By having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to take secure in the blood of the Dvaita's words. Last night, some of you were at the talk I gave in the yurt, but I wanted to mention briefly a couple of things I spoke about. Last night I was emphasizing the notion that in Zen practice there's some emphasis put on work, and the value of work as a way for cultivating one's practice, and seeing into

[01:03]

the nature of things, seeing into the nature of one's own, the way one goes about things. If you're sitting, when we're sitting in the meditation hall, and we've all stayed by mention, and we don't necessarily notice, but if you fall asleep in the kitchen, something can burn or you can cut yourself. So you find out things rather quickly in work, about who you are and what you're like and how things work. I also mentioned a poem by Dogen, not a poem by Dogen, but a poem that Dogen quotes, and in the instructions for the cook, and the poem is as follows, with one word, three words,

[02:08]

five or seven, nothing in the universe can be completely described or depended upon. Night advances, the full moon falls and sinks into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. So tonight I want to speak some more about this. Sometimes I think this is the subject of, same as the question, what is spiritual? What's so spiritual about meditation? What's so spiritual about work? What's so spiritual about anything? We live in a culture that doesn't often recognize spiritual. As you know, we live in a materialistic culture, so it's sometimes hard to get much sense at

[03:10]

all about what might be spiritual. So I'd like to mention for you from Dogen, from his chapter called Everyday Activity, a few words. In this chapter, Dogen says, the everyday rice and tea are the words and thoughts of the Buddha ancestors. And the words and thoughts of the Buddha ancestors, everyday tea and rice, has been transmitted over many years and is with us here today. So I would like to bring up for you this question, when you have coarse-grained tea, everyday

[04:11]

rice, is it the words and thoughts of the Buddha's ancestors, or is it just stuff? What is it? What is it that we hold and pick up in our hands or put into our mouth? What is food? What is tea? What is anything? Dogen says, it comes to us, it's transmitted to us over many years and is with us here today. So you should know that even coarse-grained tea and everyday rice are the words and thoughts of the ancestors. And this, he says, is the only power that the Buddha's ancestors rely on, everyday rice and tea. And they have no use for any other power but this everyday rice and tea.

[05:16]

Couple of years ago I read an article in the newspaper, it was by a woman who was a student at the California Culinary Academy, and she was very excited about food and learning how to cook. And she had been taking a course on how to brew beer, so she found out a lot about that. And she learned about how to use many ingredients and then her family started to come and visit her. And she tried, unsuccessfully it turned out, to indoctrinate them or convert them to her new passion. So when her brother and sister-in-law came, she took them up to the Napa Valley and visited some wineries and they went to a restaurant and they went out to eat and they had arugula salad and various things. And after a couple of days her brother said, we're going to the baseball game today, we'd

[06:30]

like to have a hamburger without goat cheese. And then later she went to visit her sister in St. Louis and they went out to a bar and the waitress came and asked them what they'd like and she said, I'd like a bass ale. And her sister said, she means a Budweiser. Is a Budweiser, do you suppose, the thoughts and words of the Buddha ancestors? Do you think a bass ale has more truth to it? Anyway, you know, her sister kind of cautioned her after the waitress left, this is the home of Budweiser, this is where they make it. What's gotten into you anyway? Are you too good for us?

[07:32]

Then her father and mother came to visit her in San Francisco and she took them out and since her father was a chemist she thought, oh well that's good with sourdough bakery. And they went out to dinner and then afterwards her father said, well that was okay, but you know I'm 65 now and by now I should know what I like, it's steak and potatoes. And besides, it's only food. I was really struck by that comment, it's only food, is it only food? Or I mean that's like saying, I mean it's true right, in a certain sense it's only food, but only food is only human life, we're only here because we eat. Only food, it's only food, but it's also blood and sweat and tears and suffering and it's why we're alive. So it's a little simple to say it's only food.

[08:38]

I mean we know what it has meant, you know, that one can get too concerned about having food that's really fancy or special and not understanding the preciousness of something simple perhaps. But what is it for you? The food that we eat each day and the food that we handle when we cook, what is it you pick up and hold in your hand and put in your mouth? Is it only food or is it human life itself? Is it only food or is it the words and thoughts, the mind and heart of the Buddha ancestors? Is it only food or is it sun and wind and rain and rivers and creeks and sky and earth

[09:47]

and mud and silt and bugs? Is it only food or is it someone's love, a mother's love, even though you haven't had a mother? You eat something and it's so good and it's as though you were made whole by what you eat and it's as though the world can accept that you're here because you have something to eat. You have a place at the table. Is it only food or is it a blessing, a gift, a treasure? Is it just stuff or does it have any value?

[10:52]

Is it just food or is it, you know, as we say, innumerable labors, innumerable labors. Just here we have innumerable, we have many, many labors, people working in the kitchen. But then there's all the labors of getting it here. And there's all the fossil fuel that brings us the food. So there's all the labors that go into fossil fuel, people who are really dirty and sweaty working on oil wells so we can eat. And people nowadays, I visited many years ago, even 15 years ago, my cousins in South Dakota in 19, it's only fairly recently in the last 30 or 40 years, there's even, you

[12:00]

know, in 1948 they still had combines that just cut the wheat and then they had to go and rake it up by hand and then put it into a thresher to separate the wheat. And when I went back 15 years ago, the combine drives along with the truck next to it and the combine cuts the wheat and picks it up and threshes it and the wheat comes up through a big thing and then it's poured directly into the truck driving along beside it. The people working in the combine in the truck, it's all air-conditioned. They have their tape decks going. This is how the food gets to us. So there's also some music involved. And all the people who make that music and the people who make those tape layers.

[13:05]

There's a lot going into that food, how it gets to us. Is it only food or is it you yourself, Buddha nature, the black dragon jewel? The black dragon jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. Is it a black dragon jewel or not? And what will make the difference of whether you find the black dragon jewel everywhere or you keep looking, why can't I find it? Where is it? So again, Dogen-senshi reminds us, when you handle food, treat it as though it's your own eyesight.

[14:18]

Treat it as though it's that precious. Handle it carefully. Take care of the food and property of the monastery as though it were your eye, your eye itself. So nothing happens to it as you get injured. And Dogen says, when you handle the food, don't think with ordinary mind and don't see with ordinary eyes. Ordinary eyes say, it's only food. Ordinary eyes can tell the difference between one leaf of lettuce and one leaf of lettuce. Eight cases. Is eight cases of lettuce more precious than one leaf? Well, we know it costs more money.

[15:26]

But where is the dividing line between what's precious and what's not? And if you're always getting out your dividing line and deciding when it's important, when it's precious, where will you draw that line? Pretty soon, it gets hard to find anything of value. There's no black dragon jewel because one leaf isn't important enough. Two leaves? Nah. Where will you find what's precious? So Dogen says, don't look with your ordinary eye. Don't think with your ordinary mind. Treat it as though it's precious. When you pick something up in your hand, what is it? When you see it with your eyes, what is it? So we look with our eyes and we feel with our hands.

[16:39]

Or we feel with our eyes and look with our hands. We try to find out. It's not so simple. No, it's not just food. For food, already everything is there. Also, last night I mentioned Dogen saying, when he met the cook and he asked the cook what is practiced, and the cook said, nothing in the universe is hidden. Pick up one thing and everything is there. And so Dogen again, Dogen in his instructions for the cook, he says, so if you are working with something that doesn't seem so great, some kind of, what he says, wild grasses,

[17:43]

if you're working with wild grasses, don't become careless. When you're doing something with cream, don't become careless. And butter, please sustain your effort. The same mind picks up each thing, handling it as though everything was there. Don't get, he says, careless with one thing, or disdainful. Sustain your effort. Don't be overjoyed when you find something which you see with your ordinary mind as being precious or valuable. Each thing, your heart, you connect with. Things come home to your heart. And this isn't, of course, just true about food.

[18:49]

It's not just food. If it's not just food, it's you yourself. What about you yourself? What kind of person are you? How should you be handled? Are you worth taking care of? Are you important? Does anybody care about you? Do you? What kind of a person should you be to warrant being taken care of? Do you need to do something to prove how precious you are and how important? Do you need to do something like that and then say, well, yeah, I should be taken care of, see how important I am? Or are you just a person? Food is just food. I often tell this story about

[19:58]

serving in the meditation hall here many years ago when the meditation hall was in the student eating area and how intimate it is to serve one another in silence and how quickly you know the person you're serving and how quickly you know the person serving you and you notice right away somebody who's anxious about whether they get their food or not or someone who's a little scared or someone who's angry. You notice right away. They hold out their bowl or somebody who's tired. You see it, you sense it right away. And you know, it was really, we had always been told and I used to serve almost every day because now we, the kitchen crew would not only cook but we would then put on clean aprons and go and serve. So now we take turns, the people from the meditation hall take turns

[21:01]

and come as the serving crews come and serve the food to the Zen Hall. But we didn't understand the monastic system in those days so the kitchen crew is the first thing. And we had come to understand and we were told that the service of the food should be very you know, swift. You don't dilly-dally when you serve food. And you know, this is the Zen idea. Do everything with energy and vitality and move right along. So I used to race the person across the Zen Hall. There's basically two aisles and then you go down the row and then you could see who got to the end of the row fastest. This was very important. To see who would win. After all, how good am I?

[22:02]

And if you can do something better than somebody else doesn't that show something? And then maybe people will treat you better, right? You're more important, you're more precious. And of course we would eat very quickly too. We have now about five minutes for first and two minutes for second. I'm not sure whether this is spiritual or not but it's the Zen tradition and I'm not sure if they came up with this as a kind of spiritual practice or to dissuade, you know, possible indulgence or maybe it's just because they didn't have a lot of food and like, let's get it over with. Maybe this practice started with rather poor food and not very much of it. So let's just eat and be done with it. I'm not sure.

[23:07]

So I would race down the row and usually I would win. But sometimes there was somebody in my row who was a little difficult and they would say and they would want like the stuff in the soup but not the broth or the broth but not the stuff in the soup or they'd want, I'd serve them and then they'd want a little bit more, a little bit more we have this signal for a little bit more so they'd want a little bit more, a little bit more and then pretty soon like you get slowed down. These people like they don't understand how important it is and they're slowing you down, they're slowing me down and so this would tend to arouse my wrath towards these people what is wrong with you, I would think this is what happens if you

[24:10]

have a program and a plan something to prove and Suzuki Roshi would sit up on the altar and everybody was very sweet and we all adored him and loved him so much and with Suzuki Roshi I would bow with my pot so carefully and then put my pot down just so and then he would bow and he was so, it seemed so ordinary and he'd pick up his bowl, it was so ordinary and yet the bowl would be just right there, when you went to put things in the bowl there was the bowl and there wasn't any feeling of what he was getting, he was completely unconcerned unconcerned about what he was getting but perfectly attentive and one time I mentioned this but one time a student asked Suzuki Roshi

[25:11]

in the question and answer ceremony at the end of Sushin what do you feel when I serve you food in this endo and he said, I feel as though you're offering me your most perfect love and I knew that feeling I knew what it was to serve him but the next person, I didn't understand that I wanted to get done and down to the end of the row and one day I thought, what's the difference between Suzuki Roshi and anybody else ordinary eyes and ordinary mind, you can see a difference in people but I thought at that time isn't everybody Suzuki Roshi? doesn't everybody have Buddha nature?

[26:12]

well, do they or don't they? and I decided, they do so I thought, well, if they have Buddha nature, maybe I better serve them like I serve Suzuki Roshi so I served Suzuki Roshi very carefully and then the next person pretty carefully and then the next person less carefully and then I would race down the row you know, it takes some practice to be able to serve each person as Suzuki Roshi and you have to let go of various other kinds of agendas and plans things you might be up to, things you might want to prove and after all, who are you? what kind of a person are you? are you worth treating that way?

[27:14]

how will you decide what kind of person you are or what kind of person finally or fundamentally anybody is? ... so, here at Tassajara, we meet someone on the path we meet another student and we bow whoever it is however we're feeling, whether we feel like bowing or we don't we honor somebody, we respect somebody we stop what we're doing, what we're in the middle of what we're in a hurry to get to or to finish up or to complete we stop and we acknowledge someone else and stopping to acknowledge someone else and bow is also to

[28:21]

of course, acknowledge yourself that you are also worth bowing to ... [...]

[29:31]

... [...]

[30:37]

... [...]

[31:39]

... ... ... real, all knowledge, pleasure, joy, inexhaustible. I think that's someone who understood the everyday green tea, tea and rice, the Buddha's words, the mind of the Buddha and ancestors, someone who looked not with ordinary eyes or ordinary mind, and all that affluence came into his awareness.

[32:51]

And so in this way, in Zen practice, we investigate each thing, each moment, what is it, even though one word or three words can't describe it, nothing can be dependent upon, still the life-dragon jewel is everyday. I feel very fortunate to be here at Tassajara this summer, and I feel fortunate because of the tremendous effort and good-heartedness of many people who are here,

[34:07]

many of you who work so hard, so willingly, so completely, offering your effort and your heart and the work you do. And so I'd like to thank you very much.

[34:24]

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