The Knuth link in the sibling comment is an original, but you're probably thinking of "The Tao of Programming"

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ten-thousand.html

"""“And who better understands the Unix-nature?” Master Foo asked. “Is it he who writes the ten thousand lines, or he who, perceiving the emptiness of the task, gains merit by not coding?”"""