to talk a little bit about Morioki. In the East, that East, the West East, So food is, let's just talk about Japan. Food is arranged around the rice. So you have a bowl, main dish, which is rice, big dish, and then whatever else you're going to eat goes around the rice. So you eat some rice, And then you eat a little bit of something else.

[01:10]

And then you eat some rice again. And then you eat some of the something else. And then you eat some rice again. And then you keep going back to the rice, rather than just eating all the goodies all at once. So it's a kind of style. And sometimes there's only rice. And so this style has been developed over a long, long period of time. And so the Oryoki style of eating embodies that way. The first bowl is the Buddha bowl. And that's the rice bowl.

[02:16]

You don't put other things into it. That's the bowl you keep going back to, which is the main nourishment. And then, so there's a way of eating with orioke that makes sense. You eat the rice, and then you take something out of the second bowl and eat it. And then you go back to the rice, and then you go to the third bowl and eat some of that. And then you go back to the rice, and then you go back to the second bowl. And the way that The Kokuyo can tell when to ask the people, ask the servers to come for seconds, is after you've gone back to the third bowl a couple of times, you know that it's time for the servers to come because there's a kind of evenness to

[03:29]

then it's easy to tell when to come for seconds. So, we don't mix things with the first bowl. The first bowl is just pure grain. We eat a lot of different kinds of grains here. So, we eat oatmeal, we eat seven grains and nine grains, etc. But it's all, that's the rice bowl, the grain bowl. And it doesn't get mixed with anything. It's very pure. But the other bowls are more... Those bowls can be mixed. complimentary foods around the rice.

[04:49]

So sometimes you can mix the second and third bowl in the orioke, because those bowls are mixed anyway. So when we have fruit and yogurt, people sometimes like to put the yogurt on the fruit. So you can do that. Or if we have nuts, you can put them in whatever. But we try to keep the first bowl as kind of neutral. Keep going back to the, it's not exactly neutral, but it's the fundamental food that doesn't get mixed with something else. We put a little gomasio on it to flavor it, but basically it's the staple So I just wanted to talk about that a little bit.

[05:55]

Do you have any question about that? Yes. Yes. I wonder, is it ever permissible to use chopsticks for the Buddha bowl? Well, I don't like to use the word permissible. It's customary to use the spoon. Well, it makes more sense to use the spoon because, you know, when you eat rice with chopsticks, you usually put the bowl up to your mouth and shovel it in. That's the usual way to eat rice with chopsticks, is lift up the bowl and shovel it in. And so we use the spoon. The priest bowl is curved and it doesn't lend itself to shoveling it in.

[06:57]

You said not to mix things from the second and third bowl into the first bowl. I've sometimes seen people take things from the first bowl and put them in the second or third. Is that directional? Well, let me say something about that. Ordinarily, it's customary not to do that either. But if there's some physical or medical or problematic reason why it's good to do that, You can do that. These are not rules or rigid rules. It's just customary. But it feels... Portioning it out from the Buddha bowl into something else might be okay. If you have some rice and you want to put it in your soup, that might be okay. It's what you're doing, kind of sharing the rice with the rest of the food.

[08:28]

But supposing a server comes up before you're finished, and you want some, you have to get the serving before it's finished. Otherwise you don't get the second serving. No, I don't think you have to clean every plate before you get seconds. I'm wondering, is that just a metaphor for what you were talking about? Well, it seems to me like it's a metaphor. Because they don't know what we mean every time you take soup, rice, every time you take... I mean, you can take two bites of the soup before you take a bite.

[09:58]

Nobody's checking. It's just that you go back and forth. I don't know about one bite and one bite. Some people like to be very, you know, strict about every little thing, you know. I remember when we were eating brown rice all the time. The macrobiotic people, you know, were very influential in the 60s and early 70s. And you were supposed to take a bite of brown rice and chew it 100 times. But there are people who like to get it down to that too, you know, like you did this so many times and then twice, you know. I think that there's an attitude, an eating attitude, it's not an eating rule. Yeah. Well, you can put them on the other bowl.

[11:29]

Well, the other bowl is under the second bowl. Right, okay, well, if there's no bowl to put them on, stick them in your ear. Sometime I'd like to go through Oreo, but not now So Master Wanshi says, the consistent conduct of people of the way is like the flowing clouds with no grasping mind, like the full moon reflecting universally, not confined anywhere, glistening within each of the 10,000 forms.

[12:53]

The consistent conduct of the way... This is what we call our practice. Practice is consistent conduct of the way. If you have consistent conduct of the way, then you have practice. It means Knowing what your practice is, knowing that you're not deviating in some way, even though you may lose your way from time to time, because of your consistency, you know how to come back. When we do something over and over, this is called studying away.

[13:57]

But the study in this case means doing something over and over. Consistent practice of the way means every day you do the same practice until you learn it through your pores and it becomes part of your It becomes, we say, you become the way yourself. You practice the way until you become the way. He says, the consistent conduct of people of the way is like flowing clouds with no grasping mind. like the full moon reflecting universally, not confined anywhere.

[15:00]

There's a poem in the Platform Sutra, the Sixth Ancestor says something like, the person of the way should be like the sun reflecting in all directions. And it's like someone else said, a person of the way should be like a round cup or a round glass with no corners, so that no matter where you are on the glass, it's facing There's no place hidden. And it's the same wherever you are. So these images of the sun reflecting or expressing itself in all directions.

[16:17]

and the glass with no place to get stuck. But each side, there's only one side, actually, even though it goes around in a circle. And all the sides, that one side is the same all the way around. That's consistency. So, the Moon, reflecting universally, means that it's projecting its light everywhere. And glistening within the Moon, reflected universally, not confined anywhere, glistening within each of the 10,000 forms. That means the 10,000 forms are the vehicle for the Moon, for the Moon's reflection.

[17:20]

There's a wonderful poem that Dogen uses, I can't remember who wrote it, in Nintenzo Kyokun. Xue Feng. Huh? Xue Feng. Xue Feng. 1735. The truth you search for cannot be grasped. As night advances, A bright moon illuminates the whole ocean. The dragon's jewels are found in every wave. Looking for the moon, it is here in this wave and in the next. In each moment's activity, The enlightenment is reflected, but you cannot grasp it. It's kind of like the glitter on the waves.

[18:27]

It's there, but you can't put it in your pocket. So then he says, dignified and upright emerge and make contact with the variety of phenomena, unstained and unconfused. Dignified and upright is like posture. Dogen talks about zazen and posture as being dignified and upright. It's dignified posture, noble posture, upright posture. When you have correct posture in Zazen, you feel this way.

[19:34]

Some people say, I don't know what I'm doing in Zazen. But if you sit upright, totally upright, with dignified posture, how can you miss it? I think it's easy to see beyond or look beyond the obvious for something else. Zazen is just dignified posture, noble posture, expressing that nobility in each person. That's why we put so much emphasis on posture.

[20:46]

I used to put more emphasis on posture than I do now. I used to go around and judge everybody's posture all the time, minutely. I don't do that so much anymore. But it's very important to totally pay attention to your posture and to make your effort, if you make that effort, then that's what you will experience. And then you bring that posture, that posture stays with you, or you maintain that posture in all of your postures. We can't walk around cross-legged, but we bring that attitude into all of our postures, all of our activities.

[21:57]

And then he says, function the same toward all others, since all have the same substance as you. When we have that, maintain that kind of posture, position, which is to bring forth the Buddha nature, manifest the Buddha nature, then we see the Buddha nature in everyone else. And then we treat people as Buddha rather than as just ordinary human beings. Or we treat ordinary human beings as Buddha because we realize that we all have the same nature. This is how we round out our life as a Zen student.

[23:07]

Language cannot transmit this conduct. Speculation cannot reach it. Leaping beyond the infinite and cutting off the dependent, be obliging without looking for merit. Leaping beyond the infinite and cutting off the dependent. The infinite is like You know, sometimes people get attached to emptiness and sometimes people get attached to form. The dependent is like form and the infinite is like emptiness. Don't get attached to either emptiness or form. But Suzuki Hiroshi used the term, independency, in his Sando Kai lectures, he used the term, independency, which means, you know, even though we have no self, there's the feeling of a self, of an independent self.

[24:58]

So our life is somewhere between no self and self. If you say there is a self, that's not right. If you say there's not a self, that's not quite right either. Our life, that's why it has such a difficult time understanding Our life is somewhere between no self and a self. And if we fall into one side or the other, then we have a problem. So if we say we're just independent, that's right, but not quite. And if we say we're dependent, that's right, but not quite. So he used this word, independency. which is somewhere in between dependent and independent.

[26:07]

If you say, I am alive, that's so, but not quite. If you say, I'm dead, that's true, but not quite. So our life is somewhere between birth and death. So reality is in between the opposites. If you fall into one or the other of the opposites, then you fall into duality and we can't understand it. But the problem is that we become too anxious when we're in between. We have to fall into one side or the other because we can't stand the contradiction. So he says, Leaping beyond the infinite and cutting off the dependent. Be obliging without looking for merit.

[27:11]

In a sense that means just do what you have to do without thinking about what it will do for you. Or without feeling looking for praise or advancement, but just doing what is real for the sake of reality. People may not recognize you. They may not think you're doing such a good job. But if you stay with reality, Delgin is always talking about this, don't look for name and fame. Name and fame is the worst thing that you can develop.

[28:20]

Just stay with the real and don't look for recognition. Sometimes it's very hard. He says, this marvel cannot be measured with consciousness or emotion. Consciousness or emotion is sometimes called emotion-thought. Emotion-thought. You can't measure it with the way you feel about it or the way you think about it. These are not accurate tools for measurement for reality. On the journey, accept your function in your house.

[29:27]

On the journey, accept your function in your house. Oh, I see. On the journey, accept your function and in your house, please sustain it. In other words, on your journey means as you proceed in the world and also in your own house. Please sustain it. Comprehending birth and death. Leaving causes and conditions. Genuinely realize that from the outset your spirit is not halted. Comprehending birth and death. That's one of the big items of Buddhism. Understanding birth and death. We say, no birth, no death. Because there is no one who is actually born and no one who actually dies, even though there is birth and death.

[30:36]

There is such a thing as birth and death. But who is it that is born and who is it that dies? So Buddhadharma talks about transformations, continuous transformations of Buddha nature. So, there is this independency, but there's a tendency for independence We are alive, but we are dead, but... So there are various levels of birth and death.

[31:44]

I was born at such and such a time, then I lived and then I died at such and such a time. That's one way of looking at birth and death. And that happens. to all of us. And so that's what we're concerned with, and where we try to preserve this existence. But life itself is not affected by this birth and death. by disappearance and disappearance. So, the important thing is to find the basic, fundamental life itself, so that we can see through the illusion of birth and death.

[32:49]

If we identify with life itself, or with the transformation itself, instead of identifying just with our idea of ego, life, then we can understand better what is birth and death. to just be able to stay in each moment without longing for more or regretting less and respecting each moment.

[34:01]

Comprehending birth and death, leaving causes and conditions, not being attached to causes and conditions. Genuinely realize that from the outside, your spirit is not halted. From the outset, your spirit is not halted. It's not halted by conditions. And it's not halted by birth and death. So we have been told that the mind that embraces all the ten directions does not stop anywhere, or does not have any impediment. The mind that embraces all directions is the mind that is not affected by birth and death.

[35:12]

It's like the moon reflected in the water. The moon reflected in the water doesn't have any boundary. You know, this is like Dogen's Kencho Koan. Dogen says, Gaining enlightenment is like the moon reflected in the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water disturbed. The moon is our enlightened mind reflected in the waters of our life. It doesn't get wet, yet it's reflected everywhere.

[36:19]

It's involved and yet independent. Although its light is extensive and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch across. and the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew on the grass, on one drop of water. Enlightenment does not disturb the person just as the moon does not disturb the water. So we are concerned about our life and about the lives of others around us.

[37:42]

But this life has a duration for each one of us. And everyone who's ever been born has experienced the end to this particular life experience. And each one of us must deal with this beginning, middle and end, moment by moment. Birth and death are like the two sides of the moon. The one side is dark and the other side is light. The dot.

[38:45]

And when we're on the light side, we're afraid of the dark side. And when we're on the dark side, we're afraid of the light side. But it's one whole moon. As Dogen says, birth and death don't hinder each other. One breath is a breath of birth and death. Inhaling, we come to life. Exhaling, we let go. So we're constantly letting go and coming back, letting go, alternating. Birth and death are an alternation, like a rhythm.

[39:55]

We shouldn't get stuck. into thinking that we're only on one side. So everyone has gone into the dark side. Where do you think they went? And where do you think we came from? What's going on? Stillness and movement. Stillness and movement. So it's important to find our bigger self, to let go of our small self and find our true self so that we know how to proceed.

[41:15]

So he says, comprehending birth and death, leaving causes and conditions, not being trapped by causes and conditions, genuinely realize that from the outset your spirit is not halted. So we have been told that the mind that embraces all the ten directions does not stop anywhere, or is not hindered anywhere. So, This is also zazen, is to let the mind embrace all the ten directions. So that's why when we sit in zazen, to just open ourselves to this non-duality, the unconditioned realm, that's zazen. which includes pleasure and pain, and embraces the whole universe.

[42:44]

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