This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I had this thought right as I clipped on this. I thought, well, here we go. Let's... Let's go. We're right about the middle of the fall practice period at Green Gulch, and we've been studying the theme of the practice period is Zen and Everyday Life, and looking at this through the study of the instructions for the head cook

[01:00]

which is an essay that was written by Dogen Zenji, one of the founders of our lineage. And it was collected with a number of essays into a book that became Pure Standards for Zen Communities. It wasn't... It didn't start out that way to be collected. It was hundreds of years later that these various essays were put together as this standards of living together in a Zen community. So I wanted to speak about a teaching that's within the instructions for the head cook. and how that relates to our everyday life, not just kitchen practice, but just our daily life's practice.

[02:03]

And before I go any further, I just wanted to know how many people are here for the first time? Well, welcome. So the instructions for the head cook, the tenzo, tenzo means head cook, tenzo kyokun, is a combination of descriptions of the daily life of a head cook in a monastery and all the different ways that they provide for the food, take care of the raw ingredients, the cooked ingredients, the gifts of the donors, working together with the other officers, the other people who are taking responsibility for the monastery. And then it's laced with stories of our Zen masters who served as Tenzo, served as head cook for their community, and how those teaching stories, those narratives are like...

[03:17]

koans, like Zen stories, and we may hear them and be affected by them, but maybe not know exactly how it is that we're struck by them or affected. But something is, something resonates often quite deeply with hearing these stories. And also I wanted to share with you a few stories from the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, Shinryu Suzuki, Suzuki Roshi, and just a couple of stories about how he practiced in everyday life when it came to food and thinking about practicing with food. Food both as the food that we eat and the food of the Dharma, which is really really one thing. So one thing that Dogen brings up in this Tenso Kyokun is this sentence where it says, a monk's mouth should be like an oven.

[04:29]

A monk's mouth should be like an oven. And this particular phrase, this sentence, is kind of shorthand for another story that was known to Dogen and others. It comes from a particular text in the Tendai tradition, which Dogen was, before he became part of the Zen school or Zen lineage, he practiced in another school, the Tendai school. And in this this teaching story, there was a monk who was one of the Buddha's ten great disciples. Mahakatyayana Sonja was his name. And in this story, he was invited to a meal by a king, a raja of India.

[05:34]

And I think in India at the time, there were many different rajas who were not necessarily king of all of India, but king of a particular area or clan. It's hard to know exactly what that term refers to, but a king invited him to a meal. And this king served him a variety of things, some delicacies, very delicious, maybe hard to get ingredients for these wonderful delicacies, and then some very plain ingredients everyday kinds of foods. And Maha Katayana Sonja sat at the meal and ate, tried all the different dishes and just ate and didn't seem to be kind of completely overjoyed and excited about the delicacies nor uninterested in the plainer foods, maybe some plain rice and greens.

[06:38]

He just was having his meal. And the king was watching this behavior and couldn't, didn't get it. You know, how come he's not sort of excited about all these delicacies I prepared? So he finally said to him, why are you behaving like this? We have these delicious dishes and these other more plain things and you don't seem to make a difference between them. And Maha Katayana Sonja said, a monk's mouth should be like an oven. And this word oven, it's the English translation for whatever the character is, but the oven is closer to maybe a wood-burning stove or kind of a cooking, a place where you cook and... cook the food in it, and add wood to the fire. So wood-burning stove might be a better translation, but I always see it in all the translations as oven, so I'm just leaving it as oven.

[07:42]

So what he said was, monk's mouth should be like an oven or a wood-burning stove. Wood-burning stove accepts beautiful sandalwood, sweet-smelling incense sandalwood logs, as well as cow dung. and burns those equally in the fire to cook the food. And according to Mahakadhyayana, there should be no distinction between delicious food or coarse food, plain and simple. Our practice is just to be satisfied with whatever is offered. So whatever is offered, whatever we receive, how can we practice like that in our everyday life. And so one might think, well, this is an admonition for living in a monastery. Whatever's offered, we just eat what's offered and are thankful for that, and that's the practice.

[08:48]

And I think that's one level, maybe, of this story. But another level might be, you know, what is the mouth of What is the monk's mouth or the practitioner's mouth of our life, where things we receive our life and the daily vicissitudes, the things that come and appear in our life, are we thrown around by them? Or can we burn them into the energy of our life in an equal way? And I'm thinking of loss, illness, old age, death, as well as blessed and wonderful happenings and festivals and happy occasions, and how can we receive each of those things as an offering, as receiving,

[09:56]

Just the quality of our life. And turn each of those things into energy of living. And burn those things up completely, fully. In Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Suzuki Roshi's one collection of his Dharma talks, He references a kerosene lamp, which we used to have at Tassajara, both on the pathways, lanterns, and in the cabins. And if you didn't get the wick trimmed and just right or didn't have enough kerosene, they wouldn't burn cleanly, you know, and they'd be smoky and smoke up the globe and smell, you know, kerosene when it burns. It smells really strongly. So he talked about living our life like a clean, burning, kerosene lamp, not a smoky lamp.

[11:05]

So when we are receiving all the different parts of our life and burning them equally in the fire of our practice rather than being a smoky lamp, meaning, I don't like this, I like this better, get away from me, I want this attachment version, push, pull, take it away, I like it. This is a life that's filled with being thrown around, really, by circumstances. And there's a kind of smokiness to that. And smokiness, as we know, having just lived through in the last weeks the great tragedy of the virus in Northern California and all that loss, loss of life, loss of homes, loss of beloved places and the, you know, the pain of that and also literally the smoke

[12:24]

from that and the effect it had on thousands and thousands of people. Everyone knew someone or someplace in this area. So when we burn in a smoky way, not cleanly with what we receive in our life, it affects other people. It makes it difficult for other people. Now, when we hear these kinds of teachings almost immediately, for me anyway, and maybe for you, it's like, well, wait a minute. Does that mean I'm just supposed to accept things complacently and kind of, I don't want to be like a doormat and just accept these things. I've got some energy and fight and I want to respond in a

[13:25]

I don't just want to receive with no agency or no meeting. Is this what the teaching is saying? That I shouldn't have any response to these kinds of things that happen in my life? So I think that's a very good question. And when we hear these teachings about Don't discriminate. Do not think good or bad. This is in our Zazen instruction text. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. This is about when we sit down for Zazen. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Do not gauge or measure our thoughts and views, measuring, this is good, this is bad, this is superior, inferior, I want this, I don't want that.

[14:27]

Drop it, drop all that and just sit. So this is the admonition. And then we think, but wait a minute, there are things that are good and bad. There are things that I do not accept. This is confusing. And I think we may have resistance or doubt maybe healthy doubt about this. We have to settle this, this, wait a minute, that comes up in us with these teachings that we hear not infrequently, all over the place. So in the Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen talks about the ingredients for the food and the mind of the Tenzo. Do not comment on the quantity or make judgments about the quality of the ingredients you've obtained from the director, which is where you get the stores.

[15:28]

Just sincerely prepare them. So the practice is looking at the ingredients raw or cooked. We don't make judgments. The admonition is to not judge about the quality or the quantity. If this is what we have, this is what we may do with. Just sincerely prepare them. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Just enter the practice and prepare the meal. And here's another one from the Tenso Kyokong. As for the attitude while preparing food, the essential point is deeply arouse genuine mind and respectful mind without making judgments about the ingredients, fineness or coarseness. So this is respecting the ingredients, caring for things, caring for the ingredients of our life, respecting each aspect of our life, whether it's, you know, cancer diagnosis, loss of a job,

[16:45]

some great fortunate thing that happens? How do we respectfully, without judging, but respectfully prepare carefully with that ingredient, with genuine mind and sincere heart and mind? And our life, you know, is made up of myriad moments, and each of them has their own characteristic, you know, their own past, present, and future. And to think that we can work out our life to only have certain types, only have pleasurable things, this is a folly of the, you know, of a great sort, you know. Each moment, in each moment, there's pleasant, unpleasant, or not really knowing, kind of confusion or neutral, but not knowing. That's

[17:46]

Each moment of consciousness, we can check that out right now. Is there pleasant or unpleasant? And then in this moment, does it change? This is, we can't do away with that. This is our human life. So knowing this, that there's a unique, this is someone else by having unpleasant, experience and you're having a pleasant experience. Right at the exact same, feels like the same time, but these moments each of you has your own unique, unrepeatable life that's being lived out. So to call something, you know, as if it were actually coarse or fine or good or bad is totally based on our own view our own life, where we are in our life, what age, our whole background, where we are in the mandala of the universe, we say pleasant or unpleasant.

[19:03]

So this feels like, well, is this a kind of bind here? We're being asked to not judge in this way and to take each thing and burn it, like this oven that burnt. It doesn't matter what the kind of wood is, or whether it's a big piece or a small piece, it just, everything burns. And yet, we do have these preferences. We do have, you know, likes and dislikes. How can we put those two together? So I want to not exactly answer that, but get to that in a bit. I did want to say that we do need to discern and make choices and differentiate.

[20:04]

This is also part of our human life. We do need to make discriminations. And these discriminations for our own health. In fact, the foods that we eat now that we've come to eat are the consequence of, you know, countless discriminations that our foremothers and fathers did when they, well, let me try this plant. Let's see, am I going to get sick? Or are the animals getting sick? Or all these discriminations. were necessary in order for us to eat the variety of foods that we eat today. And it's still happening, you know. And we need to make those. Am I going to get sick from this thing? Has it spoiled or not? We have to make those kinds of discriminations for our own well-being and the well-being of others.

[21:09]

So what is the kind of Buddhist way or the practice way to make discriminations? I, in studying this, I had this memory of when I was little, and I opened the icebox, oh, refrigerator. It's called icebox. Opened the icebox, and it looked like there was a big bowl of vanilla pudding that my mother had made. And so I took a, I don't think I did it with my finger. I think I took a spoon and took a big spoon of this delicious vanilla pudding. But it wasn't vanilla pudding. It was schmaltz. It was chicken fat. We have to be able to discriminate between, you know, vanilla pudding and schmaltz. Although some people, I mean, schmaltz for some people in cultures was, you know, a special, you know, fat that was needed and delicious and...

[22:13]

you know, very flavorful and put it on rye bread or whatever. But for me, that was not, especially when I was expecting vanilla pudding. So we need to make discriminations because we make mistakes. And we serve, you know, for dessert, we might serve the wrong thing, right? So, however, the vanilla pudding and the schmaltz, They each have complete their own value, you know, and their own place when they're used, when they're offered, how they're used, how they're consumed. And they each have complete value and equal value. So to judge, oh, this is terrible and this is kind of flies in the face of the teaching of... and the teaching of the equal value of each and every appearance in this world.

[23:24]

Equal value. There's a very famous poem called The Harmony of Difference and Equality, which talks about this very thing. Everything having the same value in thusness, in each thing being a dependently co-arisen phenomena, appearance right now, never to come again, never to be repeated this moment. And it's brought to you by the entire universe right now. And it has complete value. Each of the myriad things, the 10,000 things, the myriad things, has that complete value and is equal to every other thing. And at the same time, all the different things have their own causes and conditions and that has to be accounted for.

[24:30]

So if we fall to either side, like everything is equal, so I treat everything equally, The mind that knows each thing is completely equally valued with every other thing, and at the exact same time responds to it, treats it, handles it, respects — the respect is as equal, and yet how we meet it is unique. You can't meet each thing exactly the same. The spirit of meeting it as equal is the same. But in daily life, how you handle it, when you eat it, how it's planted, how you drive it, each thing has its own unique past, present, and future. And we have these two difference and equality, these two seemingly two kinds of things that are actually out.

[25:34]

one mind. You could say one mind, one thus-ness. So at the very same time, and I wanted to share with you a Japanese phrase, which is, don't tell me, um, The phrase that means being able to hold these two conceptual things at the same time, seeing how they interpenetrate, the complete equality and value of each thing and its complete uniqueness and our need to meet it with our uniqueness. So those two things are held or penetrated together.

[26:36]

seemingly two, that's really one, harmony together. And we can practice this right now. We need to practice this in order for us to find harmony, actually, in our life. So our usual view, our usual kind of human, ordinary thing is, this is superior, this is inferior, you know, all the Yelp reviews, you know, I was thinking about how they are, you know, and there's a place for critics and reviews, and at the same time, is there an understanding within that way of thinking of superior, inferior, or, you know, that there's equal value It just, it turned out like this and I didn't really like it.

[27:38]

But the value is, it's an appearance of Buddha Dharma, actually. So there is duality in our life. However, if we enter completely each thing, each of the myriad things which looks like duality, there's the oneness that's there. that that one thing, one of the myriad things, covers the entire earth when you enter it completely. And this is one of the main teachings in Zen, is when you do something, you do it completely. Whatever it is, making your bed in the morning, brushing teeth. You know, if we're right there with our activity, That activity, that instance of supposed duality, is the one thing that covers the entire earth, is the one hand clapping.

[28:49]

Each thing. So how do we put together this supposed dichotomy? How do we make it just one life? And the admonition over and over again is do what is before you. Do whatever you're doing completely and burn it up like a clean fire. You know, this energy that cooks food and warms us and warms our bodies and warms our relationships, this fire of completely entering each thing, each unique thing, all the myriad things. Then it's not caught in this and that and up and down and in and out and good and bad and profit and loss and pleasure and pain.

[29:58]

What is it anymore? because it's just whatever that thing is. It's just chopping. It's just folding laundry. It's just talking with somebody. This resolves it for us in right here, in this life, right now, rather than, oh, I've got to have some big, giant experience that's going to break it all open and then I'll be at one or something. We have these ideas like that that really kind of throw us around. But when we practice completely in each moment, there it is. It's nowhere else to be found. And we lack nothing. You can call it brushing teeth or making your bed or driving. You can call it whatever you want.

[31:01]

But it's, you know, it covers the earth. This is the suchness of unity and difference. And in cooking, in the Tenso Kyokun, it says, do not lose the I that discerns oneness or the I that discerns difference. We may think, well, I'm supposed to have this oneness thing. How am I going to get to the oneness? But form, we say form is emptiness. So the chopping the greens for the soup, if we're thinking, well, how am I going to get to oneness? Chopping those greens. Form is form. We say form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

[32:04]

We also say form is form. There's the oneness. And completely chopping those greens with sincerity. This is the practice we've been blessedly given and exposed to. And And we don't have to delay, you know, or wait for a good time for that to happen. This is the practice of us, you know, right now, each of us. So we can't kind of escape from choosing, you know. We have to choose how much we're going to eat or how much we're going to make for the dinner, and how do we choose that?

[33:04]

We choose that because we're looking at the causes and conditions right now. How many people are there? How many people are sick? This is Tenzo Kyokun. In the instructions, it said the Tenzo head cook, when providing the meal, they have to think about everyone who's in the monastery. How many people are in the infirmary or the hospice? I think it's called Nirvana Hall. You know, like people who are not doing so well in their health. How many people, how much will they be eating and how many visitors are here? So we have to choose. But that choice is completely dependent on all the causes and conditions right there, one with. So we can't get out of choice somehow, as if that's the right practice, not to have choice. But are we attached to, are we clinging to our choices and our preferences and our likes and dislikes?

[34:09]

That's when we get actually perturbed, agitated, stressed out, and smoky. We do have to make choices. And what is the basis of those choices? Is it based on greed, hate, and delusion? Is it based on me and I want this and I'm jealous and I'm going to get this and resentful and you can't have that? Or is it coming from wanting to sincerely offer something to each other, our fellow beings? Is it coming from compassion? Is it coming from the wisdom of our connectedness with all beings? and then the care that flows from that wisdom, care of water and rice and vegetables and any ingredient we use, any ingredient of our life.

[35:14]

So how are we basing these choices? Because we're going to have to make them. We can't go somewhere where there's no choice. A monk asked, I can't remember which teacher, but I want to go somewhere where it's not hot or cold. And the teacher said, you know, enter the cold, die in the cold. Just enter that cold. Drop body and mind, enter that cold. Or enter the heat. Be the heat. And then it's no longer heat in relation to cold, and I wish it were less hot or less cold. It's just... You no longer even know what it is. It's just suchness. Suzuki Roshi... I wanted to tell a couple of Suzuki Roshi stories.

[36:23]

One is... This just... I was reminded of this. It came to mind. And I think with all teaching stories, you may forget everything I said about anything, except you'll remember this story, or you'll remember a narrative, because I think we're built for narrative. And all cultures tell stories and teaching stories to convey and pass on the wisdom. So this is a very brief story. was told by Lou Richman, who is a teacher with a small sangha in Mill Valley and was Suzuki Roshi's disciple. And they were sitting together. I'm not sure if it was bag lunch at Tassajara or where, but Lou was eating olives with pits in them, and he ate the olive, and then he set it down, ate another one. But he left. He didn't completely eat, and Suzuki Roshi took the olives and ate all the little pieces that Lou had left until it was just the pit left.

[37:35]

That's a story Lou tells about Suzuki Roshi and about him. And I don't know if it needs any comment, you know, it's just... care with each thing, as the Tenzo Kyokun says, caring for the resources and the pots and the pans and the ingredients as if it were our own eyesight, not to waste one grain of rice. Another story about Suzuki Roshi is when he lived at the temple in Japantown, Sokoji, there was a market next door called Toyo Market, a grocery store, and the lady who ran the grocery store, it wasn't a very big, you know, little corner grocery store, and there was a few items of produce there, and not many people shopped there, and so the produce would, you know, be on the shelves for quite a while.

[38:41]

There wasn't a big turnover. And Suzuki Roshi would do the shopping, and his wife, Okusan Mitsu Suzuki, In her telling of the story, a number of people commented on this story. She said he always wanted to do the shopping, and she wasn't very happy about that. Oksan wasn't. He would go to the Toyo Market, and he would choose the most oldest battered, half-bruised vegetables, bring those home to cook. And he... He said he didn't want their lives to be in vain because no one would buy them and cook them up. So he bought them to cook up. Particularly, this is choosing. This is discriminative thinking. You might say, where is it coming from?

[39:43]

What's the basis of that choice of the bruised sweet potato? That doesn't look like you're going to have to cut off that part. So one day the lady who owned it brought him fresh vegetables and said, here we have these fresh vegetables for you. And he said, that's okay. Those will sell. These ones probably won't sell, so I'll pick these. Now this story, which I heard, When I first began practicing, I heard about this story, and every time I go grocery shopping, that story comes to meet me as I'm picking through the mushrooms to get the ones that have closed caps, you know, because the open ones means there's a little bit older. I remember shopping with somebody when we lived on the East Coast. Zen Center sent us to take care of a... a woman who was Zen Center's benefactor, and I was shopping, and I was taking my time picking out the good mushrooms.

[40:50]

And she said, would you just choose the mushrooms? I hate shopping with you. I was taking a long time, you know, discriminating. But where was it coming from? And so this story of Suzuki grocery shopping, grocery shopping, is a teaching story for me. And I, yeah, comes to meet me. And now maybe it's going to come to meet you. The last story I wanted to tell is a story Suzuki Roshi told about himself. And it's really an enlightenment story, I think. When he was a young monk... He went to study with his teacher, who was his father's disciple. So his master who trained him was not his father, although his father was also a Zen priest. So he went to study with Butsuman Sogaku, no, Gyokujin Soan.

[41:56]

And his father was Butsuman Sogaku, so Gyokujin Soan. was his teacher, and he had a number of young disciples, maybe 13, maybe even a little younger, but young boys who were practicing at this temple, and he was a very strict teacher, and he would serve, you know, they had a kind of plain diet, and they made their own pickles, which... many families probably do, many different vegetables, daikon for one. And this particular batch of daikon pickles, there wasn't enough salt in the brine or something, but they didn't quite pickle, but more like compost a little bit, or they didn't make it. But his teacher served them anyway. And I think it might have been a large jar of these pickles, and they'd show up, you know, every day. And the little... Young boys, finally, they couldn't stand it any longer.

[42:59]

So in the night, they found that pickle jar and they went to the garden and they buried the pickles and were very kind of pleased with themselves that they had, ah, you know. Now, a couple days later, lo and behold, they come to the meal and sit down and those pickles had been dug up out of the garden and served again. And Gyokoji and so on sat with them and ate and he took the pickle and put it in his mouth. And Suzuki Roshi did as well and just chewed it. And what he said was, this was my first experience of non-discriminating consciousness. Non-discriminating consciousness.

[44:00]

Whatever that means, to me it means there was no longer composting pickle, I don't like, this is terrible, why is he doing this to us? He just entered whatever that experience was completely and there was no more gauging of thoughts or views. There was just... ...pickleness. Not even pickleness. So this was a story he told, and my reaction to that story over the years has changed. And this time around in... I'm so moved by it, you know, and also this, what he's teaching there is not, we're not locked out of that.

[45:07]

That story is for us. If we want to practice suchness, we shall practice suchness without delay. And sometimes it takes that level of fight, maybe, when we let go of that and just enter sincerely. And his teacher ate it, too. I think that relational field of he and his teacher and his fellow, that all supported just leap, just drop away from the many and the one and the this and the that and good or bad or terrible or wonderful just leap. So here it is.

[46:15]

Egoenden free mental penetration of two conceptions a mind of non-attachment, ego-enden. It's this mutual interpenetration. It's two in one, one in the many, which you might say is the reality of our lives. you very, very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[47:19]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:22]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.7