As a card carrying member of "Type A Personalities Anonymous" (I just got my 15 year chip), I will say this about "achievement". The Buddha, Dogen, all the teachers were people who accomplished things ... be it building a monastery or teaching thousands of students or writing some great book, or all of the above! They had goals and plans. They were not folks to sit on their lotus leaf and contemplate their navel (at least, not all during the day).
So, Zen is not opposed to accomplishment.
However, we might offer a few neat perspectives on the subject:
First, it is possible to have "goals" on one channel, while simultaneously dropping all "goals" on another channel, not two. This is "thinking not thinking", or more precisely, "goaling not goaling". Work your project, create your plans, make your choices ... but know that there is nothing in need of improving, nothing to choose, not a thing to plan. This is the lesson of Zazen amid life!
Second, there really is no "place to get to". Life is lived for its own sake. So, whether you build a skyscraper, or write the next great novel, or compose the greatest piece of music of all time ... or whether you just sit on your butt staring at a butterfly, or at a sunset, or at the tv ... it makes no difference. It is all just your life, as you choose to live it. So, write that novel or just read one ... there is "no place to get to". "Be one" with whatever path you choose, what you are doing -- or not doing -- in your life at a particular moment. However, also get done what needs to get done ... and we need folks to build and compose, so do that too if you feel the calling! (
If it weren't for folks getting up and trying to accomplish things ... we would not have so much of this wondrous modern world we live in. We would not even have Buddhism if the Buddha had not decided to rise from the Lotus Position and teach). Be diligent. Build things, work hard, and make this world a little better!
There is a time to stop and smell the roses ... there is a time to get one's shovel, plant and water and weed the roses.
Third, do as you can to live by "Right Livelihood", the 5th link of the Eightfold Noble Path. Live so as not to harm others, not to harm yourself, and in a manner helpful and healthful to both (they are not two). Provide for yourself and your family, keep them fed and educated and clothed and housed, but do not be seeking material success or be be attached to material things. Money, fame and power are not the point of life. (We will discuss this in much greater detail when we prepare for the Jukai and study the Precepts). If they, however, come to you ... fine. But then, do not be entrapped by them, and use them skillfully and for good.
Know the difference between what you think you need to live, what is helpful and healthful ... and the "stuff" you crave which you only think you need to be "happy". Even with the former, know moderation ... for even good things, in excess, lead to attachment and harm.
Gassho, Jundo