The other day someone gave me a big and complicated computer, and I've been trying to figure out how to work it, and becoming very mixed up. So it's kind of hard to get into coming over here and doing this lecture, actually. Still kind of mixed up in this computer, which seems to be a kind of super space. You know, you fall in it and you have no idea where you are. And all these things seem to be going on in there that you can't touch. And you try to do something very simple and suddenly chasms of complexity stare staring you in the face. So, this morning I thought, well, certainly I should use the computer to help me plan this lecture.

[01:02]

Anyway, it kind of got me confused, so excuse me for showing up in a state of flux. Anyway, I've been studying Dogen Zenji's Tenzo Byōken, Advice to the Head Cook, and I was really thinking, wow, This mind of confusion is really impossible to deal with. How can I ever say anything about the Dharma? And then I opened up and started reading the Tenzo Kyokan, and it immediately brings up the Dharma for me. So I felt much better. So I want to recommend to all of you to read sometime the Tenzo Kyokan. instructions for the head cook of Dogen. I'm sure many of you have already read this. And I have too, lots of times before, but read it again.

[02:08]

It's really nice. Dogen wrote this text in 1237, when he was establishing his temple called Kanon Dori. which is actually the first real Zen practice place in Japan. There has been Zen in Japan, but no temple devoted only to the practice of Zen. So Dogen had to figure out with everybody how to eat and how to sleep and how to cook and all the details of monastic life. So he began by writing this text, How to Run the Kitchen. And later on, he wrote many other texts about monastic life that were all collected in a book called Ehe Shingi, which means Rules for Eternal Peace.

[03:15]

Ehe means eternal peace, and the name of his monastery that he founded later was Temple of Eternal Peace. Now, Dogen Zenji, I'm sure most of you know, is the great founder of Japanese Soto Zen. And he is a very profound and magnificent writer. And he has a wonderful ability to express the inexpressible over and over again in many ways. And a lot of writers today, philosophers and Zen teachers and other people of all kinds, appreciate his ability to write in this way. But mostly when they write about how great Dogen is, they're not writing about the He Hsing Yi. They're writing about another book that he wrote called Shobo Genzo, which is philosophically very astute.

[04:22]

The Ehe-Shingi really isn't so philosophically deep, in a way. It's literally saying, you know, here's how you wash the floor, and here's how you bow, and here's how you do this, and here's how you do that. And yet, all of the philosophical depth of the Shobo-Genzo is behind these very simple instructions. So, in a way, The Ehe-Shingi is the most useful thing of Dogen to read because it's talking about concrete daily life in the monastery. And so it's pretty good. And Tenzo-Kyokun is in a way the most useful and applicable to our situation of all of the writings of the Ehe-Shingi. By the time Dogen was writing this book, we don't know exactly what happened to him or what the particular circumstances were, but somehow when he came back to Japan from China and began teaching, he was teaching in the middle of town, Kyoto.

[05:38]

to a wide audience, anyone who could come, lay people, monks, ministers of the government. And so he was trying to develop a way of teaching that would be good for everyone. But something happened in there as he tried to do this. He found that it wasn't working. And by the end of his life, he was living far away from the center of things in a monastery, very remote, working only with monks. And in a way, being more and more narrow in the way that he taught, teaching only about monastic life. So I often think of this, you know. Is Dogen becoming more and more narrow? Is Dogen's teachings about monastic life irrelevant to us?

[06:42]

At Green Gulch Temple, where I live, we, sometimes we're trying to work, various groups are trying to work on family practice, different ways of doing Zen Buddhism that will be nice for children and parents who are busy and have children. And I haven't been so involved in this attempt, but it seems to me, from what I can tell, that it's not working out that well. Somehow the people are not being that successful in adapting Zen to that format, that way of practice. I actually think that we have to admit that Zen Buddhism, the way of practice of our lineage, our way, is monastic practice. I think we have to admit that.

[07:56]

And that the teaching that we inherit from Suzuki Roshi is monastic teaching. So what is monastic practice, I think? I'm thinking out loud, you know. So then, what is monastic practice? A couple of years ago, I went back to Tassajara for the first time in a while and was able to live there as a single person. just doing the schedule without any responsibility. And I had a dream. It was really one of those four or five dreams that you have in a lifetime that's really vivid and you really remember. And in this dream, it was just a dream about the sky.

[09:03]

you know, eight hours a day in his endo you have these kind of dreams, right? Just about the sky, and I could see many clouds passing by in the sky, forming and reforming in the sky, with a kind of rhythm, and also a kind of chaos. But then, as the clouds sort of parted a little bit, I could see behind the clouds beautiful mountain peak, reddish, kind of alpine glow. And as I woke up, I thought, this mountain peak is monastic life. In the last talk, that he gave in his lifetime, Thomas Merton, talked about monastic life.

[10:11]

And he reported in that talk, he gave this talk in about 1968, he reported that he had been in France during the student uprisings that were pretty earth-shattering in 1968. And he was talking to one of the young French radicals who said to him, Oh, you're a monk. I'm a monk too. And Merton contemplated this saying of the young radical and in his talk he said something like, A monastic life is a life dedicated to a single purpose. It's a life dedicated to constantly asking the question, how should people live?

[11:18]

What's the ideal way for people to live? And a monk is one who devotes his or her life to asking that question. A monk is always, he said, apart from society. to that extent, that the monk is always asking, not accepting societal values, but always, from a critical standpoint, weighing the society in which he or she lives and saying, is this the way people should live? How should people live? And that everything else in the monk's life is subordinated to that question. So I really think that sounds right to me. I really believe that. That this is a monastic life and this is what it means to be a monk. And that Zen practice is fundamentally a monastic practice.

[12:24]

So it doesn't have to do with lifestyle, exactly. Although traditional ways of living monastic life have been organized, to make it most possible to live a life based on that quest, that query. But of course, one can live in a monastery and just accept the values of the monastery or the values of the society surrounding the monastery without asking that question. So living in a monastery doesn't make you a monk, really, or doesn't guarantee that the life of the monastery will be monastic life. So I feel that monastic life and the life of the monk is not a matter of lifestyle, but a matter of intention. A matter of what is the force and energy of our life? How are we expending it? So therefore, I think we can read Dogan.

[13:34]

his writings about how to be a cook in a monastery with this in mind. And we can apply his teachings, which may on the face of them seem narrow, in a much wider context. I think this was the great genius, I think, of our founder, Suzuki Roshi, was that he came to America and taught monastic practice and saw that monastic practice is not a lifestyle, but it's an understanding of life. So he didn't try to change monastic practice and adapt it to the circumstances of American life. He just tried to understand it for what it was, a very broad and wide way. In the beginning of the Tenzo Kyokan, Dogen writes, the Tenzo of a monastery is not the same as a cook or a waiter.

[15:05]

He says the Tenzo is a monk who has developed a way-seeking mind. And because everything he or she does in the kitchen comes from way-seeking mind, the work in the kitchen is not the same as ordinary kitchen work, even though all they're doing in the kitchen is cutting vegetables and cooking food. In other words, The intention behind the activity radically changes the activity and conditions the activity. And in the case of the Tenzo, the intention is twofold. First of all, to ask this question in everything he does or she does.

[16:10]

what is the best way to live? And secondly, based on constantly asking that question, to make offerings to monks of food and meals. So it's, to me, a very beautiful idea You're questioning, always, how you're doing what you're doing. What's the best way? And yet, that questioning never takes you away from the warmth of human life because you're also making offerings all the time. You're asking that question so that you can make the best offering possible, so that you can make the best meal possible. And you're not making the best meal by dint of your diploma from the culinary school or your great skills as a chef.

[17:21]

You're making the meal beautiful and a wonderful offering by virtue of your constantly asking this question, how should I be living? How should we all be living? And you know that asking that question and seriously dedicating everything in your life to that question is the only way to end suffering and pain for yourself and everyone. So you're really working at it and offering yourself all the time. So he says that at the very beginning. So I want to read you a little bit and talk just a bit about some of the things he brings up in the Tenzo Kyokan. I'm using this translation, Refining Your Life, which I think is still in print.

[18:30]

And if you don't have it, I really recommend it because In addition to the translation of the text, there's also an extensive commentary by Uchiyama Roshi, a contemporary Japanese Soto Zen teacher, which is really nice. Really, for those of you who have not ever read or encountered a contemporary Japanese Soto Zen teacher, it's really kind of eye-opening because they don't come on all Zen, you know, the way we preconceive Zen teachers shouting and saying all these strange things. It's all very reasonable and wonderfully ordinary. and very directly helpful to your life. So I recommend reading Uchiyama Roshi's talks.

[19:34]

He's still alive, Uchiyama Roshi. He's pretty old now. And apparently he spends all of his time doing origami. He's retired as a teacher. So he does origami all the time. He makes these unbelievable tiny little birds and fishes and things. When we went to Japan, we were lucky enough to meet Tom Wright, who is his disciple, who translated this book. A really wonderful guy, who's been living in Japan for about 20 years or so. Anyway, let me read you a little bit. Dogen, talking about how to wash rice. He says, he tells this story. Suyfan was once a tenzo, head cook that is, under Dongshan.

[20:38]

One day while Suyfan was washing the rice, Dongshan happened to pass by and asked him, Do you wash the sand and pick out the rice, or do you wash the rice and pick out the sand? I wash and throw away both the sand and the rice together," Shui Feng replied. Then what on earth do the residents here eat? Dungsan pressed again. In reply, Svefang turned over the rice bucket. On seeing that, Dungsan said, The day will come when you will practice under another master." Dogen goes on, "'In this same way, the greatest teachers from earliest times

[21:51]

who were settled in the way have carried out their work with their own hands. How are we inexperienced practitioners of today able to remain so negligent in our practice? Those who have come before us have said, the way-sticky mind of a Tenzo is actualized by rolling up your sleeves. So I like that little story about Shui Feng and Dong Shan. And please take this story for your own. I can't explain it to you because you have to make it personal. In the issues, in the stuff of your own life, But maybe I can say a little bit about it to help you to do that. Shui Feng must have been an excellent, powerful practitioner.

[23:03]

And Deng Shan must have been a sweet and loving teacher. And I think they already, before this story begins, they know each other pretty well. So Dongshan sees him washing rice and he says to him, in effect, how do you discriminate in your life between what you want and what you don't want? between good states of mind and bad states of mind, between rice and sand in the cooking of a meal. What's your way? Do you focus on positive elements, trying to avoid negative ones, or do you look for negative elements, trying to purify them?

[24:13]

How do you do it? What's your way? What's your way of working with your mind? Shui Feng doesn't like to make discriminations. Just effort, you know? Just do it. I throw everything out. I don't stick to positive mind and I don't stick to negative mind. I just appear. Dungsan says, we'll all starve if you throw away everything. If you don't discriminate, we won't be able to survive. We're alive, so we have to discriminate.

[25:15]

As soon as you say something, you're wrong. You know, I know every time I give a talk it's wrong. I know it. But, it's part of the schedule. So you have to do it. I could get up here, you know, and throw everything on the floor and leave. Maybe that's what choy fun would do. And that would be true. But then how can we practice together? Dongshan says, Then Shui Feng dumps over the rice bucket. I don't care. Still, this is the way. Young and strong and powerful, you know, this is the way. I'll deal with the consequences, he says. Don't forget, he's the Tenzo. Who do you think has to pick up all that rice on the floor? Right? Xue Feng, after Dongshan left, had to get a broom and sweep up the rice, and then rice is precious. He had to clean all the rice, too, and get all the dirt out of it and stuff, and then cook it later, probably.

[26:22]

But he was ready for that. He could do it. He had a lot of energy, and he was ready. This is my way. No fooling around. Your way is okay for you. You're an old guy. You're the teacher, but it's not my way. And what I like best about the story is that Dongshan says to him, I recognize the power of your way. That's great. It's not my way. You really can't study with me. But if you keep practicing in your way, you will realize the teaching, and you'll be a wonderful teacher. I don't know who it was in our Western way of thinking that figured out that there's one way of right and wrong. I don't know if it says it in the Bible or Kant figured that out in his moral philosophy.

[27:28]

I don't know who figured it out, but there is the idea that right is right for everybody and wrong is wrong for everybody. And we all think that, you know. Notice how it is when you have a way of doing something and somebody else has a different way. You don't like it, usually. That's not the way to do that. It's a very common way. It automatically arises in us. But Tungshan has the wisdom and the flexibility to see what his way is. He can't dump over the rice. But it's okay. He can recognize the rightness, the beauty in Shui Feng's approach. But it's not like he says okay to everything. No. His recognizing and acknowledging Shui Feng doesn't extend to recognizing and acknowledging everything he sees because he says to Shui Feng, but you're not ready yet.

[28:37]

You have a way to go, but I acknowledge you. This seems like a really nice way to teach. So how do you discriminate? How do you work with your mind and the things in your life? Any kind of work that we do is work to get us from point A to point B, whatever it is we're doing, whether it's cooking a meal or working in an office. How do you get from point A to point B without making the mistake of thinking that point B is an improvement or progress? Point A is point B already. But you have to do something.

[29:40]

How do you do it? How do you discriminate with total acceptance of the way things are in their incompleteness? Please make this story your own. Find out. And he says, do it personally. Do it carefully with your own hands, he says. The way-seeking mind of a Tenzo is actualized by rolling up your sleeves. Wonderful image, these big sleeves. You have to roll them up, get them out of the way, and stick your hands in the pot. just plunge in.

[30:43]

That's how you have to do it. Not by thinking about it, not by reflection. Although we think and we reflect, it's not that we don't. But it's by being completely engaged in our life as it appears to us, rolling up our sleeves, that we actualize this intention to find out what is the best way to live and to make offerings. We do that by doing what's in front of us. So we actually are very concerned about how we cut the vegetables and how we clean the zendo and how we hit the bell and how we offer the incense and how we bow. We don't understand that stuff as just a task or just a formality. We understand all of it. as the door, the way to enter fully Buddhist practice.

[31:51]

One more passage, okay? A little one. He's writing now about, he goes through the whole day. First you do this, then you do that, and it's wonderful. It's a continuous round of activity. First you do, he's telling you, first the Tantra should do all these things to plan for the morning meal. And as soon as the morning meal is finished and cleaned up, you should immediately plan for the afternoon meal. And as soon as the afternoon meal is finished and cleaned up, you should begin thinking about the next morning's meal all the time. planning and working. He's talking like that. And then in the context of saying that, he says, both day and night, allow things to come in and abide in your mind, and allow your mind to return and abide in things.

[33:14]

Before midnight, direct your attention to organizing the following day's work. After midnight, begin preparations for the morning meal." So this is the great secret of Tenzo Kyokan and of our way of practice. outside you, come into your mind. Don't try to keep yourself apart from things, distractions, the world, other people, your thoughts. Let all these things come into your mind and abide in your mind gently. Be affected by them all. Let them push you around and change your life. He says, day and night.

[34:21]

When things are bright and when things are dark, let things in. Be open and affected and moved by everything. But not only like that, also Let your mind go out and affect things. Change the world. Change everything that you come into contact with by virtue of your loving mind. Let the food in the kitchen come in and change you I'll let the carrot, you know, tell you how it wants to be cooked. But then you turn around and act on the carrot and cook it.

[35:26]

Be active and do something. Change the carrot. Change the world with the carrot. But then let the world change you, like that. Until, in this way, things flowing inside of us and outside of us, we realize that our mind, It's not what's on this side of the skin. You think that. But actually, inside and outside. Superspace. Inside and outside. Flowing in and out. Sometimes emphasizing one side, sometimes another side. But not so obvious, you know, where you are. So understanding this, I say understanding, but actually not understanding it, living it.

[36:37]

Understanding it is good, because that helps us to live it. But living it, day and night, you know, day and night. This is the beginning and the middle and the end of our practice. This is freedom. Nothing can hurt us. So that's all I have to say for today. Please, do you have any discussion or questions or something about that or about something else?

[37:39]

Is that what we do now? It's a matter of, if you think that you have to somehow make it different. In other words, Zen practice is going to Zazen, living your life. Pretty simple. That's all it is. If you think that you have to do some special things to make it into family practice, and you have to create something special called family practice, you may find it doesn't quite work.

[38:45]

You may find that you're trying to create religious forms. What happens often is you say, okay, now we'll get the kids to do zazen, but they don't So this becomes a big problem, right? How come we can't get the kids to do Zazen? It's really not working. So I would say, why are you worried about that? When they want to, they will. In the meantime, please just relate to your children. That's the way. Don't think you have to add an extra thing to it. Or if we say, let's make a special service for the children. But then we can't agree what the service should be, so we're arguing. And then we have the service, and we're not confident in the service that we have. And the children, who are incredibly smart, always, and know exactly what's going on, see that we're not confident in the service, and they think it's baloney. So they act up. And then we say, oh my God, the children are acting up.

[39:50]

Why are they doing this? It's not working. Forget the service. You don't need to have a special service. Just have lunch. You'll like the lunch. And have lunch, you know, with dedication to lunch. So, I don't know. I shouldn't be talking about this because I haven't really tried to have services and get the kids to do zazen and so on, so maybe it works fine. I have the idea that sometimes there's an attempt to make our practice into something else so that it will be palatable, more workable for family life, but I don't think that's necessary. I think family life as family life. I mean, the sense that I feel Dogen is writing about in Tenzoku Yōkan is that Kitchen work with the intention of Vaisakhi mind, with this dedication, right, to what is the best way to live and how can I make an offering.

[40:52]

With that intention, cutting a vegetable is Buddha's way. You don't have to cut the vegetable and bow and offer incense and do another cut and bow and offer incense and do another cut, although that might be nice, but you don't need to do that. Just cut the vegetable with that intention. So the same with family life. Just take on family life as Buddha's way. And do it with that intention. Don't think, oh no, now I'm doing family life, it's hopeless, I can't practice because I'm not bowing now. Just do family life, you know. And then, if you can go and do Zazen, then do Zazen. Don't think, oh, it's ridiculous for me to try to do Zazen because I'm not really a monk, what am I doing here, and so on. Just do it when you're doing that. That's what I'm talking about. So I don't mean to say that... I mean, I'm a family person myself. I've always practiced in the context of a family, so I actually feel quite very much that family life is a fertile place for practice.

[41:57]

But I just feel that we don't need a special form for family life practice, that's all I'm saying. We just need to do what's in front of us and figure out, in this situation, how am I going to live the best way that I can live? Right now, how am I going to do that? We don't need to put Zen on top of that. That's what I'm saying. Yes? I was really encouraged by the way you put that, about figuring out what's the right way to live. It seems to me that that's what I've been doing with my family, and what you sort of have to do if you're raising children. You always have to sort of question, what is it we're doing here? And as my kids get bigger, exploring that with them seems to be one of the main things we do as they get into the adolescence. And I feel like, you know, you yourself living a life dedicated to that purpose without holding up a sign about it.

[43:09]

But, you know, again I feel that my experience is that children are, especially little ones but all the way up, are extremely perceptive about what's actually going on. They can hear beneath the words. So I think if you live a life based on this intention, children know that, and they see that as an example for their lives, and they absorb that. I'm looking forward to seeing how these children that we've raised are going to be, because I think that without going to Zazen, My theory is without going to Zazen, they are way ahead of us. Growing up with this intention in their lives will be a great benefit for them, I think, I hope. It seems that way. I feel like since none of us as grown-ups start out with any knowledge or understanding or feeling for Buddhism, we have to sit for a long time just to figure out what it is we're doing.

[44:21]

And it could be that these little children, growing up in the midst of it, know what it is from early age, and maybe they don't have to go through all that. I don't know. Yes? This is sort of a real-life question. You spoke about this dream. Spoke about the what? The dream. The dream, yeah. But this was at Tassajara in this monastic situation. Do you think you would have come to the same kind of clarity without having been in that situation? Yeah. Well, no. I mean, I think that, I guess I think that practically speaking, I think we do need to spend some time in that kind of situation.

[45:28]

But that's what Zazen is. I mean, Tassajara life is just an extension of Zazen. So, a Sashin is the same thing, right? A one-day Sashin. Or even, you know, a morning of Zazen is that same thing. And so I think that although fundamentally We all already know that. We all already have that insight. Practically speaking, I think we do need to spend some time clearing our minds. So that's why I wouldn't make a hard and fast distinction, as they make often in countries where there's a strong monastic community, a big distinction between monks and laypeople. Some monks nowadays talk about the monk within. I think everybody has that taste for that life. And everybody should be able to live that life for some time.

[46:32]

And really there's nothing preventing any of us.

[46:35]

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