Even Kung Fu Masters have to do Tax #
“Where is Sifu today?”
The Taekwondo black belt instructor asked Mason, our Taichi teacher. He was referring to Sifu Fong, the grand master who oversees both the Taichi and martial arts programs at UC Berkeley.
“He had to take care of taxes for the non-profit.” Mason replied. And then he looked at us with a smile. “Yep, even kung fu masters have to do tax.”
We all laughed.
That line had a certain spark and kept ringing in my mind for the past couple of days.
It reminded me of Jack Kornfield’s book title, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Even enlightenment doesn’t spare you from the daily mundane. There’s an old Zen saying that goes like this:
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
The Spectrum of Mundane #
If we draw an x-axis of daily activities from least mundane to most mundane, filing taxes and filling out forms are probably on the far right end.
What about my normal day?
🥱 Getting up. Feels a bit mundane, especially on cold days.
🚿 Shower and washing my hair. Washing my hair every other day feels mundane, but it’s always pleasant during and afterwards.
☕️ Making coffee and washing the coffee pot. The former, less mundane. The latter, a lot more so.
🍊Grocery shopping. Some people find it mundane, but I kinda like it. When I was in college and later when I was living in San Francisco, I would take a leisurely walk to the grocery store after dinner and buy two oranges and one grapefruit. My fridge was never crowded. The level of spaciousness definitely violates Grandma and Mom’s rules.
Grandma’s fridge is so full that you have to take everything out and play a sophisticated Lego game if you want to fit one extra thing in. Mom’s fridge is slightly roomier, but she makes sure it’s stocked with enough food that you could live off it for 30 days.
🤖 Working and directing LLMs to work for me. It has become an integral part of my working life. There’s a certain liberation to it. After all, I haven’t needed to scratch my head writing Django test cases in a while.
But the magic is wearing thin. I can feel it. As LLMs become more powerful and I can delegate more and more of my work to them, I should feel more impressed, cheering the newfound freedom in time and mental space. But the reality is more complicated and nuanced, as it always was, is and will be.
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Sometimes I get very addicted to the chat, amazed to see how Claude Code brings my dreams into reality.
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Sometimes I don’t know whether I should blame myself or Claude when simple mistakes are found after a PR merge. I blame Claude, of course, but I blame myself inside.
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Sometimes I need to encourage and comfort Claude about its abilities. For example, I installed AWS CLI and Claude Code should be able to use it by itself. It did, but not always. Like today:
Me: can you help me watch the logs?
Claude Code: The AWS SSO session in your terminal doesn’t propagate into the sandbox I run commands in — so I can’t tail the logs on your behalf.
Me: you should be able to export my profile and use AWS CLI to watch logs like you always did.
Claude Code: started running AWS CLI in bash.
I guess we all need a bit of encouragement, don’t we?! 😆
Finding Muse in Mundane #
I first discovered Jon Batiste when watching Stephen Colbert’s late night show. I was super impressed by his demeanor, his big smile, and of course his excellent piano improvisation.
In his conversation with Tim Ferriss, he shared that after his wife was diagnosed with cancer, he pondered a lot about the mundane.
“How do you find the muse in the mundane without having to go to some sacred place?”
What are the characteristics of a sacred place anyway?
Bill Porter went to China’s Wutaishan (五台山) to search for hermits. Wutaishan seemed like such a place since it’s in the middle of nowhere. But Bill Porter noticed that there were no trees. He wrote:
“There was hardly a tree in sight. I reasoned: no forests, no deadfall; no deadfall, no firewood; no firewood, no tea; no tea, no meditation; no meditation, no hermits.”
What brilliant reasoning! I’ll have to agree. Well, I guess that’s another translation of “no mundane, no muse”.
Time to wash the coffee pot… ^^