In his second talk at Samish Island Fall Sesshin, Nomon offers insight on practice outside of the zendo: in dokusan (private interview with a Zen priest) and in the Zen kitchen, with a special acknowledgement of Head Tenzo Bob Rose's commitment to feeding the sangha for a decade. 

Stream audio:

Tim's Talk Notes:

Deep appreciation for two practices:

• dokusan where I remember we all have such different experiences of these many moments in sesshin. One person's lovely ritual is another's trigger is another's meh! How it goes.
• oryoki - such a powerful rich and, yes, complex ritual for mindful eating and expression of our gratitude in receiving the blessing of food. And, yes, all kinds of potential triggers there. Feeling rushed. Feeling oppressed by a kind of institutional framework: you must eat THIS FOOD in THIS WAY because the authorities are DEMANDING it. So much to appreciate and work with.

And so much to appreciate about the amazing things that we have our volunteer cooks pulling off these simple healthy meals and doing so on time and doing so as Zen practice in the kitchen. They do their best in there to attend with full awareness to each thing. I've been quoting our Zen ancestor Dōgen a bit talking about noticing you're already riding the ox and riding home in the evening mist and a bit of praying for better weather for the farmers but Dōgen also wrote extensively about the practice in the kitchen.

He wrote "For a tenzo, working with the sleeves tied back is the activity of way seeking mind." That cooking is absolutely the practice is no different from zazen - the activity of way seeking mind. The sleeves thing being about the big long sleeves on Sōtō Zen robes - you have to tie them back to do this work.

And our cooks - tenzo is the term for head cook - read quotations from Dōgen's kitchen manual and do their own morning service. They do their best to keep speech to a minimum and focus deeply on chopping carrots and stirring hot cereal. And I don't know if Dōgen says this but they also know that the most important ingredient in our meals is love - you can taste it can't you?

This is a tricky balance. The timing is tight and also interrupted by things like the cooks heading down here - hi cooks! - for the Dharma talks. The cooks have to plan ahead without getting lost in that. They have to confer and organize without getting tangled and confused and in each other's way. All kinds of little things can go wrong - the rice cooker not plugged in, burning the cereal - all kinds of things. Working with this juggling act is a high wire act and that's why Dōgen considered being tenzo something that's only appropriate to experienced practitioners.

It's a bit of a longer quotation but I'd like to share the story Dōgen tells about how he learned about the great virtues of the practice of the tenzo. Dōgen has recently arrived in China but for reasons unknown to us now he was stuck on the boat - perhaps he was quarantined or perhaps he didn't have the right ordination to join the Chinese monasteries. It turned out the boat he came on was also hauling Japanese mushrooms to sell in China. Matsutakes perhaps!

In the fifth month of the sixteenth year of Jiading [1223], I was staying on a ship at Qingyuan. One time while I was talking with the captain, a monk about sixty years old came on board   He talked to a Japanese merchant and then bought some mushrooms from Japan. I invited him to have tea and asked where he came from. He was the tenzo of Mt. Ayuwang.

  "I am from Shu in western China," he said, "and have been away from my native place for forty years. Now I am sixty one years old. I have visited monasteries in various places. Some years ago, priest Daoquan became abbot of Guyun Temple at Mr. Ayuwang, so I went to Mt. Ayuwang and entered the community and have been there ever since. Last year when the summer practice period was over, I was appointed tenzo of the monastery. Tomorrow is the fifth day of the fifth month, but I have nothing good to offer the community. I wanted to make a noodle soup, but we did not have mushrooms, so I made a special trip here to get some mushrooms to offer to the monks from the ten directions."

  I asked him, "When did you leave there?"

  "After the noon meal."

  "How far is Mt. Ayuwang?"

  "Thirty four or thirty five li [about twelve miles]."

  "When are you going back to your monastery?"

  "I will go back as soon as I have bought mushrooms."

    I said, "Today we met unexpectedly and had a conversation on this ship. Is it not a good causal relationship - Please let me offer you a meal, Reverend Tenzo."

  "It is not possible. If I don't oversee tomorrow's offering, it will not be good."

  "Is there not someone else in the monastery who understands cooking? Even if one tenzo is missing, will something be lacking?"

  A have taken this position in my old age. This is the fulfillment of many years of practice. How can I delegate my responsibility to others? Besides, I did not ask for permission to stay out."

  I again asked the tenzo, "Honorable Tenzo, why don't you concentrate on zazen practice and on the study of the ancient masters' words rather than troubling yourself by holding the position of tenzo and just working? Is there anything good about it?"

  The tenzo laughed a lot and replied, "Good man from a foreign country, you do not yet understand practice or know the meaning of the words of ancient masters."

  Hearing him respond this way, I suddenly felt ashamed and surprised, so I asked him, "What are words? What is practice?"

  The tenzo said, "If you penetrate this question, how can you fail to become a person of understanding?"

  But I did not understand. Then the tenzo said, "If you do not understand this, please come and see me at Mt. Ayuwang some time. We will discuss the meaning of words." He spoke in this way, and then he stood up and said, "The sun will soon be down. I must hurry." And he left.

And then Dogen picks up the tale months later after he's made it to the monastery where he would later meet is teacher Rujing.

  In the seventh month of the same year, I was staying at Mt. Tiantong when the tenzo of dcame to see me and said, "After the summer practice period is over, I am going to retire as tenzo and return to my native place. I heard from a fellow monk that you were staying here, so I thought I should come to see you."

  I was moved with joy. I served him tea and we talked. When I referred to the discussion of words and practice which had taken place on the ship, the tenzo said, "To study words you must know the origin of words. To endeavor in practice you must know the origin of practice."

  I asked, "What are words?"

  The tenzo said, "One, two, three, four, five."

  I asked again, "What is practice?"

  "Nothing in the entire universe is hidden."

  We talked about many other things, which I will not introduce now. If I know a little about words or understand practice, it is because of the great help of the tenzo. I told my late master Myozen about this in detail, and he was extremely pleased.

  I later found a verse which Xuedou wrote for a monk:

Through one word, or seven words, or three times five,

even if you thoroughly investigate myriad forms

nothing can be depended upon.

Night advances, the moon glows and falls into the ocean.

The black dragon jewel you have been searching for is everywhere.

  What the tenzo had told me corresponded with Xuedou's poem. So I knew all the more that the tenzo was truly a person of the way.

  By studying this poem we know that the words we saw before were one, two, three, four, five; the words we see now are six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Fellow monks of later generations, from this you should understand practice and from that you should understand words. If you make effort in this way, you will understand pure one taste Zen beyond words. If you do not make such an effort, you will be troubled with the poison of five taste Zen. Then you will not be able to prepare the monks' food properly.

We've had the practice of tenzo and oryoki on and off for many years now. Opportunities to do this only come up a few times a year and even less since we had to leave our long term rented hall in Bellingham due to the pandemic.

And from the beginning it's been a challenge. Our first half-dozen or so tenzos tended to feel overwhelmed by the practice and mostly didn't express enthusiasm for doing it again. With most things in the sangha I've been able to model or traing or help in some way when we add a new Zen practice but I never really could with cooking as I had to be in the zendo and dokusan room. And I actually have quite a bit of experience having been on the kitchen staff at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center for 6 months when I was younger but it was hard to figure out how to transmit the feeling, spirit and flow in the kitchen without being in there. Well I pretty much just FAILED to transmit much of anything.

And I'm afraid that tendency to just toss someone into the wolves den did re-assert itself when we were staying at Rinso-in Temple in Japan in April. We cook for ourselves there in their guest kitchen with a ginormous rice cooker and an ancient 2-burner gas stove and we tossed Mari in as tenzo without enough support either. I'm glad she survived, is still with us, and will still speak to me! And yes Mari I do want you to learn how to be tenzo again properly later on - but NO RUSH.

But back to the earlier days of Zen cooking at Red Cedar.

We did pull it off. We had Oryoki which is wonderful but there was always this dark cloud over the practice for me and the "that was hard, I'd kind of rather not do it again" tenzo of that sesshin. Occasionally I'd be down there and make a little suggestion but it wasn't enough support.

Carrie will appreciate one story there. Edie was tenzo. By then she was already into her mid-70's. And she'd clearly been on her feet way too long. Her scoliosis was really actived too so I was a bit horrified to see this wise old woman hunched over lurching from one end of the kitchen to the other - making a suggestion her, stirring pot there, chopping an apple over there. I walked behind her trying to get her attention to suggest she sit down and let the supporting cooks come to her but it took quite a while - her focus was so storngly in front of her and I didn't want to startle her. "Edie…Edie??... Edie…" please sit down your folks have it covered.

And probably the enthusiastic language of the tenzo from Ayuwang  was in her bones plus like many of us she was an intensely responsible person who wanted to always, always do it right. No matter what. If it killer her she was going to get that meal out!

And no, I don't think she was every tenzo again.

So this is not easy.

And then in the mid-2100's I think along comes Joden Bob Rose. Turned out he'd cooked for a fishing crew (or was it a science boat, Bob?) in a kitchen the size of a broom closet for a season and has the sense of simplicity, grace in motion, and thinking ahead plus a surprisingly even temperament. He volunteered to be tenzo and ever since he's been usually our main tenzo. He didn't just make it up on his own either. He went to a couple of different Zen kitchens to train. One he was disappointed by if I recall but then he found himself in Onshin Michael Newton's kitchen at the place that Mountain Rain Zen in Vancouver used to rent for their long sesshin called Loon Lake. Michael is one of the most graceful men I've ever met. Calm, organized, warm and also very precise. And by then Michael had been Mountain Rain's main tenzo for some years. So we have Michael's wise heart and heands in our kitchen too, through Bob.

And many others have helped in Red Cedar's kitchen but we've depended on Bob for probably nearly a decade by now, if you include the pandemic pause, wisely and energetically steering the ship in the kitchen.

I'm doubly happy to share with you about all of this because this sesshin is another milestone in Red Cedar's evolution around Zen cooking. This retreat we are trying an experiment in training and passing on the tenzo's ladle. Kata, Hannah, and Raizelah are our Tenzos-in-Training working with Bob to make the delicious food we've been eating.

We are so lucky to have the 3 of them. Each already a quite confident cook training in the art of the tenzo for us. A generous thing to do to say the least!

Kata and Hannah who have already done several retreats apprenticing with Bob and now Raizelah who has helped cook in Zen kitchens at SF Zen Center and with Norman's Everyday Zen Sangha at their annual sesshin.

So at the end of this retreat we can all thank Bob - later I think we'll have a little ceremony with a literal ladle - but for now just thanking him for establishing a wise and sustainable practice Zen cooking in the kitchen. And we'll keep it going. As they each take a day or a retreat as the fully empowered Tenzo running the kitchen I know Kata, Hannah and Raizelah will be training others in the art of Zen cooking and the whole thing will not feel like a total house of cards to me like it did in the early days. Thank goodness we got through.

Thank you so much Joden sama. You are truly a sangha treasure. Enjoy your retirement! But not until after we get to enjoy a lunch and reception that you 4 and your helpers will somehow pull out of the hat tomorrow morning after the jukai without really enough time for cooking in the schedule.

Back to our practice in the zendo here. Dōgen's short dharma talks are indeed quite "Zen" and mysterious. Other's are more practical. I really appreciate this one - some wise advice for us for zazen and also how we can bring our practice out into the rest our day at sesshin, and also at home.

[Jodo 20, p 91. v. 1]

Here is a story. A kind in eastern India invited Venerable Prajnatara for a feast.

The kind asked, "The monks are all reciting sutras, Venerable one, why don't you recite them?"

Prajnatara said, "This humble person while exhaling does not follow the various conditions, while inhaling does not dwell in mental or physical realms. Continuously I recite a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a billion volumes of such a sutra, not only one or two volumes."

Dōgen said: Thus have I heard, and faithfully receive and respectfully practice.

Exhaling don't follow the various conditions.

Inhaling not dwelling in mental or physical realms.

This is wonderful advice in sesshin. See if you can get less involved in things. Oh that's interesting! What's she doing? Why's he turning around on the path, did he forget something? Wouldn't it be better if they fill-in-the-blank instead of fill-in-the-blank? Should I say something?

A great support for not getting involved in the various conditions is not looking around. A gaze gently down while walking around is a help. You can keep your head up and your posture open but gaze down. The Buddha recommended this long ago using the model of someone plowing a field with an ox. You'd be walking the plow furrowing through the earth not looking around to see what's going on.

Sometimes we can use the sesshin like a TV set. Don't look!

Another support is to see non-involvement as an active practice of trust and love. I don't need to even generate an opinion about whatever I think is going on here if I'm fully trusting you to do you. There's humility here. And an active engagement of beginner's mind or not knowing.

It's interesting the way Prajnatara breaks this process up in Dōgen's telling:

Exhaling don't follow the various conditions.

Inhaling not dwelling in mental or physical realms.

Following the various conditions is perhaps that first spark of attachment, hey that's interesting, hey that's annoying, hey. It's the beginning of lighting a little fire in our consciousness.

And not dwelling in mental or physical realms is the chewing it over in our minds. Often again and again. This is adding wood to the fire.

And then once we're in it it's had to stop. You can't tell your mind to stop thinking about things so well.

But then we can move back to this connection to breath. Get more interesting in the inhale and exhale. What does that really feel like? In the body? We can't control our mind but we can move attention and for a time we can maintain attention somewhere. If it snaps back to where we'd rather not be then we can notice that and renew our intentions.

See if you can practice being less involved today. It's a deep practice. And actually a very rewarding one. Often we don't quite realize how habitual our involvement is and it's a revelation if we can slow it down a little - there can be a lot of freedom and space there. A relief. The world doesn't need my constant attention and control to keep turning. Amazing.

*Breath counting instructions.* (as a way to deepen the relationship with breath as continuous practice throughout the day)

This work isn't easy. Dōgen acknowledged that in one of these short talks:

[jodo 239, v. 3, p.238]

The courage of the fisherman is to enter the water without avoiding deep sea dragons. The courage of the hunter is to travel the earth without avoiding tigers. The courage of the general is to face the drawn sword before him, and see death as just like life. What is the courage of patch-robed monks?

After a pause, Dōgen said: Spread out your bedding and sleep, set out your bowls and eat rice, exhale through your nostrils, radiate light from your eyes. Do you know there is something that goes beyond? With vitality eat rice and use the toilet. Transcend your personal prediction of future buddhahood from Gautama.

So just be without turning away, without getting hooked - to just be fully in this life of practice is as courageous as all of these other examples if not more so.

And radiating light from your eyes - be bright! Be alive!

Shantideva took similar inspiration from working people in staying motivated to practice.

When fishers, butchers, farmers, and the like,

Intending just to gain their livelihood,

Will suffer all the miseries of heat and cold,

How can I not bear the same to gain the happiness of beings?

This from his famous book on how to be a Bodhisattva which I mentioned yesterday - part of the chapter on working with our inner mental afflictions that get in the way.

Lastly lastly a few words on tomorrow's ceremony.

Tomorrow are born 6 baby bodhisattvas. The core practice of bodhisattvas - their support and guideposts and the source of their joyful efforts even in the face of great suffering - are the Zen precepts for creative and ethical engaged action. At first they sound a bit like the 10 commandments - and they kind of are - they remind us what not to do - but they also encourage us forward into what TO DO to help beings.

During this time tomorrow we'll get to be with Kata, Carrie, Chris Blake, Pamelia, Mary, and Catherine as they receive new names and clothes to, as the ceremony says, to [inspire and ] clothe you throughout this life and times to come. With their new names they even receive an elaborate certificate of their inclusion in the Sōtō Zen lineage. A wonderful central myth and inspiration of Zen is the passing of the Dharma form warm hand to warm hand, teacher to student, from Buddha all the way to us sitting right here in 2024 in this crazy America. Wildly that requires a list of less than 100 names. I Chris and I are each 93 ancestors from Buddha so these are the 94th generation.

This list is a bit sadly and narrowly, a list of men, so we'll be offering you all later on - and folks who were in the last couple of cohorts too - a women's lineage paper which is presented as a circle too. We apologize for slipping up on that very important addition for a year or three but this will soon be corrected to complete the family of these wonderful baby Buddhas.

So we have that to look forward to tomorrow. And FYI to you 6 that we'll practice the ceremony today during work period.

Okay that's all I've got and it's plenty. I'm so grateful to every one of you. Please keep on with your practice and I'll keep on with mine. May the merit of our efforts be of great benefit to world so in need to wisdom, compassion, and healing. And may we see an understand that we're not the only bodhisattvas giving to the many suffering others or something narrow minded like that: we are always surrounded by and receiving benefit from numberless bodhisattvas, ancestors and Buddhas all around us. We feel so isolated and separate sometimes but I hope this sesshin is helping you to feel the glimmer of how not separated we are: how we are in a deep web of mutual love and support with, well with all beings without exception.