Work (n.) was the rule of the first Zen community: a day of no working is a day of no eating.
Work (n.) is supposedly what must be done to survive — yet the main business of human beings seems to be play, while pretending that most of it is work.
Work (n.) is a burden not because it takes more effort than play but because it is a contest with death.
Work (n.) is, for most of us, what others pay us to do because it is abysmally uninteresting — so we work for money, not for the work.
Work (n.) is, for millions, a boring job that earns the means to escape its tedium in bursts of hectic, expensive pleasure — which are supposed to be the real living.