Just Enough

Welcome to everybody in the shrine room. Just 4 people tonight in this strange halfway between Christmas and New Year service, and welcome to Beth on Zoom. That you could make it, and welcome if you're watching on YouTube later on. We begin practice this evening by listening to a Dharma glimpse that Fi is going to read for us. I'll just move the microphone.

I'm reading Food for Thought by Jinny Gyo Sensei. Sōmani holidays center around a meal in our multicultural society. It seems as if a festival is always being celebrated by some group, giving us a chance to enjoy so many different customs and foods. Even Satori, the Buddha's enlightenment remembrance, really begins some days before with his accepting a bowl of sweet rice and milk from the village girl Sujata. He broke his fast and years of ascetic practice with this simple porridge-like meal. He gathered strength to meditate under the Bodhi tree, having realized that he needed to care for himself to reach mental clarity. How wonderful for us all that he did. I begin almost every day by cooking a bowl of cream of wheat with milk. As I make it and later clean the sticky metal pot, I've gotten to think about the Buddha's simple meal and also about the Zen ceremonial meal called Oriyoki. Oriyoki means just enough. It has a special liturgy accompanying each part of the meal from the beginning through washing out the bowls, and nothing is wasted. The just enough Zen meal ends with cleaning the bowls and scraping out the serving pot and offering the water and remnants outdoors to the sentient beings there. I got to thinking, what about when I wash the hot cereal cook pot at home? So I decided to do the next cleanup mindfully and take a close look Before filling the pot with water and soap, I saw how much was left sticking to the bottom and the sides. Gee, I thought I'd spooned it all into my bowl. So I took the spoon and really scraped around. Amazing, the spoon was almost full, though some was a little brown from the burner's heat. Big deal, one cold gummy singed spoonful. But yes, with a little thought and mindfulness, one soggy spoonful represented a very big deal. How little that might look to me, but how much would it be for so many people near and far? I just read a Holocaust survivor interview about how desperate concentration camp inmates were to lick any spoon or bowl in the hope of getting just enough food remnant to survive Another day, another hour. Post-war Buddhist teacher Ruth Dennison, who lived through the war in Germany as a regular German citizen, wrote of having to lick paste off wallpaper to survive after the war ended. I remembered the wrenching Japanese anime Grave of the Fireflies, where children died of starvation after the war had ended. The TV shows the horror of Somalia and Yemen. The local newspaper had a report about how many children and adults go to bed hungry each day in Pennsylvania, where I live. It is 1 in 8 people in general and 1 in 6 children. That's about 1.5 million people and 450,000 children just in my state. They go to bed hungry, they wake up hungry, they go to work hungry, they go to school hungry. We know them, but we likely don't really know them, or we wouldn't let it happen, would we? Do we? From that morning on, whenever I cook cereal, which is almost every day, I mindfully scrape the spoon all around the seemingly empty pot afterwards. Remembering hungry beings while eating that small but large remnant. Wash the pot with water and empty it in the garden. Maybe this will help me remember to consume mindfully, not to be wasteful, to take extra garden produce to the downtown free food kitchen, or to share at the local food bank, or, or to think what else I could do here and now with what I have. Why not consider making mealtime cleanup a chance for some food for thought too, like the Buddha did? Really empty your bowl as a step towards nourishing yourself, your community, and the world a spoonful at a time. Namu Amida Butsu.

Now we'll have some time just to quietly in meditation together. This evening we'll chant invoking Kwan Shin, the force of active compassion.

Namah Kwan Chi in Bosat. Namah Kwan Chi in Bosat. Namah Kwan Chi in Bosat. Namah Kwan Chim Bosat. Namah Kwan Chim Bosat. Namah Kwan Chim Bosat. Namah Kwan Shin Bosatsu. Namah Kwan Shin Bosatsu. Namah Kwan Shin Bosatsu. Namah Shivaya. Namah Shivaya. Namah Shivaya. Namokwan Shinbosa. Namokwan Shinbosa. Namokwan Shinbosa. Namokwan Shin Bosat. Namokwan Shin Bosat. Namokwan Shin Bosat. Namah Shivaya. Satya Robyn. Namah Shivaya. Satya Robyn. Namah Shivaya. Namah Shivaya. Namah Shivaya. Namah Shivaya. Namah Kwan Chim Bosat. Namah Kwan Chim Bosat. Namah Kwan Chim Bosat. Namokwanji in Bosats. Namokwanji in Bosats. Namokwanji in Bosats. Namokwan shi ngo sat namo kuan chi ngosat namokwan shi ngosat namokwan shi ngosat namokwan shi ngosa—

So we'll now recite the refuges and precepts. We do it in English because the Buddha encouraged people to teach in the language of the locals, but the form isn't so different from the one that was used 2,500 years ago, and There might be better ways of expressing it, or more skillful ways, I don't know, but it's important. That connection is important. So we retain that link to those Buddhas and ancestors that went before us. For refuge I go to the Buddha For refuge I go to the Buddha. Namo Buddha. For refuge I go to the Dharma. For refuge I go to the Dharma. Namo Dhamma. For refuge I go to the Sangha. For refuge I go to the Sangha. Namo Sangha. With faith in the Three Jewels, with faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not take life, I pray that I may not take life— With faith in the Three Jewels! —with faith in the three jewels—I pray that I may not steal—I pray this time you will still—with faith in the three jewels—with faith in those who choose—I pray that I may not fall into sexual misconduct—I praise him—and also it's your misconduct—with faith in the three tools—for fake energy juice—I pray that I may not fall into wrong speech—I prayed so I might not fall into wrong speech. With faith in the Three Jewels, with faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may avoid intoxication. I pray that I may avoid intoxication. No blame, no blame. Be kind, love everything, love everything.

Innumerable sentient beings, we vow to save them all. Inexhaustible deluded passions, we vow to transform them all. Immeasurable daunting chains, We bow to Master Nam-ho.

Infinite is the Buddha's way.

We bow to infinite completely.

Thank you everybody. Thank you, Phee, for reading the glimpse from Jeannie Sensei. I met Jeannie Sensei a few weeks ago on a Zoom call and it was a real delight. She's been a socially engaged Buddhist for a very long, yeah, very long time. And I really appreciated a couple of things in that teaching. One, how paying attention to something very mundane and ordinary in our everyday life can spiral out a whole load of thoughts and considerations that lead to this sense of deep care for the whole world and awareness of the acute suffering of some other beings. And they're kind of the love and empathy that is stirred in response to that, just from paying attention to the scrapings at the bottom of a porridge bowl. I really like this movement towards reciprocity. When we receive, we give something back. We give something to the sentient beings. We make an offering of the leftovers. Some Buddhist places, this offering is to the hungry ghosts, those beings who can't receive enough nourishment because of their heavy karma. So we make this commitment to keep feeding them until something breaks through that, those small mouths, until they're able to take something in. And that's the, you know, that's the Bodhisattva vow in practice, to keep loving all beings, even the beings, especially the beings that are shielded and shut off until they're able to receive some. And then that kind of love from the outside and that love that seeps through to the inside begins to allow those hard places, those tightnesses, to relax. And of course, because I'm an idealist, and maybe especially because it's New Year, whenever I hear a teaching like that, I want to make that into my practice. Oh, every mealtime I'm going to do this now. But I also know that the reality is once my life starts up again, I mean, I'm living right now. Once I start seeing clients again and ordinary work next week, that extra capacity will be used up with those other kinds of caring that I'm doing. And maybe at the end of the day, it's just too much to ask for me to really be mindful when I'm washing up or cooking and make sure that every last drop is used. Used up. When Dōgen wrote his instructions for living in the Zen center and instructions to the cook, not a single grain of rice must be wasted. But Dōgen was living in a Zen temple. He wasn't holding down an ordinary job. And I mean, I guess running Zen temple is not— a Zen center is not so different from running a temple. Maybe, maybe he's just more enlightened than me. There's no maybe about it, of course. So I want, I want to invite that teaching into my life, but also hold it a little bit lightly. And that's the great thing about things like retreat spaces, whether it's a personal retreat day or going away. On retreat, we create a different container where we can practice being more mindful. Like when we come into the shrine room, we attempt to be more mindful. We bow to our seats, we bow to each other, we try and take care in the space in a different way from usual. We can't always manage that every minute of the day, but we can practice a little bit here, and it starts to seep into the rest of our days. So I suppose this, this is an invitation to begin to pay that kind of attention somewhere in your life, but not to make a stick out of it to beat yourself up, because, well, that's the sort of thing I do with Buddhist teachings.

Namoha mi tabu. Namoha mi tabu. Namoha mi tabu. Namoha mi tabu.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. In gratitude, we offer this incense to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time. May it be as fragrant as Earth herself, reflecting our careful efforts. May our whole heart awareness and the fruits of understanding slowly ripen. May we and all beings be companions of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. May we awaken from forgetfulness and realize our true home. We'll finish with the closing verse. Blessed by Amitābha's light, may we care for all living things and the holy earth.