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. Good evening. This is a very strange setup. To me. To me. Because there's nobody here. Isn't it bizarre? I know that I'm going to speak with you all night, which I'm very happy about. It's great to see you. So I'm going to have to go like this, like ping pong game, all night to see. Happy faces. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi. So sweet. I think first I would like to thank all the people who spent the last year getting this building ready and making all the decisions, both big and small.

[01:24]

The big ones in the Zendo about making it quiet and not freezing cold. There used to be nice shower heads. There was a lot of work. Thank you. Thank you for whoever raised the money. Thank you for coming back to it to make it alive. It's not alive without people practicing in it. And the practice that I was asked talk about is the practice of the Tenzo Kyokun. The Tenzo Kyokun is the name of an essay that Dogen, this very old, in our lineage, very important lineage, very important.

[02:32]

He lived around 1200 to 1253, something like that. And he ran a monastery. And to my great joy, the only essay that he wrote about the jobs in the monastery was for the kitchen. Right? Kitchen. Why? Why do you think? Why? Anybody? Guess? I don't know. I'd make it up myself. You can make it up. Anybody want to guess? Say again? It's where we're nourished in every way. Had to write some things. And right he did. Beautiful some things. It's probably the concept of the monastery where you're supposed to.

[03:36]

and not sort of solve the way and kind of go to solve the source. Oh, that's so interesting. Do you think really that's so? That's very interesting. Yeah, because you're making something. Oh, very good, very good. Great. And we encounter quite a bit of variability, if not the most. What kind of variability do you mean? Situations with the kitchen itself, situations with food, situations with How many Tenzos am I speaking with? One, two, three, four, five. How many people have worked in the kitchen, in a Zen kitchen? Oh, many, many, many, many, many. And how many, particularly at home, how many have you cooked in your own house? Everybody cooks, right? Everybody cooks. Good. So, yes, this is a fascicle that Dogen wrote.

[04:41]

Out of love, if I may say. Out of love, because the kitchen, to me, is the heart of a community. It's a place where we offer the community our love and devotion. And we offer it through not just our energy and life, that, of course, and we offer it with something, what's the word I want? You know, manifest, like you were both saying, right? We offer something manifest. Food. Food. Nourishment. Nourishment. Nourishment. Organic, I hope. Nourishment. enough protein. We have too much carbohydrate in our traditional. Don't do that to you. Stay focused.

[05:48]

When I was one time, I will tell you this story, when I was in, must have been 60, must have been 69, I think. I used to come here from Los Angeles to have Doka-san with Suki Roshi. And one time I did that. I flew up from Los Angeles and went upstairs to the room that you know of. And I was having Doka-san and there was a beautiful arrangement, flower arrangement, on the lentil. shelf, on the shelf on that side of the room. And it had a lot of, like, branches in it, in the arrangement. And when I bowed and I was about to leave and he, Sugiroshi, you know, these masters, they could see us in a way sometimes that we couldn't see ourselves.

[07:01]

And it's not a magic thing. It's because they're not so much focused on me. When the me is not there very much, you're actually just listening and seeing another person. So they could see, and I think he could see easily that I was wanting something from him, some indication that I mattered, I think, something like that. And he went over to the mantle with me. He beckoned me to come to the mantle with him. And he broke off a twig. A twig. Just a twig. We were kind of the same size. I have some of his, what do you call them, besu? I have a besu. He offered me this twig. in such a way that I felt like I was receiving the most wonderful, complete, precious gift.

[08:16]

It was a twig. But I felt that and received it that way. And I saved it for years, a twig. But when we cook and when we offer, like when we're in the zendo and we serve in the zendo, don't you feel that way? Right? That you're offering everything. I could start to cry. I won't. This is the practice of the kitchen. And therefore, I think, Dogen wrote this fascicle so we can understand how we already feel. He put it in words. And this doesn't necessarily only have to do with a monastery. This is for the Maha Sangha because it's everybody's kitchen.

[09:21]

It's not just a kitchen in a monastery. There are three main parts to the Tenzo Kyokun, I think. One important part is that he is helping us understand that in mundane activity, in daily activity, when we attend fully, when we do something completely, as you've heard over and over again, That itself is manifestation of awakening. He's talking about practice realization. So when we are chopping vegetable, when we're looking at the inside of a cabbage, which is gorgeous, if we are stirring the soup, if we do something completely

[10:31]

with awareness, with attention, thoroughly. That is practice enlightenment. Because we are already — I'm going to say that you already — it is life manifesting itself as the cook, as the vegetable, as the knife. And human beings get to know that. We have the mind of awakening. We have the Buddha mind that's awake. So when we pay our full attention in whatever the activity is, it's practice awakening, practice realization. It's simple. We just do the next thing as best we can.

[11:38]

Awake. The more me there is, the more complicated, the more drama, the more confusion. Because that's the nature of the conditioned mind. The less me the simpler it is. I have been tenzo at Zen Center. I was tenzo twice at Tassajara, twice in the city and once at Green Gulch. The last time I was tenzo it was at Green Gulch and they were embarrassed to ask me. Because people feel like Tenzo, which it is, Tenzo is a heavy job. Because you have to put out three meals a day, all week, all month, all year, with a crew, ordering, etc., etc.

[12:49]

It's a burden. And usually, I guess, people don't like to do it. I love doing it. And my experience has been over time that when I was the Tenzo first, it was, I thought, a lovely kitchen, very exciting, wonderful food, full of energy and so on. But people had difficulty, some did. This one woman in particular had difficulty in my kitchen. And I thought it was her fault. Of course I did. Au contraire, right? So the next person who was Tenzo after me, his name was John, and he's the one who has us eating cereal for breakfast every day.

[13:51]

John did that. She was fine in John's kitchen. I really thought about that a lot. It was me. It was me. And the last time I was Tenzo, what, 25 years, 30 years in between? There wasn't so much me in that kitchen. It was just kitchen. It was a very much more spacious kitchen. We had you know, things to do, and it was hard, and sometimes we didn't have enough, and so on and so forth, but it was a different kitchen. And to me, the kitchen is that kind of mirror. It shows clearly who you are, very clearly.

[14:53]

So the first teaching that's, I think, important is this practice realization in the Tenzo Kyokin. The next one is, I think, the three minds. You all know what the three minds are. What are they? What are they? Oh, you don't know. Oh, people know. What are the three minds? Yes, you do. You don't? Joyful mind. Big mind. Parental mind. And sometimes we say grandparent mind because some people have trouble with parents. Yeah. Joyful. Joyful big parent.

[15:58]

Oh, thank you for asking. Let's do them backwards. I was going to do the other way, but let's do that first. So big mind, big mind is Buddha mind. It's a non-conceptual, non-locatable, non-unconditioned. It is the mind that you are right now. It's the mind that knows. It's the knowing quality of mind. Okay? Big mind. Grandparent mind or parent mind is a mind of unconditioned love. Right? Easy schmeasy. And joy mind is the ability to... is the heart. singing with the possibility of gratitude and generosity, that we get to do this work and that we get to offer it to the community in support of the community practicing the same thing that we practice in the kitchen.

[17:16]

He could have said that about anything But he chose to say it about the kitchen. Because in some way it's hardest in the kitchen because you have some pressure three times a day. You have pressure. And sometimes your thing about pressure comes forward and we turn into this whatever your particular thing is. I remember when I was and on the crew. I was the crew. I started out as a dishwasher, and then I was the bagged lunch person, then I was on the crew, then I was Foucaulten, then I was guest cook, then I was... In San Francisco Zen Center, they only gave me these big jobs after nobody else was available. But they were right. I actually would have made a mess, probably.

[18:25]

Anyway. So when I was on the crew in the kitchen, it was so pressured sometimes, it was so pressured that I used to literally run out of the Tassajara kitchen to the flats. And I would yell into the sky, into those mountains right there in the flats, across the creek, to get it out. And then I would get myself together. The Tenzo at the time, Annie Somerville, Tenzo let me do that. She knew I would come back. And I did. I always did. And then the next, what did I talk about? Oh, I talked about all three, didn't I? Yeah, I did. Unconditioned love, grandparental love.

[19:27]

The unconditioned love is being able to relate to the crew with humility. I love this word now, humility. I think the more we practice, the more humble we get. I used to think, unfortunately, that people needed help, needed to be fixed, and that I knew something, that I could help them. And I used to feel that way when I was tenzo in the beginning. When I was tenzo at the end, I didn't feel that way at all. I just appreciated who they were. They were doing their best, always. Nobody needs to be fixed. Nobody even needs to practice this practice. But it was, I did have a good feeling, I have to say,

[20:29]

when you were all standing there in your robes and you put out your zagus and stuff and we all bowed together. I don't get to feel that because I don't live in this kind of context. And what I felt was, was that here are people who have committed, made a public commitment to pay attention, to give their attention to their intention to live a life of faith in the Dharma that is liberative and heart-opening. That's what I felt. It's a beautiful feeling. What else? Do you have a question about the kitchen?

[21:41]

What? Oh, the third part. The third part is reverence for every little big, medium thing. All of it. So the knife, the cabbage, the spoon, the person, that we bow to each thing that we handle, this cup, this microphone, this table. We have, from Dogen's point of view, reverence for all things. Why? Why do you think? Why revere everything? Why? You can make it up.

[22:53]

So it can reflect back on us and our world. So it can reflect back on us and our world. Anything else? because it is what we are. We're not alone here. We are this entire package. So I can't say, you know, this is me, but if I spoke from the Buddha mind, it is, because it's all life. How could it not be? How could we not manifest Buddha mind? It is what we are all the time. We just forget it. You've been told this over and over again. So what we need to do is we need to look deeply at whatever it is that comes up in our mind that prevents us from feeling, from feeling, from being

[24:08]

that truth. So Dogen talks about being and becoming all the time, being and becoming, so practice realization. The becoming part is practice. The being part is realization. So we do, we need to practice because our little itty-bitty-shitty committee up here is always telling us something that actually isn't true, always. Mind does. I was really listening carefully to it the other day. A lot of times it's not there. I'm used to it not being there very much. And being up at Enzo, I'm faced all the time. And because I'm almost going to be 81 in a minute. I'm faced with death all the time. And it's magnifying everything. And I wasn't able to sit a lot this last, when I was at the East Coast, so my mind was yammering at me and I was really listening to it.

[25:17]

And it was nasty. And it hadn't been nasty in decades. It's really interesting to listen to it. It has nothing good to say. Right? Are you all listening? Right? Does it ever have anything good to say? No. Okay. It can? Yes, that's true. That is very true. Yes, that's true. That's true. Yeah, that's true. That's very true. But a lot of the time... Okay. But not all the time. That's very true. But it's the conditioned mind that we reify and believe it's telling us the truth that does make difficulty for us and makes life much more complicated when we believe it. So Dogen is helping us see that when we practice in this way, when we pay our attention, when we put our attention

[26:30]

and live, or try to live, give an effort to live with these three practices. The kitchen helps us see when we're doing that, when we're not doing that, and so on. And you can take that very same effort into your lives at home, wherever your home is. See, 15. Should I stop? Oh, 8.30. Well, I don't have anything else to say, so we can go home early. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[27:37]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[27:38]

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