Sometimes we in the West think we shall never understand the East. A Buddhist magazine recently reported on a group of Japanese Buddhists who clean airport toilets -- voluntarily.

The Buddhists in question claim that they do this as a function of service to others -- the humblest service they can perform. The interviews with them clearly showed that they regarded this activity as ennobling. We on the other hand, however enlightened we may claim to be, feel there is something disgusting about this business -- which shows, inevitably, something of what we feel about people who are paid to do this. Or does the fact of getting paid exalt this labor to something worthwhile for us? Worth a Step 11 meditation, perhaps ....

As is a recent story about rats. In a European study of wild and laboratory rats, it turned out that the dirty wild rats tended to have a better level of health and a more balanced immune system. The clean lab. rats had so little exposure to germs that their immune systems would go berserk in the presence of attack; while the dirty rats' immune system, tested daily by their tainted environments, tended to have a more moderate and effective response to germs. Scientists suspect that soaring rates of asthma and other diseases in the West are coming about because we live in too sterile an environment and so our immune systems are compromised.

It may follow, therefore, that cleaning toilets is not only good for our spiritual health, but for our physical health as well. So today, when we've finished meditating, there's another little job we can do ....