This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Lovely to be here and to be sitting Sashin with you all. What a wonderful... gathering together at the end of this investigation of the Tenzo Kyokun that has been going on for the last month. My name is Dan Gudgel. I'm one of the resident priests here at San Francisco Zen Center and also a former Tenzo or head cook at the Tassajara Monastery. And it feels a little strange to me to be giving a talk in the middle of Sesshin but there was such a wealth of former Tenzos with talks to give and great stories to tell.

[01:07]

So Abbott Mako took a look in the pantry full of Tenzo talks and adjusted the recipe a little bit to fit this one in as well. Thank you for the invitation. One of the great benefits I have of giving a talk here at the end of this month-long intensive is that many other tenzos have already spoken and have covered a lot of really interesting territory within the Tenzo Kyokun, Ehei Dogen's instructions for the monastery cook. So I get to speak. on just a little piece that I really wanted to focus on. Mako brought this up a little bit yesterday as well. So from the main translation that we've been using in the first paragraph, from the beginning, in Buddha's family, there have been six temple administrators.

[02:17]

They are all Buddha's children, and together they carry out Buddha's work. Among them, the Tenzo, the chief cook, has the job of taking care of the preparation of food for the community. The Zenen Shingyi says, for serving the community, there is the Tenzo. So I first encountered this text, the Tenzo Kyokun, about six months after I had first been introduced to Zen practice. I had just moved out here to the Bay Area, had been invited by a friend to dip into a sitting group, and had found that group really quite interesting. This was a sitting group up in Marin, a little neighborhood branching streams sangha.

[03:20]

So I had my introduction to practice Sort of got the Zazen bug. And then after I'd been here about six months, I went out to Michigan for about six months to work for the summer at a camp that the college that I went to runs on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That's a sort of research and wilderness station up there. And I was the only employee. I had worked there a few times when I was in college, so I was familiar with the place. But I went up to be the everything for that place. I was cooking. I was planning meals. I was cooking, taking care of the infrastructure, doing plumbing, taking care of a solar power system.

[04:23]

doing a little light roof repair here and there, building decks. When classes would come, I would also be their tour guide, give recommendations on where to go, maybe, actually quite often, go with them, bring a picnic lunch. It was really a very all-inclusive experience. We would sort of have a week or so of classes, a week or two of classes, and then I would often have a week or two by myself. at that place in the wilderness. And the job, the name they gave to that job is caretaker. And I found a real support in this caretaker role from the Tenzo Kyokun. Right around the time that I arrived there, that friend of mine who had introduced me to Zen practice, sent me a copy of the book Nothing is Hidden, which has a translation of the Tenzo Kyokun and then a number of essays on it as well.

[05:33]

I found a few of the stories in the Tenzo Kyokun sort of directly helpful. If you haven't read them, I recommend going back to Dogen's stories of his specific interactions with other Tenzos. In the context I was in, I particularly found the Tenzo who says, when else should I do this work, and why would I want anyone else to do the work that is mine to do? Those two points were really quite helpful for me. But really, this holistic, kind of all-inclusive approach mind of the Tenzo is what I found really directly helpful in my life. And this, I think, was really, really important in cementing my connection to Zen practice. I'd had this introduction to Zazen.

[06:36]

I took a cushion with me to the woods. I didn't sit very much, but I took the cushion with me as sort of a reminder that I could sit if I wanted to. And Encountering this Zen text that was so directly and practically applicable to my everyday experience really opened my eyes to how I could bring Zen practice into the entirety of my life. So this idea of taking care of caretaking, I think is also really obviously quite helpful in the Zen kitchen context. But it's also fundamentally how life really is. The Tenzo some days needs to do a budget spreadsheet.

[07:40]

Some days needs to order food. Some days needs to fill in as breakfast cook. And so not clinging to to categories or preconceived ideas of what needs to be done or what the role or the job is, I have found really quite directly helpful for myself. And I have noticed many times, because I'm not yet all that good at this, I have to say, I recognize it as a distinct possibility and yet every day I have to remind myself of some of these points and the times when I did get sort of hung up on this is this is the box that my job is inside this is what my role is it goes up to this line and does not go beyond that line coming to practice with that mindset

[08:48]

for me, was really a source of suffering. To create a bigger picture of what is needed to take care of the moment, to me, is a much more lively and flexible way to be. I think this is, to me, sort of related to this teaching image that Suzuki Roshi used. If you have a bull who is very upset, if you try to put it into a small enclosure, it will get more upset. It will kick those walls down. If you turn that bull loose into a large field, even if that field is fenced in, the bull feels that it has space. It wanders and it calms down. This, of course, is a great metaphor for the spacious mind of Zazen, but I think also for our fixed ideas of what we should be doing, what we need to be doing, or what is the appropriate thing to meet the moment.

[10:04]

Yesterday, Mako pointed out that I would be talking about parental mind. And I very much think that this is one of the keys to parental mind. I have never raised children myself, but I have seen the process happening. And I was a child myself once. And it occurs to me that having a fixed idea of what it means to to be a parent, what it means to raise a child, coming up with some absolute program, in year one we're going to do this, in year two we're going to do that. That is destined to not meet the actual moment, to not meet the actual needs of either the child or the parent. So I think this parental mind, this

[11:11]

spacious caretaking mind is one of including everything, of being willing to not leave anything out. It is also really important to have healthy boundaries and to recognize the realistic limits of time, space, the human body, the human mind. If I, in the time that I was serving as head cook, had tried to personally take care of every single thing that came up, I would have been very quickly worn down and I would not have had the time or space to actually take care of the entirety of that role. Getting so focused on an individual detail can distract us from the wider picture of what the moment is actually asking for.

[12:24]

So this serving the community is not a universal answer. It's not an excuse to give up your agency in your life. We always should be actively engaged in living our lives, whether we're in a monastery or in our own home or alone in the wilderness. So this holistic nature of the role of the Tenzo and the way that we have been engaged using the role of the Tenzo in the last month to look more broadly at the roles we take up at the relationship between life and work. I really locate something very helpful in this specific word, caretaker.

[13:30]

There's maybe a bit of a distinction and a connection to be drawn with the word caregiver. Generally, my understanding, caregivers usually are giving care, giving their attention to one specific person. They are supporting that person because that person needs particular support. And that is a wonderful expression of our interconnection and our care for the world. And it's very focused. That is caregiving. This caretaker role, taking care, is a step back from that in my embodied experience.

[14:34]

the caretaker role is looking at the big picture, is looking at not just an individual who may really need direct attention and support, but also looking at the relationship between human beings, the relationship between human beings and their work, the relationship between this sense of self and the sense of self that might be expressed in another being. So to keep a really broad perspective of what I am taking care of, I think, is one of the suggestions that the Tenzo Kyokun is making to us. To get really hung up on specific tasks I think, can take us as far off track as just ignoring that things need to be done to begin with.

[15:39]

And this, I think, also points us towards one of the core teachings of Buddhism, this middle path, this finding a balance point between extremes. I can't tell you specifically what taking care looks like in any particular moment or situation until we get to that moment or situation. There is no universal prescription. But we are called on to be aware, to make our best effort, and to take into account as much context as possible as we decide what is the most skillful and kindest thing that we can do. I think one of the things that really, for me, gets in the way of this attitude of being a caretaker and taking care of my life is ideas of what I should be doing or

[17:02]

how things ought to be. These sort of little loops that come up in my mind of things should be better, things should be easier, I deserve something different than what is happening. These are very understandable human reactions. And when I take those as fundamentally true in some way, I can cloud my vision for what the big picture is and what really needs to be taken care of in a particular moment. It may be that if I really look closely, what needs to be taken care of in that moment is this one, is this body-mind complex. That very well may be the case. And Over years of experience, I have found that it seems much of the time that I think this one, when I think this one is the one who needs attention and help, actually there's something in the relationship, in the community, or in the bigger picture of interconnection that if I give that thing my care,

[18:30]

If I take care with this relationship that I experience as outside myself, that actually may be the best way to take care of this one. So to bring this attitude of a caretaker into all parts of our life is really my goal. fundamental recommendation today to ask, am I leaving anything out by hewing too closely to my idea of who I am or what I think I should be doing or what I think I should be receiving or getting from the world? So maybe one place to start is to clarify what exactly is it that we are trying to take care of right now?

[19:38]

Are we stuck in definitions or dualities of some kind? Here in Seshin, these days that we have set aside, where we have... to a certain extent, withdrawn from our other duties and activities in life. We have a different set of things that we are trying to take care of. And to recognize that the conditions are a little different in these couple of days is a really useful part of taking great care of the whole experience. And I encourage us to not really ever form a finished or fixed idea of what taking care looks like, to never really come to a final conclusion of where our caretaker role might extend to.

[20:56]

As soon as we draw some boundary or distinction, we're leaving something out. And we should really ask ourselves, is there anything that we cannot include in this practice? Taking care of the community through the kitchen, as the Tenzo does, also includes the environmental effects of our food purchases. Also includes sociopolitical effects of where our food comes from and how it comes to us. It also includes making sure that we don't serve a dish that makes someone sick. It also includes knowing when to bring joy to the community by serving dessert. All of these things are appropriate considerations in their time and in their context.

[22:00]

And again, there is no answer. I can't tell you there should always be dinner on Wednesday or there should always be dessert on Wednesday. Some Wednesdays deserve dessert. Some Wednesdays, maybe we should just have dinner and move on to something else. Some considerations are appropriate in certain moments and others So in studying how to take great care of our lives and to take great care of the whole world through the way that we live our lives, we really need to look closely and be deeply familiar with interconnection with interbeing with the the way in which there is no gap between us our lives the planet and the whole universe being in community certainly helps us notice that even even being together for a few days we begin to get a sense of

[23:25]

what the other human beings around us need and how we can support them. And from the perspective of the kitchen, sometimes we can see very clearly how wide-ranging our effects are. In my time at Tassajara, I spent much of my time in the kitchen, spent a little time on the Doan Rio, doing ceremonial roles in the zendo as well. And so I had a lot of experience in getting oryoki meals ready on the one side and handing them over to the servers. And on the other side, quite a bit of experience in receiving those meals and taking them up to the zendo and serving them to the community. And I have... specifically and directly seen tension in the kitchen.

[24:32]

A breakfast cook who is having a really difficult day give out a little bit of that tension to the serving crew as they come into the kitchen to get the food. That gets the serving crew a little bit tense and worried about whether everything is all right. And then they can bring that tension right into the zendo. These experiences that we are having do not stop at the boundaries of our bodies. Our experiences fill the whole world. So I wouldn't say that that breakfast cook should pretend like they're not having a bad day. But it is also possible that being really aware and really mindful of this interconnection might actually help that breakfast cook not have such a bad day.

[25:39]

And in that particular instance, probably the role of Tenzo would be best filled by taking really good care of that breakfast cook in some way so that this chain of handing out unhappiness is broken closer to the root. In thinking about interconnection in the last year or so, perhaps, I've been finding my mind coming again and again back to the image of a human body. we can sort of narrow in and widen our perspective of the world and identify things that function much like bodies sort of all throughout the world.

[26:42]

This is what I experience as my own human body. Within this body, there are other living beings that have their own bodies. zooming the perspective out, this human body is part of a larger ecosystem body. And so to limit my perspective and my decision-making solely to things that affect just my personal body and personal experience, to me brings up this idea of what if my lungs decided they were just in it for themselves? What if my stomach decided that it was just going to keep all the food to itself and not give any of the nutrition to anything else?

[27:43]

The system would break down almost immediately. And so in taking great care of our own lives, We do very well to start by taking really great care of our own bodies. But then to put our experience and our lives into this larger context of friends, of family, of community, of nation and world, those are all really important perspectives to bring our attention back to. We might not be able to hold all of those perspectives simultaneously, but to have some ongoing awareness that my small self personal perspective is not the only perspective that matters, I think is vitally important.

[28:49]

So we are in the midst of this three-day sashin, sitting a lot of zazen. So what does it mean to be a caretaker in the midst of this great effort we are making at silence and stillness? For me, sometimes... letting go of the words meditation and Zazen can be helpful. If instead I am just taking meticulous care of this one and only present moment that can bring up the mind of Zazen that can highlight the, the lively, unrepeatable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of this precious present moment.

[30:03]

And then that moment will pass, and there will be another moment that we have the opportunity to take great care of. So I started with this quote. Among them, the Tenzo, the chief cook, has the job of taking care of the preparation of food for the community. The Zen and Shingi says, for serving the community, there is the Tenzo. To broaden this idea and to bring it into this Zazen spirit and Sesshin time that we've set aside. I might put forward, among the community, you have the job of taking care of the precious present moment.

[31:16]

The Zen and Shingi would say, for serving the moment, there is you. So particularly since we are in this sesheen time, this precious opportunity to quietly and with great stillness investigate the present moment, I don't want to talk too much. I will just, again, encourage us all, please take great care. Take great care of your body. of your mind, of the other beings you encounter, of the community of this world around us. Do your best. I seem to continually have opportunities to notice where I have missed something, where I have not quite been the caretaker who I would wish to be.

[32:30]

And those things are not so much failures as they are opportunities to notice what I'm leaving out. If I have the heart and the dedication to continue noticing what I have left out, what I have not taken care of, then moment by moment, day by day, I can become more completely a caretaker. of my own experience, of my impact on the world, and of my place in this shared dance that we have of being alive on this planet. So again, please, take great care. We are all caretakers of our own lives and of these fleeting precious moments. Thank you so much.

[33:59]

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