The Buddha taught us to extinguish the flames of the three poisonous minds with the fire of wisdom. It is said in the teaching of the four noble truths that the three poisonous minds are the cause of suffering in samsara. Buddhist practice is the path that leads to the cessation of suffering. Our practice protects us from the flames of greed, anger/hatred, and ignorance and so nurtures our virtue.
Because we receive food as part of our Buddhist practice, we need to free ourselves from the three poisonous minds. And yet, food can easily be the object of our greed and anger or hatred.
When I practiced at Antaiji, most of the monks and lay practitioners were young people in their twenties. We were always hungry. Especially during sesshin, because there is no entertainment at all except for the three meals a day, I often ate a lot even though the food was not particularly fancy.
When we have fancy food, we often eat more than we need and suffer later. When the taste of the food is not what we expect, we often dislike it, and we may get angry with the person who prepared it. During a single meal it is possible for us to transmigrate through all six realms of samsara. When I have to eat something I dislike, I feel like a hell dweller. When I am hungry, I feel like a hungry ghost. Sometimes when I eat and become sleepy, I am like an animal. Sometimes, I am as angry as an asura (fighting spirit) with the person who cooked the food. Sometimes when I eat fine food I feel like a heavenly being. These likes and dislikes and transmigration within my mind are caused by ignorance. The taste of food exists only while the food is in my mouth. After I swallow it, whether I love or hate it, it’s all the same. It all becomes nutrition that sustains our body and mind in practice.
Receiving food in the zendō during ōryōki meals is a very powerful practice. We cannot complain about the taste, and we receive only the amount of food we can use. There is no way for us to be pulled by the three poisonous minds. We simply receive what is offered to us. This attitude should be maintained throughout our lives.
In the last discourse of Shakyamuni Buddha, recorded in Butsuyuikyōgyō, the Buddha taught the eight awakenings of the great being (Jap., hachidainingaku). These are the eight important points of our practice. The first two are to have modest desires (shōyoku) and to know how much is enough (chisoku). Dōgen Zenji writes:
The first is having few desires. (Not pursuing too intensively the things we have not yet gained among the objects of the five senses is called “having few desires.”) The Buddha said, “Monks, you should know that people who have many desires avariciously seek after fame and wealth; therefore they experience great suffering and anguish. Those who have few desires, because they have nothing to pursue and desire, are free from such troubles. Having few desires is itself worth learning and practicing. All the more so, as it gives birth to various virtues. Those who have few desires do not flatter to gain others’ favor. Also, they are not pulled by their desire for gain. The mind of those who practice having few desires is peaceful, without any worries or fears. They are always affluent with whatever they have and never have a sense of insufficiency. Those who have few desires experience nirvana. This is called ‘few desires.’”
The second is to know satisfaction. Even among things which have already been given, you set a limit for taking them. This is called “knowing satisfaction.” The Buddha said, “Monks, if you want to be free from suffering and anguish, you should contemplate knowing how much is enough. The dharma of knowing satisfaction is the place of richness, joy, peace, and calm. Those who know satisfaction, even when they lie down on the bare ground, still consider it comfortable and joyful. Those who don’t know satisfaction are discontented even when they live in a heavenly palace. Those who do not know satisfaction are poor even if they have much wealth. Those who know satisfaction are rich even if they are poor. Those who don’t know satisfaction are constantly pulled by the five sense desires and pitied by those who know satisfaction. This is called ‘knowing satisfaction.’”61
A meal is an opportunity to practice the Buddha’s teachings about having few desires and knowing how much is enough.
“We regard this meal as medicine to sustain our life.” Buddhism is not an ascetic practice. Before he attained final awakening the Buddha practiced austerities for six years, engaging in extremely harsh practices such as holding his breath until almost he died or eating only one grain of sesame or rice a day. It is said that having nearly died, he realized that this kind of practice is not wholesome or meaningful for the purpose of awakening. He received some milk porridge from a young woman named Sujātā, and he bathed in the river. He gave up ascetic practice and sat down under the bodhi tree. When he taught the five monks at Deer Park, the very first thing he said was that he had found the Middle Way.
The Buddha said, “One who has gone forth from worldly life should not indulge in these two extremes. What are the two? There is indulgence in desirable sense objects, which is low, vulgar, worldly, ignoble, unworthy, and unprofitable, and there is devotion to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathāgata has realized the middle path. It produces vision, it produces knowledge, it leads to calm, to higher knowledge, to enlightenment, to nirvana.”62
An ōryōki meal is a practice of the Middle Way. We become free from the three poisonous minds that lead to indulgence in sensual pleasures. And yet we receive food to keep our body and mind healthy and functional.
“For the sake of enlightenment we now receive this food.” The final contemplation is to confirm our determination to receive and eat the food in order to attain the Way. This is the same determination the Buddha made when he received the milk porridge from Sujātā.
Verse of Food for Spirits
O spirits, we now give you an offering;
This food is for all of you in the ten directions.
After we recite the five contemplations at the lunch meal, we offer a small piece of food on the setsu, the wooden scraper we use for cleaning ōryōki bowls. This practice is called saba in Japanese. We leave this small amount of food for all living beings. When we take food, we are receivers. Before the tenzo obtains the food he will cook, many people work to produce it. The tenzo collects the ingredients, cooks them, and makes them into a meal. To a practitioner who receives, who eats in the zendō, food is an offering from the tenzo and the many other people and living things involved in its production. The idea of saba is that we are donors as well as receivers. We give a small piece of what we have received. This is temporarily our food, but from this food we take a small piece and offer it to all beings.
The original Japanese expression for “O spirits” is jiten ki jin shū. This means “many demons and gods.” Ji is “you,” and ki jin is Japanese or Chinese for unseen beings such as demons and gods. A ki is a demon and a jin is a god. This phrase refers to two kinds of unseen beings, some harmful and some beneficial. Shū means “group” or “assembly.”
These unseen beings have vanished from our modern society. Perhaps they live only for a day on Halloween, or in comic books or horror movies. I grew up in a small town named Ibaraki between Kyoto and Osaka. I was surprised to learn that Ibaraki is a sister city of Minneapolis. I lived there from 1952 to 1968. I went to elementary school, middle school, and high school there. When I was a kid, it was a small town of maybe thirty thousand people. Today it has grown tenfold to more than three hundred thousand and has become a part of the metropolis of Osaka. When I lived in Ibaraki there were many Shintō shrines. Each block had its own small shrine that felt like a sacred place, separate from the outside world. When we played in the precincts of the shrines we felt different from the way we did outside. We felt something sacred. We felt that we were protected. In 1970, shortly after I left, they had a World Expo near Ibaraki. In preparation for it, the town was completely changed. We call it development, but in a sense it is a destruction of the living environment. The Shintō shrines were surrounded by houses, shops, and big apartment buildings instead of woods. I’ve gone
back to Ibaraki several times to visit the shrines, but I didn’t feel any spirits there or anything spiritually alive. There are just buildings. Today belief in spirits is called animism and is considered to be left over from primitive religion. We don’t appreciate it anymore. But we still have a psychological need for this belief. Natural phenomena still influence our mentality or spirituality. Without demons, gods, and natural forces our lives become materialistic, and something is lost. The Buddha’s teaching doesn’t rely on animistic beliefs; it is rational. The Buddha taught that our life is full of suffering caused by our desires and greed. The essence of Buddhism doesn’t rely on demons or gods. And yet Buddhism never opposed folk religions. In fact, in many countries Buddhism accepted and assimilated them. In Japan, for example, Buddhism and Shintoism have coexisted for centuries. Shintō is an animistic folk religion that worships nature, yet nature has been nearly eliminated from modern society. This makes me sad. I don’t worship Shintō’s demons and gods, and I don’t even believe in them as beings. But I think that as symbols of nature—symbols of forces that can become very fearsome or harmful—these spirits can be a kind of blessing. Nature can be frightening and dangerous, certainly, but it also gives us everything we need: food, water, and air. Everything we have is given to us by nature, and yet nature can kill us. Many people believe that beings more powerful than humans control these natural phenomena. They pray to these gods or demons to protect them; they make offerings to insure a good harvest and avoid disasters. Not originally part of Buddhism, these gods and demons became part of people’s everyday lives.
Early Buddhist scripture abounds with stories, legends, and myths that mention food offerings to unseen beings. Three are especially well known. The first is about a demon king’s wife named Hārītī (Kishimojin in Japanese, which means “mother of demons”). According to the scripture she had ten thousand offspring, whom she fed with human children. The Buddha saw what Hārītī was doing, so he hid her youngest child in the ōryōki. Hārītī was very upset, and she searched all over the world but couldn’t find the baby. Finally she came to the Buddha and asked where the child was. He told her, “You have ten thousand children and still, when you lose just one of them, you are sad and you suffer. You are in pain. Human beings have only one child or two. You should consider the parents’ sadness when they lose their children.” After being taught in this way, Hārītī accepted Buddha’s teaching and received the precepts. She said that she would not kill human children anymore, but then she asked how she could feed her own children. The Buddha said, “From now on I will tell my disciples to offer a small amount of food for you at each meal so that your children will never starve.” This is the origin of the offering we make to unseen beings. After this, Hārītī became the guardian of children and mothers.
The second story, which appears in the Mahāyāna Parinirvana Sutra, involves a demon who ate one person a day. The Buddha taught the demon and instructed him in the precept of not killing. The demon asked the same question as Hārītī and the Buddha gave almost the same answer.
The third story, in the Vinaya, may be more realistic. When the Buddha was still alive monks went to town to do takuhatsu—this is, to beg for food—and returned before noon to have their meal. Dogs came hoping to find some food to eat, but some disciples didn’t give them anything. The Buddha taught them that monks should always offer some of the alms food they received to animals.
These stories convey the original spirit of food offerings made to birds, animals, and unseen beings. When we receive an offering from all beings, we should not be the end of this cycle of offering. We cannot live without the offerings we receive, but we should not keep them all for ourselves. We should offer a small amount to other beings. This practice makes the offering a circle. We take from nature and we also give back.
There is a story about the Chinese Zen master Tianhuang Daowu (Ten’nō Dōgo, 748–807) and his dharma heir, Longtan Chongxin (Ryūtan Sōshin, ninth century). Before he became a monk, Chongxin was a cake seller. Every day he offered ten cakes to the master. Each time, the master returned one cake to him saying, “I offer this to you. This is for the sake of your descendants.” One day Chongxin asked the master, “I brought these cakes to offer to you. Why do you return one cake to me? Does it have any special meaning?” The master said, “You bring the cakes, so what harm is there in returning one to you?” At these words, Chongxin grasped the deeper meaning. Because of this, he left home and became a monk.
Bowl-Raising Verse
After chanting the Verse of Five Contemplations and the Verse of Food for Spirits, we put our spoon in the ōryōki bowl and chopsticks across the second bowl. We return to gasshō and chant the following verse.
First, this is for the Three Treasures;
next, for the four benefactors;
finally, for the beings in the six realms.
May all be equally nourished.
Then we pick up the ōryōki, hold it with both hands at eye level, and chant the following:
The first portion is to end all evil;
the second is to cultivate every good;
the third is to free all beings.
May everyone realize the Buddha’s Way.
The Japanese reading of the first Chinese verse is “Jōbun sanbō / Chubun shi on / Gekyū roku dō / Kai dō kuyō.” Jōbun sanbō means that the upper portion is for the Three Treasures. Chūbun shion means that the middle portion is for the four benefactors. Gekyū roku dō means the lower portion is for all living beings in the six realms. Kai dō kuyō means to offer this food to support all of them equally.
The expressions jō (upper), chū (middle), and ge (lower) are a reflection of the vertical social structure in ancient China and other East Asian countries influenced by Chinese culture. A correspondence is implied between the upper portion of food and the Three Treasures, the middle portion of food and the four benefactors, and the lower portion of food and living beings in the six realms. Because this vertical idea is not suitable in the modern society, all English translations of this verse avoid using “upper,” “middle,” and “lower.” One translation uses “first,” “next,” and “finally.” Another one has “first,” “second,” and “third.” There is also a translation which avoids even specifying an order: “This food is for the Three Treasures, / For our parents, teachers, leaders, and homeland / And for all beings in the six worlds.”
I think there is no problem with using the phrase “to offer the food to the Three Treasures and all living beings in the six realms.” But the use of the phrase “to offer” for kuyō in relation to the four benefactors needs some explanation.
“Four benefactors” is a translation of shi on (Chi., si en). Shi means four. As for on (en), this is a difficult word to translate. In a ChineseEnglish dictionary it is translated as kindness, favor, grace. Another dictionary has: kindness, goodness, favor, mercy, blessing, benefit. In Chinese and Japanese morality, this word also connotes a “debt of kindness.” If we receive a kindness from someone when we are in need, we have a debt of kindness to that person. It is very important to repay the debt of kindness with our appreciation and gratitude. We are indebted toward people who did us favors, and we have an obligation to return the debt. This is called hōon or ongaeshi (repaying the debt of kindness). If we fail to repay this debt we are called onshirazu (ungrateful, thankless), that is, someone who doesn’t know the importance of repaying the debt of kindness.
According to a Buddhist dictionary, the concept of on as a debt of kindness is not emphasized in Indian Buddhism. But in Chinese Buddhism this notion became very important. In Buddhist teachings all of us have four benefactors to whom we have a debt of kindness. There are several different sets of four. According to a sutra titled Daijōhonshō shinchi kankyō (Mahāyāna Original-Life Mind-Ground Contemplation Sutra), “four benefactors” refers to one’s parents, all sentient beings, rulers of the country, and the Three Treasures. According to another sutra, Shōbō Nenjo kyō (True
Dharma Mindfulness Foundation Sutra), the four benefactors are one’s mother, one’s father, the Tathāgata, and one’s dharma teacher. The first set is more general, applying to any human being in any society, while the second is limited to the context of Buddhism.
In both cases parents are included. All living beings have parents. We have a unique, intimate connection with them. Parents give birth to us and take care of us until we become independent. In ancient times parents taught their children all the skills necessary to live. Farmers learned how to grow grains and vegetables from their parents. So we all owe much to our parents. We should appreciate their love and kindness. In East Asian countries a very important responsibility of children is to take over the family’s work, maintain the family’s wealth, and care for their aging parents.
As human beings we are supported not only by our parents but by many other people in society—teachers, friends, and colleagues. We are also supported by many other things—air, water, food, clothes, and houses. We have a debt of kindness toward all beings. This is the second benefactor in the first set of four.
The third benefactor is rulers, kings, or emperors. In these modern times we don’t think that presidents or prime ministers have helped us much, so we have no debt of kindness to them. In ancient times, however, people thought that a king or emperor owned the whole country. The king governed people, protected the country from enemies, and kept it peaceful.
Living by Vow Page 13
