Sadoyan: That’s exactly right.

[Theme music begins]

Well, Shoukei, you’ve given me so much to think about, especially the next time I pick up a broom or a towel [laughs] and start to clean. Um, I’m so grateful for all of your insight, and just want to thank you again for joining me on the podcast today.

Matsumoto: Yeah, thank you so much. So, I’m looking forward to visiting your museum to see this lady in laundry. [laughs]

Sadoyan: Please, anytime, you’d be my guest.

Matsumoto: Thank you so much.

Sadoyan: Thank you.

To find the related meditation and see images, transcripts, and additional resources, visit our website at Getty dot edu slash OMMM. That’s O-M-M-M.