I vow to taste the truth and to talk in terms of words. Morning. Well, originally I had planned to talk about zazen, but I'm going to talk about three things. One is serving, and the other is service, and the third one is orioke. I probably won't get around to all that, but I have a little list. I have a little list, and your name is on it. Well, well, there's several things about serving, and this is not an admonishment for anything you've done today, so don't feel personally singled out for this.

[01:03]

This is ongoing procedures, okay? When you serve, say like cereal or anything, actually, the first scoop is pretty full, and the second scoop is smaller so that a person has more control over what's going into the bowl that way. If you make the first scoop small and then the second scoop big, it takes the person by surprise, and it's harder to control the quantities that way. So the first scoop is full, and then the second scoop is discretionary. All right, do you want some more? So it shouldn't be done the opposite way.

[02:06]

Also, when you're serving, some people serve little bits at a time, which is very tedious. You know, you're kind of like, oh, come on, you know? And then some people take a huge serve and go, wow, you know, and say, wait a minute, wait a minute. So those are the two extremes. So in between those two extremes, the first scoop is full. If you use that as a kind of rule of thumb, the first scoop is full, and the second scoop is more, do you want more? And then it's not so big, so a person has a chance to kind of see what's going on, going in. Okay, so that's it. And the next thing to look at is when you're serving something like soup,

[03:10]

where you have water and then ingredients, and ingredients will fall to the bottom because they're heavier than water. And so often the servers are just scooping up the top and they scoop up all the water, and then what's left is all the food. So when you come up to serve, you stir the soup and then serve. Sometimes if the soup is heavy, their ingredients on the bottom, sometimes you just serve the ingredients and they don't serve the water. So you should make some judgment, you know, to serve, if the ingredients are kind of pebbly, you know, then you serve a scoop of that, and then you serve a scoop of water in order so that you distribute things evenly.

[04:13]

You should think about that, how you distribute things evenly. If you have a salad, oftentimes the lettuce and everything is on the bottom and a lot of interesting things on the top, so all the interesting things go into the first people's bowls, and the lettuce goes into the last people's bowls. So you should think about how you distribute that. And then the other side is a lot of times all the nice ingredients are on the bottom, all the interesting things are on the bottom, and the lettuce is all on top. So you serve the lettuce, and then at the end, the people get all of the interesting ingredients. So you should think about this. This is the art of serving, you know, it's like, are you just doing something mechanically, or are you paying attention to how things actually work?

[05:15]

Sometimes we take a pincher full of something, and it's all this wonderful stuff, and then we go, and it all falls off. And then we put what's left in the bowl. So, also, we have to be careful. I know we're all careful about dripping, you know? You take a spoonful, a dipperful, and then try to get into the bowl without getting it on the edge of the bowl. So, it takes, it's been just a moment, you know, to make sure that it's not gonna drip onto the bowl. Also, when we're carrying the salad bowl, do not put your thumbs inside the bowl. Carry it on the bottom, and then if you're,

[06:29]

if you don't wanna put it down on the tan, then at least hold your hand on the bottom, and not like this, but on the bottom. And we have these pinchers, you know, that we use for salad that have that little ring on the top, and every time you wanna open it, the ring falls down, so you can't open it. We should just throw those away. There is a kind that locks and unlocks. I have a pair. You just pull the little thing down, and it locks. Then you pull it up, and it unlocks, and it doesn't lock when you're trying to use it. So, you know, there's a way, a simple way of correcting that problem. Oh, yes, sometimes when we're serving cereal,

[07:37]

it's kind of, you know, heavy and sticky, and so we use two spoons, right? But it's not, you don't take the two spoons and use them like that, two spoons. The second spoon is simply to scrape off the first spoon. So you take a dipper full with the first spoon, and it's sticking into the dipper, you know? So you take that little wooden spoon, and you scoop it out. But it's not meant to be done like that. You only use one spoon to serve with, and the other spoon to scrape with. And when you walk down the aisle with your bowls, don't walk on your heels. Boom, boom, boom. It's like this floor is like a drum. Boom, boom, boom. So when you're walking, it's boom, boom, boom, boom. Walk on the front of your foot. This is how we walk in the zendo anyway, all the time. When you're doing kin-hen, you put the front of your foot down.

[08:37]

Ordinarily, when we walk, we walk on our heels, but not in the zendo. In zendo, we walk putting the front of your foot down, not the ball of your foot, but just the front of your foot, and not walk on your heel, so that you're not making any sound when you walk. Yeah, and like, when you're serving something like nuts, like I said this morning, you lay the nuts in the bowl. Nut rim, tut-tut-tut-tut-tut-tut-tut. Try to do that without making any sound. It's possible. You can do that. You just, shh, like that. And when you're carrying the teapots, we have a napkin, a little paper napkin. So you put the paper napkin on the top of the handle when you're carrying it, and then when you go to serve the water, you put the,

[09:40]

I request that you put your finger with the napkin under the base of the spout. That's a good fulcrum for pouring. Rarely does the water ever drip from the spout. So you don't really need it so much to catch the drip. But it's there if you need to. It's more like it's there so that you can handle the pot with the hot water. I mean, that pot's hot, right? So the napkin helps you to keep your hand from getting too hot. But what we do is we hold the napkin up at the tip, and then it gets wet when you're pouring the water. Or else you can't see what you're doing because the napkin's there, and you can't, you know, you don't know if you're getting it in the cup or not, in the bowl or not. So, and then sometimes you pull it down a little bit.

[10:45]

But it's better to just hold it down at the bottom, or halfway is okay. But down at the bottom where the fulcrum is, then, you know, it's nice and easy. And then if there is a drip, you can go, catch the drip. Sometimes when we're pouring water, the servers don't really look at your hand. They're just pouring the water. Sometimes they pour the water real fast, you know, like, whew. So we go, oh, oh. So you should be ready for the hand to go, and as soon as the hand goes, then that's when you stop. Sometimes the hand goes like this, and the server's still pouring the water. So, be quick. And then holding the pots, when we walk with the pots,

[11:49]

some people hold them above their head. And some people hold them down at their waist. To hold it, you know, we don't want to breathe on the pots, right, but, you know, we all have to breathe. And then, you know, when we walk with the pots, hands have to be somewhere, and the pots are in front of us, right? So, to hold it at a kind of reasonable height is good, I think. Just hold it where it feels reasonable to you, which I would say is about like this when you're walking with the pots. And with the teapots, maybe like this. So,

[12:57]

and then, of course, when we bow, you know, we bow with the, we bow with, after we serve, or before we serve, we bow, and to actually bow with the person that you're serving, not just make a cursory, a curtsy, which is a courtesy bow, but a real, you know, to actually bow with that person. Otherwise, what's the point? Also, when we approach the people to be served, you're not right up against them. You're one step removed. Then, to bow with the pot, and then step forward, put the pot on the thong, and serve. And then, when you finish serving,

[13:58]

to step back one step, and then bow with the pot. Okay, those are the things that I wanted to remind us of. Do you have any question about any of those things, or about anything else related to serving? There's some question about when we're serving the front thong, if we do put the serving bowl or pot on the thong, is it always on the Buddha bowl side, or if we're serving, say, the third bowl, or does it make a difference? Well, I don't think it matters which side it's on. You know, the priest bowls are round on the bottom, so they have a little bowl underneath them to stabilize them, you know?

[15:00]

And so, sometimes the servers come up, and they put down the pot, and their hand is about a 16th of an inch away from that bowl. And if they were to touch the bowl, it would go, poof, you know? So, I always went, move it over, move it over. So, make some space between the bowl and where you put your pot down. But, as far as which side, if you're serving cereal, then it should go on the side where you're serving cereal. If you want to have the salad or something goes in the third bowl, second, it's okay, I think, to put it on the other side. I don't know why it would matter. Got it, so I would say either side. There's a question that comes up from the servers to the head server. Well, in order to not have to worry about it, we put it on my left, which is your right. Or Nancy's left, right?

[16:04]

Yeah. To put on the side of the big bowl. No? In terms of the step forward, I noticed this today. I tend to take one, this is a detail, but it doesn't quite feel right. I tend to step forward with one foot and the other foot is back because it seems like too much extra to take both steps forward and then step back. But, on the other hand, there's a certain awkwardness about the one step and I couldn't, I would like to know. Yeah, well, take one step forward and then bring the other foot up. Do bring the other foot up. So, you're standing on both feet? I know, that's awkward. Is it still good to, when you're serving, angle yourself a little bit towards the Buddha,

[17:07]

towards the front of the room? No, no, no, you're just serving the people. You're not having to worry about Buddha. He'll take care of himself. But, when you're serving the people, the lower tongs, it's good to go down on both knees. If you have trouble going down on both knees, then just go down on one knee. But, don't stand up and serve. Could you say something about the canton tone? What about it? Well, I think people don't understand what it's for. Really? Well, after the meal is served, and after the gamassio is taken back, then the head server comes around with this little towel, right? And that's where you put debris. If you have anything, not, you know, little nut shells or something you can't eat,

[18:07]

then you bow and put it in the little towel. And when you say these things, when you have these instructions about the form, other teachers will give different instructions and have a set of different form. I'm wondering where these judgments for where this form comes from. Comes from here. Yeah. If you go someplace else, you should conform to their way. But when you're here, you just conform to this way.

[19:10]

It's your expression? My expression? It's my expression and your expression. It's our expression of not worrying about it. Dolly, is that you? Yes. What comes to my mind is that serving and being served is like a unified thing. And you didn't mention, perhaps you would now, the actions of the server. In particular, when you said something about the server should be careful not to drip food on the outside of the bowl, particularly the booty bowl or any bowl. I think that most servers would appreciate it if the person being served would put their bowl

[20:13]

over the edge of the bowl being served from. I've seen people gesture that way to get the person being served not to just statically hold their bowl in front of them and expect the server to do all the maneuvering, but to cooperate with the server. Move forward and move your hands and your bowl in a position that's ideal for them to put the food in. Yeah, that's a good point. So we should respond to the server so that we accommodate and make it easy for the server to do the serving. And so you hold your bowl over the pot. That's a good point. Yeah, it's a two-way street. What about when servers try to grab your bowls? So when somebody tries to slug them? No, sometimes I'll be eating

[21:19]

and the server will try to take my bowl and I don't really want to give it to them. Okay, well, let me explain that. The booty bowl is the big bowl. And so we hold that to be served. The smaller bowls, sometimes we give it to the server because it's easier for the server to serve when it's in their hand. And when you give the bowl to the server to serve, the server shouldn't put their thumb inside their bowl but hold it on the palm of their hand. So some servers are used to people handing them the bowl. So if someone's, they shouldn't take your bowl though. They hold it, if they hold their hand out, then put the bowl in their hand and let them do this serving that way. Don't resist. I mean, after all, it's Buddha's bowl.

[22:19]

But it's not necessary to do that, okay? But if the server does put out their hand, then be generous. You may never get it back, but. Okay? Okay. Now, during service, we have this habit of stretching out the last part where gatte, gatte, paragatte, bodhisvaha. And it's simply gatte, gatte, paragatte, bodhisvaha. Sometimes it's even slower than that. What? Sometimes it's even slower. Sometimes it's even slower, yes. But you get the idea. And every day, I say something, but.

[23:33]

Anyway, I just want to say it again. And, you know, it's like filling up the well with snow. You just keep doing useless activity. Yes? Sometimes in the afternoon when we're chanting, just in the year 2000 here, it's been, just, it's gotten crazy. Everyone will be out of sync quite often. Yes. Right. It wasn't that way before. Well, that's the next thing. Yes? Also, I think we drag out prajna. So it's prajna, paramita, sutra. And also, mantra. Yes. All those sort of unusual words. Well, we do tend to drag everything out. So, every once in a while, we just have to consolidate, you know.

[24:38]

And not emphasize any one syllable any more than another. It's just da, [...] da. And then, gradually, over time, it starts expanding again, and then we have to contract and expand. So this is normal. It's normal for it to, there's some reason why that happens. I think it's our devotional feeling, you know. Tends to want to stretch things out. But it's a little tiresome, too. It's not a good idea. Keep it succinct. Today, during the meal, the meal chant was really wonderful today, according to my judgment. It was brisk, and it was moving, you know. And there wasn't any extra, anything extra. It just made this really good feeling of briskness and some strength.

[25:46]

And this thing about everybody chanting at a different pitch, it all depends on the Kokkyo's pitch. The Kokkyo sets the pitch, and if it's funny pitched, then people have a hard time matching it. And so then, pretty soon, everybody's doing their own thing. And, I mean, there's a tendency for people to do that anyway. But if the pitch is not accessible, easily accessible to everybody, then it just, everybody's kind of looking around for a pitch, you know. So that's why Kokkyo has to be very careful about how they set the pitch. Sometimes it's too high, and sometimes it's too low. And sometimes it's just a funny place that people feel uncomfortable with. And sometimes their voice is strained.

[26:48]

You know, often the Kokkyo doesn't come from a clear place or from a deep place. They come from their throat or up their chest. And so when you start chanting, you try to match the Kokkyo, right? So when you start chanting, then you're chanting up in your chest because that's where the sound is coming from. Or you're chanting from your, and you don't like that. It's, you want to cough or, you know, it makes you choke or something. And then you find your own deep place to chant. So being Kokkyo is not easy. It, you have to have some talent. And if you don't have some talent, you have to work at getting it. So I think that's a big factor, the Kokkyo's pitch and where they're chanting from

[27:50]

is a big factor in that. And it's always an ongoing kind of problem because we're not professionals, right? So it's just us folks. But I take a lot of the blame for not training people more. So, so I apologize for that. Mark? Oh, I think maybe you remember, I don't know if you remember at Tassajara when Lisa and I was there, we used to do voice training exercise for Kokkyo. And, you know, I've never done it here. And I haven't been in Kokkyo that many times, but I really noticed a big difference between, you know, doing those exercises and not doing the exercises. Do you know why? That you never come to my trainings. That's why you think that. But I do give trainings and you never come to them.

[28:51]

And also, I don't think Tassajara is such, they do it so well there. Yeah. They're typically in the morning. They're typically in the mornings after Zazen. Speak up, please. They're typically in the morning after Zazen and Mark's son is going off to work. Right. Yes. But not always. Yes. Sajan, I wanted to thank you for helping myself and I'm sure other people with the forums. It's my understanding that this is where we are to work from, the forums are to help us. I wanted to really thank you for helping, I know myself, with the forums. Also, I would encourage you to, I know it might be discouraging at times when we don't respond, but I thank you for helping me with the forums. Thank you.

[29:56]

But anyway, it's always my wish to want to do it more. I don't know why it doesn't happen, but we're all busy. You know, Mark has to go to work, right? But there's a way of making it work. Also, I'm just done with that guy. Yeah. So if you want to, I'll try to work you in. Okay. Yeah. I think that you used to do Saturday afternoons after the Saturday program of extended training with all the kokyos, fukudos, and dohwans together. That's right. And I think the last one was, I think it was almost a year ago, or even just over a year ago, and in that time, I know personally,

[31:00]

I was never fukudo or kokyo before that, and so I haven't been to one of those trainings, but maybe we could have another one of those. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. The other thing is, when we do the enmei jyuku kanagyo, there's a perception that, because we do it nine times, right? And kan, ze, an, namu, there is a perception that it starts out real slow and then ends up real fast. I want to say that it doesn't start out real slow, because what happens is the fukudo, who's leading, does it real slow the first time, and then they do it slow the second time,

[32:03]

and they do it slow the third time, and by that time, there's no way that we don't get tired. There's no way that it just picks up energy. It has to start out kan, ze, an, namu, butsu, not kan, ze, an, unless it's a funeral. Kan, ze, an, namu, butsu, and then kan, ze, an, namu. Each time has to be distinctly different than the preceding one. The other way of doing it is just to start out with a brisk tempo and gradually make it a little bit quicker to the end. That way you don't get bogged down. You don't get bogged down in three or four slow ones. Often what happens is the fukudo, eight slow ones, and the ninth one will be real fast.

[33:03]

That's quite usual. So it's either you start out at a middle tempo, and each one is distinctly quicker than the last one, or else just start out quick and maintain that, or just pick up speed a little bit. But it shouldn't, because it just keeps going on and on, and if it's too slow, it just bogs down the energy. You lose the energy. This is also true of the Heart Sutra. When we're doing the Heart Sutra with the mokugyo in Japanese, it starts out at a fair tempo and gradually increases the tempo so that it should be a little quicker at the end than at the beginning. Yeah. We do the ancestors. I've noticed the first seven where the thing is hit

[34:09]

are always very fast, and then it seems to just, everybody just falls away. Should the speed be that quick throughout? Should it be kept at that? Well, we should maintain the same tempo that we started at. Anytime you slow down a tempo in chanting, you lose it. You lose the energy. Whenever you slow down, you lose the energy. This is why it's good to gradually increase, because if you don't gradually increase, the tendency is to slow down. Because it's, you know, we're chanting something that takes five minutes, and five minutes of chanting, not everybody has a strong voice they can maintain or are thinking about maintaining a strong chant throughout the whole thing. So you get to the middle, and then people start getting tired, either knowingly or not.

[35:12]

They get tired. That's why the pitch has to be at a nice place where you don't get tired. You can chant easily without getting tired. If it's too low, you start getting tired. So, in the Buddhism Ancestors, that's a pretty long chant. I think it goes pretty well most of the time, actually. I don't really have any complaint about that. On the Enmei Jigokunandyo, when you're trying to increase the tempo distinctly, but every time, should you do the increase at the beginning or sort of in the middle? No, at the beginning. At the beginning, okay. The Acharyas, C-I-T-T-A, is that pronounced?

[36:14]

Acharya? Acharya, C-I-T-T-A. Cheetah or Cita? I don't know. How do you spell it? C-I-T-T-A. Alan said it's C-H-E-A-T-A. There was one that didn't say Cheetah. There's one C-A-P-A. There's one C-A. There's two of them. One is C-A-P-A, and there's another one, C-I-T-T-A. And is it always pronounced with a Cha or is it a Sa? Like Chapa or Kapa? Oh. And Cheetah or Cita? I haven't thought about it. Probably Cheetah, yeah. Usually when the C has a little thing underneath it, it's C-H. But they don't always put that. And we wouldn't put that there. So, usually in Sanskrit or Pali, I don't know,

[37:15]

the C is often pronounced as C-H. And it's probably somewhere in between. Cita. Cita, we say Cheetah. Like Prajna, we spell it Praj-P-R-A-G-N-A, and we say Prajna. But it's really Praj-N-G-A. And so the closest they come in spelling is with a J, but the actual pronunciation is, it's up in your nose. Prajna, Prajna, Prajna. And even if you say Prajna, then the old man will say, no, it's Prajna. Yeah, Prajna. No, no, Prajna. So, anyway. I don't know how much it matters. That's close enough. That's close enough. Similar to that, do you want the Sangha

[38:18]

to strive for correct Japanese pronunciation? Depending on which dialect you mean. We used to teach chanting in Japanese dialect, you know, Japanese. But I haven't done that for a long time. So, you know, it's important to stress the stresses. But we put the stress marks in to the chanting card, and if people actually followed that, their pronunciation would be pretty good. So, you know, it's a matter of, some people can know what the stress is,

[39:20]

and everybody else kind of listens and goes along with it. And so it's pretty good, but we don't try to make it perfect. Well, the other thing is, you know, when you're, when you are sounding the bells, you know, if you clutch the beater, then the sound you make on the bells or the mugugyo doesn't come out well. You're actually stopping the sound. So to hold the beater without holding it, it's how you use it. It's, you know, when you sound the small bell, it's almost like lazy.

[40:23]

And you let the beater do the work. You don't, your arm is not doing the work. The beater, you're just allowing the weight of the beater to do the work. And therefore, you have to let it swing. It's like a pin going through your thumb and finger. Which is holding the beater. And then it goes, ding, ding, instead of ding, ding. You hold it, you're stopping the sound from coming out. And the same with the mugugyo. It's like, it's not, dah, dah, dah, dah. It's dum, dum, dum, dum. You just let the beater fall. You're just picking it up and letting it fall. That's the basic approach. You do have to do a little manipulation. But basically, it's loose. You know, when you're loose, the sound is loose.

[41:24]

This is the secret of life. That's the basic thing. If you're loose, the sound is loose. And everything is loose. When you're tight, the sound is tight and everything is tight. So, I think it's good to practice being loose. And this is the secret of zazen as well. If you're tight, your zazen is tense and painful. And if you're loose, zazen is loose and comfortable.

[42:14]

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