Joden Bob offers a reflection on Dogen's Tenzo Kyokun, Instructions to the Cook, during the community's Summer of Dogen.
Note: For the past 8 years Joden Bob has served as RCZC's tenzo or head cook.
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Talk Notes
Last week, John Wiley offered a touching story about his dad’s stable presence in life and in passing on the context of Dogen’s “Birth and Death.” I noted two comments that stuck with me:
“Face whatever arises” and “Day to day life is rarely discussed in Shobogenzo”
My reflections tonight are inspired by Dogen’s Tenzo Kyokun or “Instructions to the Cook.”
Preface with these short quotes, the first two are from this essay and the last from my tenzo blessing during Nomon Tim’s ordination as guiding teacher.
“Keep your eyes open.” “Nothing is hidden.”
“Between cushion and chopping block, no walls, no floor”
As many of you know, I have served as Tenzo for RCZC for the past 8 or so years. And, as I’ve noted in an earlier talk, I helped Kanho Chris one year at our Forest Street zendo as assistant tenzo. She warned me “not to get trapped by this position” but I found myself both liberated and at times exhausted by the responsibility ever since. I have discovered joy and satisfaction that has been both surprising and deeply moving. The sound of chopsticks clicking on oryoki bowls and the settled faces of sangha members after finishing a bowl of mushroom stew or cucumber salad is inestimable. True Buddha joy. As Dogen comments: "The job of the cook is an all-consuming engagement of the way. If one lacks the Way Seeking Ming, it will be nothing but a vain struggle and hardship, without benefit in the end.”
This summer’s assignment was to offer comments on one of Dogen’s essays. These “instructions” are interesting because they are not part of the essays we associate with Dogen’s Shobogenzo, a deep and extensive offering that plumbs the depths and soars beyond the outer edges of the vast universe, exploring various questions in a style that is at first a bit baffling and comes into clearer perspective with exposure, diligence and repetition. This text is different, in ways I hope to make clear in the next few minutes.
My deeper appreciation of Tenzo Kyokun has benefited from a book I provide to fellow students who express an interest in the position of tenzo. It’s called appropriately, “How to Cook Your Life,’” a commentary by Uchiyama Roshi. I remember taking this book to Mexico just after beginning this role and how I treasured my study time with Uchiyama’s reflections on his own evolution during the hungry times of WW 2 and the lean times of recovery in Japan. As he points out, and is evident from the two pithy quotes above and many others that will emerge during this talk, serving as tenzo is both a unique opportunity to serve the Three Treasures of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha; it is also a moment by moment opportunity to reflect on your personal life and to incorporate a posture and attitude toward every moment and object one encounters to fully realize the Self becoming the self in full engagement with the relative world we live in, breath by breath.
This is a text that both is both instructive for continuing practice and utterly practical, tracing the days’ work of the tenzo from getting the rice and vegetable from the temple administrators immediately following the noon meal, to counting the numbers of mouths to be fed as the tenzo returns to his room and closes his eyes at the end of the day. Dogen poses ‘Facing whatever arises in this context” this way:
“All day and night the tenzo has to make arrangements and prepare meals without wasting a moment. If he throws all his energy into whatever the situation truly calls for, then both the activity and the method by which he carries it out will naturally work to nurture the seeds of the Buddhadharma. Just taking care of the function of the tenzo enables all the residents in the community to carry on their practice in the most stable way.
Or, again, reflecting on “facing whatever arises” Dogen says:
Put your whole attention into the work, seeing just what the situation calls for…(and) Cultivate a spirit which strives to increase the source of goodness upon the mountain of goodness.”
Another way to appreciate Shunryu Suzuki’s “You are prefect the way you are but there is always room for improvement.” Always surpassing the teachings of the ancestors.
In telling stories of various tenzo ancestors, Dogen makes it clear that “the tenzo is the man fully living out the buddha dharma” or, a paragraph later “ working as the tenzo is the incomparable practice of the Buddhas.”
But this practice is not separate from zazen. Rather it is the place where the stillness of sitting becomes the acting point of practice:, where each seemingly individual action from recipe choice, to counting the mouths to be fed, to shopping, to serving each meal and all its constituent pieces exactly on time, to cleaning chopsticks and each cooking pot as intimately as washing one’s own face, each and all contribute to a harmonious and tasty outcome. The constant demand to nourish the sangha and all beings in the 6 realms is based on the truth “that the mouth of a monk is like an oven” - never satisfied, always hungry for whatever fuel/food is offered. How can we save all beings when we ourselves are in need of essential nourishment?
Uchiyama Roshi points out in his commentary that “there is no other writing which brings together the work of the tenzo and shikantaza together. He reflects on how Dogen, three times in this text states:
The three treasures Buddha, Dharma, and sangha are the highest and most worthy of respect of all things…Given the opportunity to prepare meals for the Three Treasures our attitude should truly be one of joy and gratefulness…My sincerest desire is that you exhaust all the strength and effort of all your lives past present and future and of every moment of every day into your practice through the work of the tenzo.
This is not to confuse just sitting shikantaza with the work of the tenzo. Shikantaza is just sitting. The work of the tenzo is just the work of the tenzo but the fundamental idea is concentrating wholly on one thing and only that one thing. This is the cornerstone of every teaching of Dogen. We might say we have shikantaza and tenzo taza. Each are concentration fully in that moment. The work of the tenzo is informed every moment by the “unbusyness” that has been embodied in the in the practice of just sitting.
How did this all begin and how did Dogen come to this essential recognition of cooking as beyond while encompassing a functional activity (which it always is) and the reverberating spiritual practice of concentrating on one thing, instant by instant, as the highest form of fully participating in the buddha dharma?
How does Dogen come to the statement that the greatest teachers from earliest times have “carried out their work with their own hands?” That they have said, in the clearest manner: “The Way-seeking Mind of a Tenzo is actualized by rolling up your sleeves.” No philosophy or ideas here. Just get to work! Chop wood, carry water. Peel carrots, wash dishes.
While quoting numerous times from the Japanese text Chanyuan Quigui (Rules of Purity for the Zen Monastery (1103), he also reflects on our Chinese ancestor, Bhaizhang, a teacher 3 generations following rom Hui Neng, who wrote the first comprehensive set of rules for Zen (Chan) practice around 800 AD. Here’s what Baizhang tells us of the tenzo’s duties. So much more than “just cooking”:
The duty of this official is to prepare and serve the rice gruel in the morning and the rice gruel of the noon meal every day for the practitioners. In preparation and serving, he must always maintain sanitary standards with utmost care. He must be resourceful in using available quantities of supplies and attentive to his workplace. He must also be thrifty about supplies and never waste them through extravagance. Instructing the novice attendants to keep the rules, he must not allow them to become idle and negligent in serving food to the practitioners or participating in physical labor. The kitchen official must treat farm workers kindly and at planting time which requires heavy labor should give them some reward and equal benefit amongst themselves. At the morning and noon meals he eats the same food in the kitchen hall as what has served to the practitioners in the practice hall when the pails of gruel or rice are ready for transport he must first burn incense and perform prostrations toward the practice hall before they are delivered.
So this Dogen text, dated 1237, is an early writing from the same period as Fukanzazengi, Genjo Koan, and Bendowa, written following his extended stay in Song China and returning to Kennin-ji in Kyoto. It comes nearly 500 years after Baizhang and 150 years after the primary Japanese text of monastery instruction. But Dogen, having experienced profound revelations from his interaction with Chinese tenzos (who typically served for one-year terms) and his realization that many of the great teachers such as Guishan and Dongshan had immeasurably deepened their practice as tenzo, is deeply disappointed by what he finds upon his return. This essay seeks to answer his profound distress at what he found:
It has been several hundred years since the Buddha Dharma was introduced into Japan. Yet, no one has ever written about the preparation and serving of meals as an expression of buddha dharma, nor have any teachers taught concerning these matters. Much less has there been any mention of bowing 9 times prior to offering meals to the residents. Such a practice has never entered the minds of people in this country. Here people think nothing of eating like animals with no concern for the way they eat. What a pathetic state of affairs. It truly saddens me to see things this way. Why must it be so?
Later in this essay, Dogen tells us a bit more about how far from the devotion he encountered in China was from his experience at Kennin-ji:
They had the office of tenzo, but in name only; there was no one who actually carried out the functions of the office. Since no one clearly saw that the work of the tenzo itself is the activity of a Buddha, it should not be surprising that there was no one capable of functioning with conviction through this office... Since he had never encountered a living example of a tenzo functioning as a buddha, he was only wasting his time, carelessly breaking the standards of practice. It was truly a pathetic situation….. He never even helped to prepare the meals, but entrusted all the work to some absent minded insensitive servant, while he merely gave out orders. Never once did he check to see if the work was being done properly... He did not know that taking care of these matters is itself Buddhist practice. Nor, apparently, did the practice of putting on his kesa and bowing 9 times before serving each meal ever occurred to him, not even in a dream.
Strong words, great disappointment, and profound distress at this total lack of appreciation for this opportunity to walk the Way of the ancestors and fully devote one’s energies to the benefit fo the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This is clearly more tha a job of cooking.
In my early exploration of the role of tenzo, I spent a week as an assistant in the kitchen at Daido Loori’s Zen Mountain Monastery near Woodstock, NY. Like Dogen, I was distressed to find out the tenzo was usually in NYC and had left meal planning and preparation to two younger students who evidenced little interest in ensuring the Buddhadharma presence, had no kitchen altar and no blessing, bowings or offerings before beginning meal preparations, or other recognitions of the profound and joyous task at hand. It was, indeed, hard work but something was missing, for sure.
Two stories in this text that point to the necessary devotion of the tenzo to his task and the profound understanding that the responsibility is unique and truly specific to the full dedication of the Authentic Self to serving the Three treasures.
After his long sea voyage to China in 1223, while still on board his vessel, the tenzo of Mount Ayuwang came aboard, seeking mushrooms to create a special dish for his sangha. He had left after lunch, walked 14 miles and intended to return that evening. When Dogen expressed disappointment they would not have time to talk, the monk replied: “I am sorry, but that is impossible just now. If I am not there tomorrow to prepare the meal it will not be made well.” When Dogen pressed him that others could equally make the meal. The monk replied, “How can I entrust the work to others?” Dogen, just beginning his exploration of the Chan way, asked why the old monk insisted on the hard work of tenzo instead of practicing zazen or studying koans? The monk “burst out laughing” and replied, “My good friend from abroad! You do not understand what practice is all about, nor do you know the meaning g of characters (texts).” The monk noted the sun near setting and said “I’m afraid I can’t stay any longer. 14 miles to walk back to prepare the meal for the next day. 28 miles to find a special addition for the sangha’s rice or noodles. Total devotion to practice and to being on time to offer the meal to the sangha.
The second story Dogen tells is from his stay at Mount Tiantong where he encounters bare-headed, 68-year old monk Lu drying mushrooms in the brutal, foot-burning hot sun. Dogen asked why he never used assistants and Lu replied, “Other people are not me.” Dogen replied, “I can see your work is the activity of the Buddhadharma, but why are you working so hard in this scorching sun.” Lu replied: “If I do not do it now, when else can I do it.” Dogen continued walking and states, “I began to sense inwardly the true significance of the role of tenzo.”
Throughout this text are moments like this -- of stating the basic reality for each of us, in this individual moment of karmic possibility, to take full responsibility for our response to the moment at hand and to “increase the goodness.” Who else will do it? If not now, when?
A key lesson for me in this text is built upon the notion of not making distinctions among ingredients, to not be carried away by aversion to grass soup or infatuation with cream soup. Or. As stated in Seng Tsan’s Faith in MInd: “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” Dogen puts it this way: “Your attitude towards things should not be contingent upon their quality.” A person who makes distinctions in this fashion is not a person “working in the Way.”
Just as Indra can plant a blade of grass in the sand and the Buddha can then say, “The Sanctuary is established,” so Dogen offers: “Maintain an attitude that tries to build great temples from ordinary greens, that expounds the Buddhadharma though the most trivial activities.” His direction to the cook is to handle “even a single leaf of a green” as a manifestation of the Buddha which, in turn allows the Buddha to manifest through the leaf. How we treat something, anything, transforms it and ourselves. The lesson that Dogen draws from this transformed way of engaging this reality, in the kitchen and in our lives is: “It is vital that we clarify and harmonize our lives with our work, and not lose sight of either the absolute or the practical.”
A little later in the text, Dogen offers:
A dish is not necessarily superior because you have prepared it with choice ingredients, nor is a soup inferior because you have made it with ordinary greens. When handling and selecting greens do so wholeheartedly, with a pure mind, and without trying to evaluate their quality, in the same way in which you would prepare a splendid feast.”
He concludes, “never feel aversion toward plain ingredients as a teacher of men and of heavenly beings, make the best use of whatever greens you have.” This is fundamentally the basis of an unobstructed, non-judgmental approach to whatever life offers in the moment: make the best use of whatever greens you have. And make the tastiest soup you can from those greens (and whatever else you can find).
The final sections of these instructions step back from the physical and practical and reflect upon what Dogen calls the Three Minds that inform the tenzo’s work: Big Mind, Parental (or Grandmother) Mind and Joyous Mind, three intertwined realities fully engaged with our life.
As Uchiyama points out, the fundamental lesson of the Buddha’s teachings is that freedom from anxiety, living a settled life with a judgement-free perspective, is found “when the “Self settles naturally upon itself,” bringing composure and compassion to everything you encounter in your life, whatever “greens” are offered.
It is through the practice of preparing meals, with all its complexities and requirements to provide tasty food at just the right time, that we have the opportunity to develop these perspectives.
Daishin, Great mind, is an attitude of magnanimity, accepting whatever arises, in the moment., as the materials and situation we have to work with. Dogen characterizes great mind as a mountain, “stable and impartial.” A mountain is without prejudice, not taking sides. Dogan says “do not get carried away by the sounds of spring, nor become heavy hearted upon seeing the colors of fall. View the changes of the seasons as a whole, and weigh the relativeness of light and heavy from a broad perspective. It is then that you should right understand and study the character for magnanimous “ Grass soup and cream soup are equally delicious, equally the same, one taste, the buddhadharma, the world itself as it is.
Roshin, Parental Mind, , or as some translate, grandmotherly mind, is the ever-caring attitude of a parent. As we recite the Metta Sutta, “ Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things.” In the context of this these instructions, this means cherishing the Three Treasures. Parental mind is unconditionally giving, without thought of profit, gain or self benefit. It is the mind that thoughtfully considers a balanced menu, that chooses foods that all can eat without discomfort, that makes sure there is coffee in the morning, fruit and chocolates for snacks and to make sure anyone who is ill gets served their meals to speed their speed their recovery.
Joyful mind, kishin, is one of gratefulness and buoyancy. The great good fortune of being born as a human in this body, has given us this opportunity to serve the sangha, honor the Buddha and further the Dharma. Master Dogan reflects that the merit of serving as tenzo “will never decay,” and that we should each “exhaust all the strength and effort of all your lives – past, present, and future and every moment of every day into your practice as tenzo, so that you form a strong connection with the buddhadharma.” It’s said that you can taste the love in food when it is prepared with joy. May our preparations always fully demonstrate our joy, caring and magnanimity to further and benefit our sangha’s practice.
Dogen concludes this essay “for followers of the Way in succeeding generations”, an offering to us in 2024:
Whether you are the head of a temple, a senior monk or other officer, or simply an ordinary monk, do not forget the attitude behind living out your life with joy having the deep concern of a parent and carrying out all your activities with magnanimity.”
Thank you for your attention.
Question for Consideration: How do you make the best of whatever greens you have with a great, parental and joyous mind?
