This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So welcome all of you. I imagine there are some of you that are here for the first time. It takes a lot of courage to arrive at this place. And once you're here, you're kind of trapped. So thank you for taking that first brave step. And I would like to thank Tonto, David Zimmerman, Head of Practice, for inviting me to speak today.

[01:03]

It's this weird thing how we say yes when we know that our heart's going to be pounding and our mouth gets dry and everything just feels like, what was I thinking when I said yes? And in some ways that throwing ourselves towards this practice is the whole... point of practice. So, my name is Mary. I've been living at Zen Center for a number of years. I'm currently the director of this temple. I end up saying yes a lot, and I end up saying no a lot. So I have a lot of practice with both of those things. There has been... a talk that I've been cooking for a while, and I wanted to share it with you today, partly because there's going to be a seven-day seshin starting this evening. And during seshin, there's this practice we all do called oryoki.

[02:14]

And oryoki is a way... to eat in community, let's say. It's many things, but let's start there. So I have props today, and I realize that this is going to be a little awkward for the people that are listening in the dining room, and it might be a little awkward for Marcus, I don't know, so we'll just give it a go and see how we feel about this. These are Orioki bowls. As a Zen student, you get a set of oryoki bowls. As a priest, you get given a different set of bowls. They're essentially the same thing. The priest bowls cost a lot more money. I can honestly say I've never opened my bowls with so many people watching.

[04:13]

Usually everybody's in a furrow to get their bowls open so we can begin eating, and nobody's really watching other people. That is the beginning of the dance. I first learned to do oryoki at Gampo Abbey. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche met and was a friend of Suzuki Roshi. At that time I don't think there was a tradition of oryoki in certainly North American Zen, or North American Buddhist practice, Tibetan Buddhist practice. Trungpa thought that this was such an amazing training vehicle that he asked Suzuki Roshi to teach it to him, and then he started adopting it in his longer practices, like Sutrayana Seminary, Vajrayana Seminary, and then the Datuns.

[05:21]

And when I was first taught, it was for a month-long Datun. The person that taught it to me was a woman named Trime, who... conveyed this practice as an elegant, simple method of training. Training the body, training the mind. And I learned it with a very good friend and fellow practitioner. And she was, I would say, a brilliant lawyer. I, at that time, had been practicing as a carpenter for 20 years. Her experience of learning Orioki was sort of like being plunged into a hell realm. It didn't make sense to her. The movements didn't flow. It was frustrating. I think she tried to figure it out as an intellectual thing rather than allowing the practice to settle in her body.

[06:32]

My experience, I think... partly because I had been a carpenter, and a lot of that is not intellectual, I thought, wow, this is really interesting. And it didn't worry me too much if I missed things. I was getting fed. And so I think it was a slower thing for me. And I grew, I have grown to... value this practice. When a person goes to Tassajara during a practice period, which is a 90-day intensive practice, you do about 280 meals in the zendo-eating oryoki. You get a lot of practice at this. If you're frustrated all the time by this setup, you're pretty well frustrated all the time, actually.

[07:37]

You're just frustrated. If what's happening is against what you want to happen, as you're eating these meals every day, three times a day, it starts affecting your life at Tassajara, actually. I think that's very safe to say. So... The practical side of oryoki is this is absolutely the fastest way for a group of people to eat together in community. Each person is responsible for their own setup. Each person cleans at the end of the meal. You put things away. You put your bowls behind you. The meal's over. And then there are a few pots that get cleaned in the zendo. I mean in the kitchen. So it is this very practical meal delivery system. So that's one aspect of it. The kind of training aspect that it offers us is that it gives us each individually a field of practice.

[08:44]

So there's this field. There are rules. And there's this opportunity to engage over and over in the spirit of proficiency. Am I getting it right? Am I getting it right? Did it work out for me today? And it is kind of like the Zen knockoff of a board game. In Monopoly, you drink sodas and you have popcorn. Here you get brown rice, soup, and a salad. And if you play the rules right, it goes pretty well for you. If you don't do the rules very well, it's very frustrating. And... You get to do it over and over again and see how you are with the rules. How you adapt. How each day is different. Some days the brown rice is really good. Some days the brown rice is kind of sticky.

[09:46]

Some days the soup meets with your expectations. Some days the cook, if you can believe it, put way too much cayenne in it and everybody's just like on fire. And then what do you do about that? So... It is about getting fed, but more to the point, it's about how you're approaching this everyday event called eating. Some people love it. Some people hate it. And it's like everything, you know? Some people love things, some people hate them. there's this element of getting it right. And when that happens, when you feel that you've opened your bowls and you don't have an extra bowl that you don't know what to do with, some of you have been there, there's this element of deep relaxation, like, oh, finally, I've got it.

[10:52]

I've got this. But then you drop a bowl. And it happens. And then you think, how stupid am I? And you go through that whole mind thing. So this brings closely to us how we work with every situation. And of course this is really about eating, but of course it's not about eating at all. Because how we approach this practice, is taken into everything about our lives. If most of the time you feel extremely frustrated and angry in your life, your relationship with Oriyoki will be very angry and frustrating. If your relationship with your life is pretty gentle, accepting, then your relationship with this practice will be that thing's role.

[11:58]

So it acts as a mirror for our lives, I would say. And there are steps for everything. So when you are getting... This is the setup to begin with. Then the meal chant happens. Then there's placement of utensils. There's food now in your bowls, and there's an offering. And after that, you can begin eating. So I was thinking about this or Yoki practice, and it came to my mind that one of the Lojong slogans fits in this situation. As some of you know, the Lojan slogans have been part of my training since I was Fugaten in the Tassara kitchen one summer in 2010.

[13:09]

There are 59 slogans, and the point of these slogans is to keep them close and in every situation to bring up a slogan. And so instead of saying, I'm a dummy... you can say, one of the slogans will come to mind. Instead of being critical about a situation, one of the slogans will come to mind. So I've been working with these slogans in this way for years. And number 16 comes to my mind. I'll offer two translations. One is from Norman Fisher's Training in Compassion, his commentary on the slogans. And it is, whatever you meet is the path. And then Chilgham says, In Trungpa Rinpoche's Training the Mind book, he translates slogan 16 as, whatever you meet unexpectedly, join in meditation.

[14:10]

And the idea of joining here, he explains in the commentary, is sort of like when you put butter on bread. After you've done that, you can no longer separate them. They have become joined. And his idea for this slogan is that no matter what is coming up in your life, there's the possibility of meditation or zazen. And I think about this for this experience of oryoki, because you can be sitting in the zendo, you have your food, and then one of your chopsticks drops on the floor. And there's something you have to do for that, which is you look mournfully at your chopstick, and then you put your hands in gusho, and you wait for somebody to come and pick up the chopstick, take it in front of the altar, bow it ceremonially,

[15:16]

It's cleansing ceremonially. They walk back to you and then they hand you your chopstick. And you haven't been able to eat anything at that period of time because you've had your hands in Gosho the whole time. So what are you doing with your mind then? Are you thinking, I wish they would walk faster? Are you thinking, oh man, that's the third time I've dropped my chopsticks. What am I going to do? Why am I so clumsy? Or can you sit there and breathe, notice your breath, be engaged with your body and your mind while the chopstick comes back to you and then proceed to eat? This is sort of the elegance of all of these methods of training. They're an opportunity for you to do whatever it is you're going to do.

[16:16]

And the more you do whatever it is you're going to do, your life will change. If what you're going to do is send yourself negative messages all the time, your life gets more difficult probably, more painful, more self-damning. If what you're doing is learning to be kinder and gentler to yourself and to other people, that generally makes things more pleasant. So oreo-ki is a field of practice. It's got rules. So do you find yourself pushing against the rules? Do you find you're reacting to the rules? Are you trying to change them? Do you try to just work with the rules? I think rules...

[17:20]

can bring out this elegance of our humanity, depending on how we hold them. And done well, this practice is spacious and elegant and practical. And done in frustration, and in displeasure, you know, it's very difficult. So, the slogan, whatever you meet unexpectedly, join in meditation, is the idea that we start by having a sitting practice. And in that sitting practice in Zen, you face a wall, you have awareness of your body, and you are, let's say you're aware of mind activity.

[18:36]

And I use those words really specifically because being aware of mind activity is pretty neutral, right? It's not like, do you have a busy mind? That sounds kind of negative. It's that over time, over this practice, you learn to experience what's going on in your mind. And you can nudge it in certain directions. So some of you will be doing this practice in Sashin for the next seven days. You'll have lots of opportunity to engage in body awareness, and in noticing your mind activity. And you'll be eating Oreoke. And what happens with Oreoke is we turn out towards the room, we unpack our bowls, and people serve us nourishment.

[19:40]

So all of a sudden, compared to the practice of Zazen, where you're facing a wall and you are only engaged in your own experience, you now have this room full of people that are serving to the wrong person. They're not giving you the right amount of food. They're giving you food you don't like. And this... This allows us to take practice into the world in a pretty limited way, but it's astounding, actually, how much goes on around Oryoki. I remember in my first practice period at Tassajara, there was a very senior monk, and for every single meal in Oryoki, she kept her eyes downcast. And I was, you know, like this... like a tennis match. And I was pretty fascinated by this idea of keeping eyes downcast.

[20:45]

So I talked to her and she said, well, to be honest, if I don't see things, I don't have to judge them. If I'm not watching the servers screw up, I don't have to think about it. Because she said, I've been eating areyoke for so many years. I know when people are screwing up. It's painful, kind of. It's painful to see my judging mind make opinions and think, well, they're wrong, they should have been there. She said, that's too hard for me. This is somebody that had practiced for years. So I think that was interesting for me because there's an experience where the world is happening all around and how much of it are we obligated to be aware of? This is pretty prevalent right now. And I think her statement to me years ago allows me to feel like I want to be aware of as much as I'm not, as I'm able to take as a rational, equanimous being rather than somebody that's reacting and freaking out to everything that's going on around me.

[21:58]

And actually for me, that's kind of limited. It's a limited amount of stuff that I can pay attention to. And after many years, I also find myself with eyes downcast during Orioki. Not because I'm depressed or uninterested, but because I no longer feel so comfortable about calling the game, let's say. Do people know that expression? It's like when you're a broadcaster watching a... basketball game and you're the person that's saying out loud what the play is. I think our minds call the game a lot. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to do that so much anymore. I want to receive the world. I'm not so sure that I need to comment on everything that's happening in the world. So, what happens with our minds?

[23:01]

What are we doing as we're receiving food? There's also the prescribed cleaning of the bowls at the end, and that gets, you know, it gets kind of crazy, actually. Somebody comes, they give us water. Oh, first. First, we set aside our utensils. and somebody comes and offers us water. And this is all happening non-verbally, for those of you that don't know Oriyuki. So when you want somebody to stop pouring water, you have to be paying enough attention to be able to raise your stick so they see it, so it can stop, otherwise you get a lot of water. And then you clean, you pour water,

[24:06]

the water into the second bowl. And you have this thing called a drying cloth. And you dry the bowl. Clean spoon. Clean chopsticks. Clean second bowl.

[25:16]

Then the water to the spirits is offered. And somebody comes around with a bucket and that you empty out some of the water. And then... You drink the remaining water. Dry this bowl. So every turn of the hand, every knot, every fold is prescribed.

[28:10]

There's a lot of rules. And somebody once said to me, well, it's kind of like a dance. There are very complicated dances. The tango is a very complicated dance, for example. And there's the learning stage where you're learning a dance and it's hard. You have to pay attention. It's frustrating. You miss a step. And then there's that moment where you think, I think I've got it. And then at that stage, do you stop paying attention? Or is there this further exploration of what happens when you actually get the moves? think that's the moment that's interesting for me. It's like I think there's an elegance there. Not because of the limitations of rules but this idea that when you're acting in a form it is liberating.

[29:20]

And for a lot of us I think in this culture that idea is very radical. That rules are and forms are liberating. And I think that one of the things that's very interesting to me about Zen is that there are so many forms, so many rules, and we get to actually feel our relationship towards those rules almost every day, all the time. There are so many rules to living in community. Spoken rules, unspoken rules. Are we always raging about those rules? Are we always uncomfortable? Or can we find this place where those rules are liberating? They allow us to feel out how we experience ourselves, how we experience other people. So I think that...

[30:29]

The idea of practice in terms of seated meditation, zazen, is a very narrow field that a lot can happen. Our minds are very powerful, and most of us have quite a limited idea of what's happening with our minds in our day-to-day lives. And meditation, zazen, allows us to explore that relationship and expand it, I would say. That's one of the effects or the payoffs of Zazen. And then this practice, this turning into the room and engaging with a community of people, further allows us to explore that in relation to others. It's not just happening in our minds or in our bodies.

[31:33]

It's now happening in this visual field in front of us. And then to go a step further, what happens after Sashin or after Saturday program when you walk out of that field onto the street to your jobs with your wives, your husbands, your children? Where's your attention? How do you experience yourself? Is the energy that you feel always towards other people? Or can you really identify what's going on in this one? These methods that we teach here are helping us to get to that point. They're not in isolation. Living in community at San Francisco Zen Center isn't a permanent situation for people, generally.

[32:40]

It's to help them understand who they are and what their minds are doing so they can then go and work in the world, spend time with their families, have families. and understand their activities better, I would say. And so this allows us to, or allows me anyway, to think about slogan 16. Whatever you meet, unexpectedly join with meditation. There isn't a right moment to be meditating. There isn't a right moment to pay attention to your mind. there's not a right moment to practice. The right moment is every moment. And these are tools to help us, support us, to understand that the right moment is every moment.

[33:46]

That to be kind to ourselves and to other people in every moment is the request of practice. So for those of you who are sitting, this week during Sashin. I hope you find ease. I hope that the servers are fantastic. And that the food is like the best food you've ever dreamed of. And it might not be. You know? And then what? If somebody stumbles and a pot of soup goes... over the threshold which some of us have seen, what happens? That's the moment. What's happening? That's pretty interesting to me.

[34:48]

And I hope that it's interesting to you. So, thank you very much. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:36]

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