Thich Nhat Hanh, in “Fragrant Palm Leaves".

 Even if you have the perseverance to sit for nine years facing a wall, sitting is only one part of Zen practice. While cooking, washing dishes, sweeping, carrying water, or chopping wood, we dwell deeply in the present moment. We don’t cook in order to have food to eat. We don’t wash dishes to have clean dishes. We cook to cook and we wash dishes to wash dishes. The purpose is not to get these chores out of the way in order to do something more meaningful. Washing the dishes and sweeping the porch are themselves the path to Buddhahood. Buddhahood does not come because of prostrations and long hours of sitting. Zen is to eat, breathe, cook, carry water, and scrub the toilet, to infuse every act of body, speech, and mind with mindfulness, to illuminate every leaf and pebble, every heap of garbage, every path that leads to our mind’s return home. Only a person who has grasped the art of cooking, washing dishes, sweeping, and chopping wood, someone who is able to laugh at the world’s weapons of money, fame, and power, can hope to descend the mountain as a hero. A hero like that will traverse the waves of success and failure without rising or sinking. In fact, few people will recognize him as a hero at all.