Bring up the subject of nourishment and kindness, since many people in the practice period have been working with nourishment, and many people in the practice period have been working with kindness. And although I was away Saturday night, I heard that there was a dinner prepared by Anna and Dana's class with the subject of nourishment. And a Monday morning, saw the menu of that dinner, and it looked fantastic. So, I also think that nourishment is a very important topic for us, particularly at this time in the practice period, and that's because we're getting to the beginning of the end or the end of the middle of the eight-week practice period.

[01:04]

And it's the time when people need a boost. And so I thought that nourishment might be a good topic for us at this time. And also, I want to invite people to ask questions during this talk. It will help give me a chance to drink water. and give my throat a rest, which may allow me to continue speaking for the length of the time. So please don't be embarrassed to ask a question when I come to some stopping point that's a little different than usual. So, as you may already know, nourishment is a word that has a very interesting history in the English language. It's actually from an old, I think an old French word, nourrir, which is similar to the modern French word, nourrir.

[02:15]

And it meant mother's milk. To give milk to. Latin, nutridae. To give milk to. And it comes from a Sanskrit word, a Sanskrit root, which is S-N-U, snu, actually. Sanskrit word is shnoti, which is a word that is used in poetry to describe a woman who is giving milk. And this is not an aspect of Zen that's very commonly brought out, although it is in the tradition as part of jukai, the classical form of jukai.

[03:24]

and the classical form of Dharma transmission, which both happen in a setting that's like a mother's womb. It's red and kind of mysterious, and there's an emphasis on being newborn in that space. And then the whole rest of the time in practice, even classical practice, it's hardly mentioned at all. the act of being born. Except, you know, birth and death, or in some way that's very common and easy to understand. Oh, no, wait a second. There is one place, which is in the personal service that we often do. It was taught to us by Katigiri Roshi a long time ago. And the very first sutra in that personal service, we say, this recitation of the Heart Sutra is dedicated to, you know, the great teachers, Shakyamuni Buddha, Ehe Dogen Dayasho, Bodhaita Ruma, Shogaku Shunryu, or whoever is the Buddha enshrined on your altar.

[04:47]

And then you say something like, may the merit of this service return our debt of compassionate gratitude for they nurture us with the milk of dharma. So nurturing us with the milk of dharma, what is this? And also, how does it fit in with kindness? How does it fit in with the feeling that we sometimes have in practice of coming home or coming to ourselves? And Well, the Buddha actually taught four nutriments. And I looked at... I've looked at a lot of explanations in the last few days, including the explanation in the Abhidharmakosha Bhashyam and some translations by the Venerable Nyanaponika Tara. But maybe the best explanation that's most accessible you can find in this book called Dharma, Color and Culture.

[05:54]

which was edited by Riumon Gutierrez-Baldo Keen. And there's an article in it by Thich Nhat Hanh. And Thay talks about the four nutriments. And the four nutriments are edible food, like the food that we know has food that you can get for dinner. and nourishing the attentive, nourishing the intention, and nourishing the consciousness. So material food is

[06:55]

Matter. You know, it's stuff. Plants that grow cooked in pots with water or with oil, and it takes a certain amount of space on a plate, and you take it into your body. And the nourishment of the sense consciousness is what we take in through the senses of eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin. and mind as a receiver. And the nutriment of intention or volition is what nourishes our karmic tendencies or our anti-karmic tendencies to do, to build, to destroy, to create, to... love, to hate, as actions, to speak, not to speak, and so on.

[08:03]

And the nourishment of consciousness is the sum total of the impressions that we take in and how we put them together as a result, which is basically a feature of our habits, our caste habits, and our current intention. So Thich Nhat Hanh talks about this and he gives some explanations. So for instance, he says, for food, the Buddha urges us to consume only items that bring about lightness, healing, and nourishment in our body and in our mind. He's using nourishment as a way to define nourishment. And then for sensory impressions, he says that when you read an article, you consume for the senses.

[09:15]

That article may contain the toxins of craving, violence, fear, discrimination, hate, When you watch TV, you consume. The TV program may be full of poison. Western young people often watch TV several hours a day because their parents are so busy. And so in that action, the seeds of craving and violence in them are being watered. It's dangerous. And when you drive through the city, you consume. Because what you see and hear As ads are also items of consumption, even when you don't want to, you're forced to. And being aware and mindful of what we're seeing and hearing and so on may help to protect us. And then conversation also can be toxic or nourishing. What an other person says can be full of hate, despair, and even after an hour of listening you might feel paralyzed.

[10:23]

by what's come up in the conversation. Even if you're a psychotherapist, it's not wise to spend your whole day listening to the suffering of others. You have seeds of suffering in you. If all you do is listen, the seed of suffering in you will be watered. Someday you'll get sick, and you'll have to go to another therapist. Practice of therapy needs to include hours of walking, sitting, and getting in touch with the wonder of life so the therapist will have strength to do the work of listening to suffering. And then it keeps going. Basically, he says that if we guard our sixth sense doors, that that may help protect us from that kind of intake. And... that store consciousness is like a basement, and mind consciousness is like our living room.

[11:28]

And anything we don't like, we put into the basement. We want to keep the living room beautiful. But the blocks of suffering in you don't want to stay in the basement. If they become too strong, they just push the door open and settle in the living room without your invitation, especially during the night. when you have no means of control. During the day also, any violence, craving or hate in you or anger are pushing hard because you may have allowed them to grow every day through unmindful consumption. You try to resist. You try to close the door firmly. You set up an embargo in the living room and you repress it. You try to fill up mind consciousness with other good items. You do that by consumption. So you might play music or pick up the telephone, read a book or so on. And, you know, the first step is that we have to stop unmindful consumption for the senses and bring in mindful consumption.

[12:42]

The third nutriment is volition, our deepest desire and motivation. And so often we don't know what our deepest desire or motivation is, and it's one of the reasons to come to a place like this and find out. And the fourth nutriment is consciousness as food. The Buddha said that everything comes from consciousness. When consciousness is taken care of, when wrong perceptions have been removed, consciousness becomes wisdom. Anyway, there's a lot more of here, and I may return to Tai's words in a few minutes. But I want to go into the Four Nutriments a little bit more, just to understand what they are and how they might be related to kindness. So, food...

[13:49]

You know, we can think of kindness in a variety of ways. We can think of kindness to ourself or kindness to the world, and that's a very good place to start. And so with food, kindness to the self is to understand what the body needs. And kindness to the world is to understand how it comes to us, And that's actually true of all the nutriments. I have much more to say about these nutriments and what the Buddha said to get us to pay attention and not be complacent about the craving that feeds our desires to take things in. And I can save that for a little while.

[14:51]

the Venerable Buddha Gosha talks about how, who gets conditioned or what gets conditioned and how that happens. And I can talk a little bit more about that if you like. I want to say just a little bit about another couple of definitions that relate to things that we do. So the five skandhas of clinging, are often called the upadana skandhas. And upadana doesn't actually mean clinging. It means intake or uptake. And if it's conditioned by tanha, by craving, then it is the five skandhas of clinging. But the five skandhas don't have to be the skandhas of clinging. What we usually think of as our personality, which if we look at it deeper, we can deconstruct, doesn't have to be about clinging, it can be about wisdom.

[16:01]

And I also want to say a little bit about Upasatha. Upasatha is the day that we usually call the full moon or Riyaka Fasads. but it's actually a pre-Buddhist ceremony. And in pre-Buddhist times, it was celebrated as a period of purification or fasting. And many people do fasting as purification. The Buddha first tried fasting as a way to purify himself, to try to let go of suffering. And he found that when he took fasting to an extreme, it didn't work. that it just pitted part of his mind and body against a different part of his mind and body and was unkind to himself. It caused a fight. And now, Bhupasata still means purification for Buddhists, but it means purification in moderation.

[17:06]

And that's the middle way. So the milk of dharma is the teaching of teachers and what kindness teaches us in relation to nourishment is just what teachers teach us. What teachers teach us is the truth and what kindness teaches us is also the truth. And what we learn is that basically that this business about feeding And nourishing ourselves is very deeply important and gets to the root of our practice of kindness or unkindness. That appropriate nourishment of the body leads to an ability to understand our physiological life, which is the same as understanding our life feelings.

[18:12]

And when we understand our feelings, we can understand our thoughts and perceptions. When we understand our thoughts and perceptions, we can understand our consciousness and our deepest spiritual life. I'll just say, I was writing down a few words this afternoon about What does kindness teach in relation to nourishment? So basically, the first place to understand edible food as an experience is really with the tongue, you know, really by chewing food. And by chewing the food and experiencing it at the tongue, we understand how hot or cold it is, how light or heavy it is, how oily or plain it is, and sometimes how wholesome or unwholesome it is, just in terms of the elements of our own body, that we have the capacity to understand this.

[19:32]

And when we look at the four great elements as we take in food, four great elements are earth, air, fire, and water. So we can look at the matter of food, like how much are we eating? And how much are we drinking? And what does it leave space for? Is there any space left for us after we finish eating? Or is it all taken up by food? And... We can understand the air, the space, in that way. We can understand the fire, the digestive fire. Oh, when I drink a lot of water, I can't digest the food. Or when I eat this kind of food, my digestion works. When I eat that kind of food, my digestion doesn't work as well.

[20:35]

What am I going to eat? But this is actually a deep teaching, because when we understand the food in relation to the four elements, we understand ourselves in the same way. And we understand that the form that we're in is impermanent, that it changes in relation to what we do. And so we begin to understand the causes and conditions that affect us. And to understand it is to discard our impulsiveness in favor of a wholesome response. And it means that even at the tongue we can be aware of our desire for material nourishment as it arises. We can totally understand the way it binds us as a desire. And instead we can understand that we have a choice to turn towards our real life.

[21:37]

And we become able to stop harming ourselves at a gross level. That's what that very simple conventional practice gives, which is why I'm so happy with that class of being taught. One of the reasons. And then with sense impression, the perceptual and feeling aspect, you know, how do we understand it? So we can understand it at its origin for us when it touches us. So a sense impression of the eye touches the eye. A sense impression of the ear touches the ear. And when it happens, there is kind of like a thunk. There's a moment when that occurs. The contact of the organ, the object, and the consciousness is the moment of experience. And so when we understand that, we understand the subtle aspects of the great elements. And we understand the root of pleasant and painful experience.

[22:45]

Like when something comes to our eye, we almost immediately experience it as pleasant or painful or we're just confused. And it means that we discard a kind of... ignorant about conditionality. We tend to discard judgment in favor of a sense of presence and curiosity to what's in front of us. And we can be aware of our misconceptions and preconceptions because they would be contradicted by that experience. And we can totally be aware of the way those misconceptions bind our thinking process. and we can turn towards things as they are. And then it lets us stop harming ourselves at a subtle level. And so volition or intention, we can understand that when we begin to say something or do something.

[23:57]

We can look, what is my intention? And... And it means when we understand this, we understand our conditioning. And so we can ground our speech and action in what's in front of us. And we can discard our habits in favor of appropriate response. And we become able to do good. And then the last one, consciousness, the nourishment of consciousness, is the kind of existence aspect, I am-ness of life. And how we understand it is that when we split the mind off into self and other, good and bad, right and wrong, this and that, you and me, any sort of duality that objectifies an object and subjectifies us, we understand that

[25:03]

consciousness in the present. So whenever we slip off the present moment, we can begin to understand the nutriment of consciousness as it is. And that means that we get an understanding and experience of the thinking mind. And we can understand that the thinking mind is like sweat, it's a result, it's not a cause. We discard fixed personality and positions. in favor of a skillful response based on people's needs and concerns. And we become able to help other people, help and nourish other people. So I've just given you a lot here, and I haven't given you everything I prepared, but this is really enough to start with. And so I've given you a menu of things that we could go into... examples.

[26:04]

We could go into mothering. Yeah, Carolyn? Mahabajapati is a great story, and there's a lot of mother stories that aren't appreciated in Buddhism, so I'm glad you brought her up. Mahabajapati was the sister of Mahamaya, the Buddha's birth mother. The Buddha's birth mother died within a week of giving birth to the Buddha. And the Buddha was brought up by Mahapajapati, who later was to be known as Gotani. Please change your position if you're not being nourished by your sitting position. Take a rest and then come back to your sitting position. And Mahapajapati must have done something right, I think.

[27:11]

And Mahapajapati was revered by generations of female practitioners because she was the one who first asked the Buddha if women could be ordained. And Mahapajapati, along with Mahapajapati, The story of Mohamed Japati, along with the story of many other women in Buddhism, has been suppressed down the generations and is coming to light in recent times. So yes, she was the Buddha's nursemaid, but she was also the Buddha's foster mother and one of his earliest teachers. And when he became enlightened, he became her teacher. head of her lineage. Yeah.

[28:12]

Yeah. Trevor. Yeah, you. I read a lot. I read a lot of poetry and song books. I often have a novel that I'm reading, too. I don't really know enough about literature to say that I'm not reading, like, the novels and I know that, like, I enjoyed that and I could probably blow a whole afternoon reading this, like, Jonathan's Black Doggy murder in the street that I'm reading with. And sometimes I wonder if I'd kind of be better spent, like, reading one of the great star books that I have in the show or writing letter to a friend or something like that. Yeah, it could be worse.

[29:12]

It could be in your room enjoying drugs. Drugs. Yeah. Well, here are some clues. If you feel mild adrenaline poisoning after reading such a book, it's probably bad for you. It means if your heartbeat went up, if you became very excited and then kind of let down, if you need to read books to keep your mind off your life, If you find yourself dreaming about or associating according to the images in the book in certain ways, if they poison your thoughts in any ways.

[30:15]

If you find your language becoming coarser or your actions becoming coarser. If you find yourself becoming unable to concentrate or be sensitive to yourself. then you may want to put them down for a time. But I'm not saying that as a rule, because what you're asking is a private question. It's about your nourishment and what nourishes your mind. So let's say, like for me, let's say that there were a person who spent 37 years practicing and a lot of them without looking at TV or reading any popular fiction, and then was trying to practice with people in jail or on the street, it might be good to read those things. So that you could say something like, this is like the moment in Jurassic Park when they actually had to go on the island and couldn't do anything else.

[31:24]

Do you remember that moment? You know, but everyone was saying, don't you? You know, all the clues were there. And then... Or like, you know, so that you can say, have you watched The Big Give? Someone told me about The Big Give the other day. It sounds fascinating. The Big Give is a program by Oprah Winfrey, which is a new program in which... She teaches people how to be generous. I can't wait to see it. I don't have a TV or anything, but I mean, I have a DVD player, but I'll actually have to go to someone's house and see it because it's very interesting to me. And I'm sure that I'll be able to...

[32:24]

you use it with somebody. So it really depends on what's nourishing. If you're practicing, if it's hard for you to pay attention to food, then stay away from junk fiction. Do you know what I mean? Because then you're still working at a very gross elemental level. yogically speaking. And you need to learn how to do that before you can understand what's good and bad for your senses, for your volition, or for your consciousness. But there are also people who did everything that they weren't supposed to and became completely enlightened. So I really can't say Who's your teacher?

[33:27]

Yeah, this is something to discuss with him. He knows you best. Yeah. Yeah, Carol? Were you the person who had you? Yeah, okay. Hello, Baird. So you, when you were reading, you said about the... something about protecting... Yeah. That's right. Well, you know, that's... I used to know the different logical fallacies, and that's one of them. You know, where you say something like... You say something like, driving over potholes can be damaging to your car.

[34:30]

Your car is damaged, therefore you must have driven over a pothole. What's that called? Does anybody remember? Huh? It might be the false cause, I'm not sure. Anyway, study some text and logic and you'll find out that it was presented by the ancient Greeks as one of the logical... No, I'm sick. I think that the proximate cause of this illness is that I got close to a lot of other people who were sick and didn't get that much sleep. I think that's probably what happened. The kind of sickness that... You know, it could have contributed. I could have contributed to that sickness by, let's say I ate the wrong thing. Let's say I ate a lot of dairy products, a lot of ice cream, sugar, and crusts all last week.

[35:39]

Okay? Then how sick I get is really different, given that I have a slight sensitivity to those foods. That how sick I get is really different from if I had spent last week eating brown rice and steamed vegetables with a little bit of tamari, you know, and drinking enough water. So, yeah, it could be like that. Or let's say I spent last week, let's say last week was full of unpleasant sense impressions. because the street construction was going on right outside my window, and I was trying to work at home and couldn't get anything done, and I was so frustrated and, you know, stomped up and down and had to read murder mysteries to keep my mind off of it because nothing else would do, and...

[36:49]

and forgot that I was a practitioner of the way. So, yeah, I got sick. Anyway, it's kind of like that. Did that answer? Okay. Benadir? Yes. I must say, I'm not really sure if I can actually formulate my question or my concern. So maybe we can all witness how it will fail. But... When I read the passage from Tigmatan and also the exchange between Trevor and you, what came up for me was last August and Sashim brought up a text by a Zen teacher which was virtually unknown to most of us who actually lived at the end of the time when Japan was ravaged by civil war, and yet he was able to write on me.

[37:57]

He said, undoubtedly, everything is an animation up at the top. Then he basically quoted Hakuin and said, this great land ravaged by war is the pure land. That's right. Somehow, he was able to sit. That's right. I feel, personally, I feel, yes, I can really make a decision about material nourishment, especially in this community. People are very aware. Most people I know, or I come close enough to talk to, of course, try to control, like, what goes in through the sensory world.

[39:00]

That's what I mean. It's a passage or a kind of a very valid question. Yeah. The more, the more I look into this matter, I feel, in this indeterminate world, Actually, there's conscious impulse to control the intake. And we say, this is a major part of our suffering. That's right. I brought up this quote because it sounds to me as if somebody did not even try to control anymore, but... See everything. Okay. Wake up in the middle of what's happening. That's right. That's right. That's Zen practice. That seems to be a very different approach.

[40:08]

My personal view of practice as compared to practice the kind Christ took my mouth. What actually nourishes we must deal? So, can I make this clear? Yeah. Yeah. Did everyone understand what the concern is? Let me see if I can summarize it. On the one hand, you have someone who says everything just as it is is the Tathagata, which seems like the ultimate nourishment. On the other hand, you have what looks like it might be a practice of controlling what you take in. How do you reconcile the two? Are they the same or different?

[41:14]

Okay. So, do you remember... A long time ago when I was talking about appropriate response. Okay, here. Yeah, a long time ago, about a half hour ago. I was talking about appropriate response. I just mentioned it. I didn't talk about it a lot. Basically what I talked about was how when you understand the elements, when you understand material food, To understand material food is to understand the elements and stop hurting yourself in a gross way. To understand sense impressions is to understand the subtle elements and not hurt yourself in a subtle way. To understand volition or intention is to understand a little bit about karma and conditionality.

[42:18]

and to be able to do good. And to understand consciousness as nourishment is to understand a little bit about the self and to be able to help self and others. And this is a statement of the gradual path. But what I left out was the whole where the gradual path comes from every moment is the whole practice of the Tathagata. That unless we had a sense of this and understood it as our ultimate intention, none of that other practice would have any meaning whatsoever, except as a step or a stage. So... This is why I don't want to make any prescriptions about what's valid.

[43:22]

At the same time, I can say things like, it's probably better if you fill half your stomach with solid food, a quarter with liquid, and leave a quarter for your practice. You know, I can say stuff like that. Make sure that you eat stuff that's good for you. Yeah? Oh. Fill half your stomach with food, a quarter with liquid, and leave a quarter for your practice. Okay? And so I can say stuff like that. But that might not be true. And also it depends what kind of food. I mean, for heaven's sake. Also, who am I to be in charge of your practice? You know? So... So that's one piece of the answer to your very excellent question. The other half is that when we talk about nourishment, we need to talk about digestion.

[44:23]

And I would say that probably that Zen master had an excellent digestion. Another word for digestion is awakening. So sometimes we think that People are naturally kind or naturally unkind. But if a person has a lot of insight, whether they're kind or unkind, they may end up being kind. I don't know how to describe this. I don't know how to say this. That we can create a sense of nourishment because we have external conditions that are good. And we can create a sense of nourishment because we have the insight that allows us to digest non-nourishing experiences and get all the vitamins and minerals out of them. You know? So let someone else ask, okay?

[45:28]

Let's see if they ask. Yeah? Do you think that it's possible that... Well, I think this is a dangerous question. It's a dangerous idea. Yes, of course, there's stories about yogis who didn't need food. And there's stories about yogis who transcended normal life. But as then... practitioners, even as Vajrayana practitioners, our job as yogis is to discard those superpowers and live in the conventional world with everybody else. And one very dangerous example was the example of Osel Tenzin, who because of his insight thought that it was okay for him to sleep with a number of students even though he had AIDS.

[46:33]

And he died and they died miserably. So I would say that it's a very dangerous thing to think about oneself, although it's perfectly okay to think that about someone else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. through that discipline to reach the higher state again? Well, that's a very good question, too. And I'll, let's maybe, what time is it? How are we doing? Okay, I'll make that the last question, okay, so that you can get the nourishment to sleep. So our practice is more like the practice, have you ever seen the mandala that has Yamantaka holding the six states? It's a round circle, and you see heaven, the angry or jealous gods, human life, animals, oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, hungry ghosts, and hell.

[47:51]

Do you remember that? Have you ever seen it? There's a circle like that, and it's held by Yamantaka, who's this kind of scary guardian figure. Well, our practice is the thing that's often not mentioned about that picture, which is in every picture there's a bodhisattva holding his hands in the abhyasa mudra, no fear, have no fear. And that bodhisattva appears teaching in every single one of those states. And that is our practice, the practice of sin. Yeah, and we often think, well, Vajrayana's in color and Zen is in black and white. But Zen is so secretly way cool. So on that happy thought, I'd like to wish you a nourishing good night and sweet dreams. See you in church. May our attention.

[48:56]

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