Applying what we've learned about nyoho clothing to nyoho food

from Hoko

As we can see from this section of Sanshin Source, nyoho is the dharma of thusness, and food, clothing and shelter can all be made according to the dharma of thusness as a practice.  The central question of nyoho practice is: does this thing create attachment?  That’s an important question whether it’s about something we’re acquiring or something we’re making.

In the case of clothing, inside the temple we’re talking about robes, and in this family, we sew our own rakusu and okesa according to the way that Sawaki Roshi has handed down.  We don’t make and wear them as an expression of our own ego attachment;  it’s not our robe but Buddha’s robe.  

We can still ask ourselves this question about attachment when it comes to everyday clothing that we wear outside the temple.  Are we attached to a particular way of presenting ourselves that’s causing unwholesomeness for ourselves or others?  How can the everyday action of getting dressed be a dharma gate that allows us to do some reflection and discernment?  What’s our attitude toward both acquiring new clothes and letting go of old ones?

Someone asked Dogen whether it was better to mend and keep our old clothes rather than discarding them, because that can turn into a habit of clinging and yet, if we want to throw our the old clothes and get new things, that can turn into greed.  Both of these can be exercises in ego: either I’m a pious and humble practitioner because my clothes are rags, or I’m a spiffy, impressive practitioner because I have shiny new things.  Dogen said either option—mending or replacing—is OK as long as we’re not stuck.  We should just do the most appropriate thing and not be driven by ego.  Still, he says in Shobogenzo Zuimonki, it would be better to mend torn clothing in order to keep it as long as possible and not lust after new clothing.

This kind of teaching is just one example of Dogen saying that it’s not always immediately clear what we should do about things like clothing and food.  Sometimes an argument can be made for both options, and then what do we look to as a point of reference?  This is when having nyoho guidelines is helpful (though the answer might still not be obvious).

Elsewhere, he said:
It is difficult to determine what is good or bad.  In the mundane world, people say that it is good to wear garments made of fine cloth with golden embroidery and bad to wear robes made of coarse cloth and abandoned rags.  In the Buddhadharma, the latter is good and pure, while luxurious garments embroidered with gold and silver are considered bad and defiled.  In the way, the same is true for everything.  At the end of this piece of writing, he says, Because a sangha is born from the realm of purity, things that do not arouse human desires are considered good and pure.  He’s not using the term "nyoho," but that sounds like nyoho to me.

We can also apply questions about grasping and attachment to food: what ideas do we have about food that create some clinging?  In this case, we’re not necessarily talking about childhood “attachment” issues that may lead to eating disorders, though if these are our karmic circumstances, it can certainly be useful to do some discernment there.  We might use a poor relationship with food to deal with difficult emotions or try to get control of some aspects of our lives.  However, those issues are about insecure attachments to other people.  Here we’re focusing on our attachments to food itself and to our ideas about food.

Inside the temple, just as clothing means robes, our food practice centers on cooking and eating meals formally during sesshin.  We use a standard set of bowls and utensils and do meal practice in particular predetermined ways.  Also, there are guidelines about what we put into the bowls that help us make sure that food supports zazen and sesshin practice.  This kind of intensive container allows us to practice with food in a really intentional way, and to pay attention to it just like we pay attention to everything else about sesshin.  We don’t make and wear robes from a place of ego, and we don’t offer and eat food from a place of ego.  This is food that feeds practice, not egos.

Outside the temple, in our homes or grocery stores or restaurants, the question is: are we attached to particular foods or ways of making and eating meals that’s causing unwholesomeness for ourselves or others?  How can the everyday action of eating meals be a dharma gate that allows us to do some reflection and discernment?

We’ve seen that nyoho things take into consideration three aspects: tai or materials, shiki or color, and ryo: size or amount.  Certain materials are appropriate for robes, generally materials that are unpretentious, fit for purpose, often local.  Fabric is plain and simple, sturdy enough to hold up to sewing and wearing and not something exotic.  Likewise, nyoho food is generally simple, natural, nutritious, and here at Sanshin we’re making an effort to serve locally grown food.  It also needs to be something we can serve and eat with bowls, spoons and chopsticks, and that we can wash up with only hot water.

When it comes to color, robes are made in broken or mixed colors, not flashy, primary colors.  The color considerations for a meal are that we include five colors so that we have a mix: white, black, red/yellow, green and brown.  The point isn’t that any color is prohibited, but that there’s a variety.  Not only does that make the meal more visually appealing, it helps ensure that it’s nutritionally balanced.

Finally, there’s size or amount.  The robe needs to be the right size to cover the body.  With food, we need to buy and prepare enough to feed everyone adequately but not so much that extra food goes to waste.  We also need to consider how much we’re taking and eating as individuals, and whether there’s anything we’d like to change about that.

We can consider all of these things related to the meals we eat at home.  We can make wholesome, appealing, nutritious, balanced meals that we can easily serve and eat, and that we can offer to our families and friends without ego attachment and ideas about who that makes us.

It’s fun to have something exotic sometimes and to learn about new foods, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  However, are we choosing exotic stuff because simple, everyday ingredients that are readily available aren’t good enough or interesting enough in themselves?

We’ve begun to see how everyday things like clothing and food can be important elements in our practice.  We can just go through life ignoring these things as dharma gates, or we can start taking advantage of those practice opportunities.  

Here’s something else from Dogen's Shobogenzo Zuimonki, and although he’s talking about monks, I suggest we can apply this to all of us as practitioners.  Although it is similar to other places, if we enter a temple, without fail, we will become buddhas and ancestors.  We eat meals and wear clothes just like other people.  Still, if we simply shave our heads and reveal their roundness, wear a square robe, and eat gruel for breakfast and rice for lunch, we immediately become patch-robed monks.  In other words, as soon as we approach our interactions with clothing and food as part of our commitment to practice, those things take on a different significance.  They’re not just things we need on the way to practice; they’re not separate from the practice.  

For instance, meals in the training temple can be quite ceremonial.  You don’t eat breakfast in your pajamas, slouched over your Cheerios and coffee -- you wear full robes, do chants, and eat using oryoki.  It’s a full ritual.  You also don’t casually skip meals because you’re not hungry or have something else you want to do; you don’t get to choose that.  Meals are practice, so you don’t skip them like you don’t skip zazen.  Thus, what you wear for meals is important -- it’s not just the food and bowls.  If you’re tenzo, you have to get things done with enough time to change into robes and make nine full bows toward the sodo before sending out food.

This all seems like a lot if you’re used to just grabbing a sandwich in your sweats on the way to the next activity or eating in front of the TV wearing your favorite bathrobe, but it’s an interesting opportunity for full immersion in practice and to see everyday basic necessary activities as dharma gates.  Yet you’re really just eating rice and pickles.

We eat meals and wear clothes just like other people, but in an intentional practice container, something else is happening.  During the sewing retreat, we saw that the rakusu is known as an antarvasa robe in Sanskrit.  The meaning is something spiritual that’s deep within or inside, with a sense of connection or intersection between the physical and the divine.  Clothing and food can both show us intersection between form and emptiness.  It’s just a garment, or just a ladleful of soup, and we shouldn’t get precious about it, and also, it’s nothing other than buddhadharma.

In the Zuimonki, Dogen says that “robes, bowls and other things are simply the ornaments of monkhood,” the point being that we don’t need to wait until we have these things in order to practice.  Our jeans and paper plates can serve just as well as long as we see with the eyes of Buddha.  Of course, Dogen also wrote significant texts and guidelines about how to engage with robes and bowls as practice, both the specifics, like exactly how to carry out a meal using oryoki or how to decide how much food to cook, and the larger, more abstract teachings, like the nature of the formless robe or the identity of food and clothing with dharma.  On the one hand, robes and bowls are signifiers or ornaments, and on the other they’re nothing other than dharma.  When the practice is sincere, what’s being manifested by whatever we’re wearing or eating from can change.

Uchiyama Roshi commented on Dogen’s teaching that “You must constantly reflect on yourself and never allow the loss of wisdom. . . . One who does not act like this cannot be said to be a person of the Way.  Nor can such a person be called a lay follower either.”  He said:
In India, lay followers wore a kesa-like robe that was white, while monks were only allowed to wear robes that had been dyed black.  So byaku-e, “white clothing,” referred to lay followers or believers.  Or even if they were wearing the black robes of a monk, if the person was not receiving and connecting with the essence, they were not considered to be followers of the Way.  Likewise, even though they were wearing the clothing of lay followers, they were no longer considered to be lay believers.  [Roots of Goodness p. 232]

It’s just another way to say that we can wear humble robes and eat humble food out of oryoki bowls, but if we’re just going through the motions, then those things are ornaments and don’t really signify anything.  

One thing we hear over and over from Dogen in the Zuimonki is that we shouldn’t be concerned about whether we’re going to have enough food and clothing.  He’s always saying we shouldn’t be storing up vast reserves of supplies or worrying about where the next meal is coming from; we should just go about our practice and trust in the dharma.  For instance, he says, “Devote yourself only to the practice of the Way, and do not seek after food and clothing,” and again, “Do not be troubled when it comes to food and clothing.  Just maintain the Buddha’s precepts, and do not concern yourself with worldly affairs.”  On first encounter, that sounds like either foolishness, irresponsibility and a failure to plan ahead, or like an attitude of martyrdom.  Both might feel fairly extreme, and well, yes, he’s probably trying to get our attention.  We also have to remember the likely context for this: in tough times, monks and temples didn’t necessarily have all the resources they needed.  If there was famine, war or epidemic happening, folks probably weren’t too concerned about giving to temples.  They were worried about their own survival.  However,  I suspect that where Dogen is really going with this is that if we’re consumed by making sure our situation is perfect with regard to clothing and food, we’re living somewhere other than here and now and we’re missing this moment, which is the only place we can actually practice.

Here again we have this line of balance we have to walk.  If you're managing meals for a sesshin or retreat, that means determining menus, buying groceries, cooking meals, and making sure everyone gets enough to eat without creating leftovers and waste.  Without planning and management, that can go completely off rails.  Any tenzo knows that stewardship of temple resources is a major part of the job.  It’s not about just producing nice meals to impress people, so there needs to be enough food to feed everyone, but that management can’t come at the expense of living and practicing in this moment.

Dogen says several times that as long as we’ve committed to practice and we’re practicing wholeheartedly, the dharma will provide.  Somehow, we’ll continue to have the things we need to keep ourselves alive, and the important thing is that our time and focus go toward awakening before we die, because our time with this body and mind is limited.

Uchiyama Roshi shared an interesting perspective on this using the images of fresh and artificial flowers.  He makes the point that people today are so concerned about living that they’re not thinking about dying.  In other words, they think about survival, not about life.  Then he says:
If I were to express this another way using flowers, it would be that “life” is a fresh and vibrant flower, while flower “survival” is like an artificial flower that never ages and dies.  Flowers are truly lovely.  They blossom. but eventually they wither and die.  An artificial flower never dies.  It pretentiously blossoms in full glory, but over time it looks weather-beaten and gets thrown in the garbage.  [Roots of Goodness p. 160]

Of course, he’s reminding us about impermanence, and the beauty we find in things precisely because they’re empty and they arise and perish.  This is nyoho, the dharma of thusness.  Here we have another paradox, because one of the elements of nyoho practice is to make a connection with what’s gone before, whether that’s studying the Vinaya so we know the rules, or reusing materials or objects that are already here rather than throwing them out and getting something new.  At the same time, if we cling to anything other than this moment in the service of nyoho practice, we’ve missed the mark because nyoho is alive, dynamic, changing, breathing.  Uchiyama Roshi concludes by saying:
Looking at the dewdrops on the wildflowers in full bloom, we can feel their true beauty.  But if we refuse to look at death and focus only on survival, then just as an artificial flower becomes discolored and dusty and ends up in the garbage, we, too, will become just another expendable existence that gets old and dirty and must be thrown out.

Interestingly, Kodo Sawaki makes the same point in his own way:
If you aren’t careful, you’ll start making a big fuss just to feed yourself. You’re constantly in a hurry, but why? Just to feed yourself.  Chickens too are in a hurry when they peck at their food. But why? Only to be eaten by humans.

In our study of nyoho, we get to bring some abstract teachings down to our own level and put them on the ground.  It’s tangible thusness, seeing the basic things we need to survive as gateways to the dharma.  What’s more immediate than that?  We can’t keep living without them, and we can’t ignore them.  Yet if we only see these things as means of survival for this body and mind, we’re still missing an opportunity to open our eyes.  Yes, we need to take care of this body and mind as the only ground of our practice, and we also need to take care of this moment as the only ground of our practice.  In both cases, we need to ask: what’s alive here, what’s changing, what is this nyoho robe or meal or building trying to get me to see that I’ve been ignoring?  At what point did the live, fresh, vibrant flower become the discolored, dusty, artificial flower?  Where have I traded the directness and immediacy of this moment for my assumptions and opinions and stopped really looking and seeing?

It’s a blessing when we can see basic, everyday things in a new way that cracks something open for us.  This is something that practicing with nyoho things can do if we let it.