Remembering
Reality:
Comments
on the Gokan-no-ge
Presented
by Ven. Jinmyo Renge osho
Saturday,
January 24, 2004
Sometimes the Teachings can seem so endless and complex
that we can forget what they are about. Essentially, what they are all
about is remembering reality. The Pali word for memory or remembering
is “sati”, as in “Satipatthana.” In Sanskrit it is “smriti” and “nen”
in Japanese. But “memory” in this context, is not remembering some “thing”,
but rather refers to our capacity to remember. If we did not have this
capacity of memory, we would not be able to function. None of us would
be able to understand what I am saying because we all would have forgotten
the meaning of one word before I spoke the next.
But fortunately, in the moment of hearing a word you
are able to recognize the meaning of the word and remember it as the next
word is spoken. In recognizing it you are making use of memory. But this
does not involve having to “go back” in memory to understand what each
word means. Wouldn't that be dreadful – if on hearing a word we had to
go back in memory and replay our 2nd grade teacher explaining a definition?
And then go rummaging around for the meaning of the next word, and the
next? The reason we don't have to do this is because, of course, the information
is already known. Everything that we have experienced is already known
and so there is no reason to constantly reference back to prior experiences.
However, this is what we will tend to do much of the time. This is why
it is so easy for us to confuse the recognition of this moment with the
recognition of a previous moment.
Anything can trigger associations of past history.
Zen Master Anzan Hoshin says, in Class 14 of the “Development of Buddhist
Psychology” series,
“There
is nothing in the ability to recognize which leads to a deadening of
our experiencing. In fact, it can show us the richness of it, that,
you know, this thing is much the same as this thing and as that thing
so in fact it can lead us to connections which actually deepen our appreciation
of what we are experiencing rather than deadening it, just as memory
can be something that we dwell in rather than experiencing what is actually
going on, rather than being open to the people that we are meeting now
and the situations that we are experiencing now, we can just be involved
in some nostalgia or wishing that things were the way that they were
or the way that we would like them to be and on and on and on, so that
we are completely dissociated from this moment. Yet at the same time,
a memory arises now and is part of this moment. This moment contains
the past. So these things can be things, which act as bonds, and fetters
or they can be aspects of the richness of our life.”
That
last sentence is very important. “So these things can be things which
act as bonds and fetters or they can be aspects of the richness of our
life.” Unfortunately, we will often choose to view ourselves and the world
around us in terms of what we think we already know. Everything can remind
us of something else and even something as simple as seeing a colour can
evoke associations of past experiencing.
For example, in the moment of seeing the colour red,
we may for a flash of time recognize the richness and vividness of the
colour, but then reduce it to an association about Aunt Vi's red lipstick
bleeding into the age lines around her mouth and the boredom we experienced
as she repeated stories about her trivial little life over and over and
over again. Of course, it doesn't occur to us at all that we are doing
the same thing – telling ourselves stories about our own trivial little
lives over and over and over again. Yet the colour red has nothing to
do with any of this. It is completely empty of all of our associations,
our thoughts and our feelings about it. It is simply – red; and there
is no need to add anything to it. Adding anything to it takes away from
the seeing of it. It is right here, right now and the seeing of it is
seeing this moment of present experiencing.
Each moment rises and then falls and in its rising,
its falling is already present. This moment rises and is gone and now
it is this moment; and it is now; and now; and now; and now; right here;
and here; and here. New, fresh, bright. You have never been here before,
have never experienced the light as it is in this room at this moment.
It might look familiar, but that is only because you are able to remember
certain details about the room, enough to be able to recognize objects,
just as you are able to recognize the meaning of each word as I speak
it. But in turning that recognition into familiarity, we can cut ourselves
off from the richness and directness of experiencing. Self-image backs
away and curls itself into what Dogen zenji calls our “old nest of ideas.”
When we are mindful of these sensations in this moment,
we remember reality, right here, right now. Mindful of these colours and
forms and sounds, we remember reality right here, right now.
Mindfulness is opening to this moment of present experiencing.
It is practising the directness of each moment as it is. Remembering reality
through practising mindfulness is not “going back” to what we think we
have already learned about practice, or the moment, or what we think reality
is.
Even “Mindfulness” can become part of the repertoire
of states that self-image, the structure of contraction, uses to play
out its basic ignorance concerning itself and its world. But mindfulness
is not recalling the memory of how we experienced mindfulness in the past.
It is not a memory. It is an activity, something that we must practice
in this moment, meeting each moment as it is, as we are, new and fresh.
It is what is true, right now, right here.
Zazen, kinhin, bowing, chanting, the Daruma-kata aiki,
the 1700 teisho and classes Roshi has presented, Dharma Talks presented
by Dharma Teachers and by a new shuso, meeting with a practice advisor,
a Dharma Teacher or Zen Master face to face or in an email exchange –
this is what all of these Teachings are pointing to – the brightness and
freshness of this moment.
The traditional Meal Chant that we use is one such
Teaching. It is called the “Gokan-no-ge: the Five Remembrances” or the
“Five Reflections.” “Go” means “five”; “kan” means “remember”; “no” means
“of” “ge” means “chant or “gatha.”
We will recite the chant now:
This
meal arises from the labour of all beings,
may
we remember their offering.
Delusions
are many, attention wanders,
may
we justify this offering.
Greed
arises from self-cherishing,
may
we be free in moderation.
This
offering sustains us, gives us strength,
may
we be grateful.
We
use this strength and attain the Way.
Prajnaparamita!
We will begin with the first sentence, “This
meal arises from the labour of all beings.” What does this mean? It means
what it says. “This meal arises” means just that. It means this meal in
front of us, right here, right now is the presencing of awareness in itself
arising as this moment, as this meal, as you reciting the chant.
Despite
our preference to think of the Dharma realized and Taught by the Buddha
and the Awakened Ancestors of the Lineage of Transmission as something
elusive and unattainable, and as something we will “get to later”, here
it is right here, right now. Here we are right here, right now. Waking
Up is Waking Up to our lives as they are, in this moment. As Roshi often
says, “If not now, when? If not here, where?”
Looking
into a bowl of soup, the colours and shapes of the ingredients swirl,
the fragrant steam fills our sinuses and with the first spoonful, flavours
dance across the tongue. The Dharma is in our eyes; it's in our mouths
and it's up our noses. It presences as the experiencing of the sensations
of the hand as we lift our spoons.
If there is a sense of separation, of not really being
able to experience or appreciate the directness of experiencing, this
is also just something that we need to notice and practise with. We tend
to hold ourselves back and away from what is being presented to us, moment
after moment, glossing over the details of our experiencing. We can feel
the sensations of the body, open to the colours and forms and sounds and
yet, even as we practice opening to them there can still be this sense
of separation. As though we, or perhaps some “thing” is holding back.
That sense of separation, the perception that there is some “thing” between
us and what we are experiencing, buffering things, needs to be recognized
and practised with. It is that sense of separation that reduces everything,
renders it meaningless, that washes all of the colour out of our lives.
That “thing” is self-image, the perception of a “self” or an “I” that
is at the centre of our experiencing, that pretends it is doing the experiencing.
It recoils and refuses to participate in even something as simple as eating
a meal or walking, or sitting, or standing or laying down. It is distrustful,
suspicious and it pisses on everything. Sorry if you don't like the “p”
word, but that is a very accurate description of how self-image behaves.
It is, as Roshi once said, rather like the guest served a meal by the
host, choosing to stub their cigarette out in a plate of fried eggs.
Whether you are being served a meal or have prepared
it yourself; whether it is made from fine ingredients or leftovers, the
food in front of you is the presencing of Awareness in itself, presenting
itself as food. It should be prepared as well as is possible, served beautifully
and eaten in mindful recognition of this life, this moment, this meal,
this opportunity to practice.
“This meal arises from the labour of all beings, may
we remember their offering.” What is meant by “the labour of all beings”?
To begin with, what is a being? A human being is a collection of systems
of knowing, many small systems of knowing which interact with each other,
such as blood and bone and tissues and skin. But there are other systems
of knowing which also interact with one another to maintain a structure.
Plants, water, air, these are all beings. The sun, the moon, the planets
within our solar universe are beings, each made up of small systems of
knowing.
What
is the “labour” of all beings? Well, beginning with the human contribution
to this meal, there are countless beings I could list: farmers; those
who harvest crops; those who work in mills and processing plants; those
who package and organize the distribution of food; truck drivers; shopkeepers
and clerks; those who cook our food. And that is just listing a few of
the more obvious beings who labour on our behalf.
But as I mentioned above, the word beings is not limited
to the human variety. If not for the position of the sun relative to our
planet, we could not grow food; the moon and other planets positioned
as they are, absorb the impact of meteors that would otherwise destroy
this planet. The labour of this whole solar system contributes to the
gravity and atmosphere that enables life here. This is vast labour.
Then there are smaller systems of knowing, such as
the worms which aerate the soil; insects whose labour contributes to the
pollination of plants; the micro-organisms that are needed for fertile
soil.
When we really look into who or what it is that makes
this meal possible, we realize that each thing is dependant on every other
thing; that each thing interpenetrates every other thing. We are looking
at the Renge-zo or Lotus Matrix World which includes all beings everywhere,
and so we simply say, “all beings.”
The
next phrase of the first Remembrance says, “may we remember their offering.”
I have always found the use of the word “may” interesting. “May”, to me,
implies that nothing is guaranteed, nothing is for sure. There is the
possibility of remembering that experience is rich and deep and wide,
but will we? Will we remember that there is more to our experiencing than
the little scraps and husks that we reduce it to? Will we make the effort
to at least flash on the countless beings who contributed to this meal,
to acknowledge their offering? This is where your labour and mine come
in, and the labour I refer to is our practice in this moment.
The next Remembrance is, “Delusions are many, attention
wanders, may we justify this offering.”
There is tremendous wisdom in these words. Delusions are
many and attention does wander. How many nonsensical thoughts and feelings
have we taken seriously? How many states and storylines have we identified
with? How many dreadful situations have we landed ourselves in because
we identified with them? Seeing this is why we chose to practice. Remember?
The view that we can take, that eating a meal is a
“break”, a time to separate ourselves from reality and become self-indulgent
is very strange. And these days, of course, it is not uncommon to almost
completely disconnect attention from the fact of eating by reading or
watching TV at the same time. Not that I am saying that there is anything
wrong with doing that as such, because we can eat and read at the same
time and be mindful. But very often there is no mindfulness whatsoever
and the TV or book becomes simply a way of ignoring that the bodymind
is eating. Food becomes a backdrop for whatever else is going on. How
strange and how out of touch with reality is that when we consider that
if we did not eat we would die, that this food enables life?
So how do we justify this offering? How do we bring
about something in our lives that justifies or comes forward to answer
what is offered? We offer it back to all beings by practising. And we
had thought it was just for us, all about us? Hahahahaha! No. Nothing
is. We are each what is alive as all lives, all beings. And so is everyone
else.
Speaking of things being all about us, the next Remembrance
says, “Greed arises from self-cherishing, may we be free in moderation.”
Self-cherishing
describes the obsessiveness of self-image. Self-image sees everything
in terms of “me-me-me”. This obsessiveness will often express itself in
the habitual ways we choose foods, prepare them and our eating habits.
For instance, what we might call exercising our “freedom to choose” by
eating absurd amounts of food at one sitting is obsessiveness; it is being
bound by the habits and patterns of self-image. To be free in moderation
means to be free of obsessiveness. It means choosing wisely and taking
only as much as is needed. But this teaching, as with all of the Five
Remembrances is not limited to food, of course. It applies to everything
that we do.
The Fourth Remembrance is, “This offering sustains
us, gives us strength, may we be grateful”. This Remembrance reminds us
that this food is the offering of the labour of all beings, that it arises
through the activity of numberless beings throughout the ten directions.
The gratitude that is spoken of here is not just some feeling of collapse.
Very often, when we are in a situation in which we think or are told that
we should be grateful, we might pay lip service to the word, without really
knowing why we should be. It seems that being grateful is the “right”
thing to do, and so we will pump up a feeling tone that we think is a
close facsimile but resembles something more like, “Yeah, right. Grateful.
Check. Anything that smacks of that of course should be noted and practised
with, not in order to “make” ourselves feel grateful, but simply because
regardless of whether it is about food or anything else, it is an obviously
distasteful attitude.
In
the context of the chant, “may we be grateful” does not mean feeling a
certain way. If we were paying attention to the previous four Remembrances,
applying the Teachings in this moment, then there is a direct and simple
acknowledgment of what we have been given.
And this leads directly to the last of the Five Remembrances:
“We use this strength and attain the Way.” We can eat and eat and eat
until we explode. And for all of the actual purpose that we might live
our lives with, that had might as well be all that happens. We live, we
eat and shit and die and everyone forgets about us because they are all
busy doing their own eating and shitting until they die.
Or we could use our lives, use each moment, use the
energy that we are offered by each meal and each spoonful and each grain
of rice to attain the Way. Roshi has spoken of this as “living on purpose.”
The purpose that Zen offers us is to question into and realize who we
are and what each grain of rice is.
The last line of the meal chant is “Prajnaparamita.”
This is the summation of the whole chant, and is a dedication to all beings,
everywhere. Roshi once defined Prajnaparamita in this way:
‘Prajna' is the Sanskrit word for what would be ‘Hannya'
or ‘E' or ‘Chie' in Japanese. It means Wisdom or Perfect Knowing. ‘Jna'
means ‘knowing' and ‘pra' means ‘higher' or ‘transcendent'. In Zen it
is used to mean Awakening. In the Zen Community it is often translated
as ‘radical insight' or ‘perfect knowing' because it is the direct experience
of the Awakened nature and so shatters the terms and reference points
of self-image.
‘Paramita' is the Sanskrit word for what would be
‘Haramitta' or ‘Haramitsu' in Japanese. It means perfection; activity
arising out of realization of emptiness. Inherent transcendence. In
particular, ‘The Six Paramitas' (ropparamitsu): generosity or recognizing
the fundamental richness of experience (dana, dan, fuse); integrity
or living with not-knowing (sila, jikai); patience or the flexibility
of not jumping to conclusions (ksanti, ninniku); energy or the limitless
uncontrived exertion of experiences (virya, shojin); the practice of
inherent freedom through continuous questioning (dhyana, zenjo); perfect
knowing or Awake Awareness becoming itself as it is (prajna, hannya).
There is more information about this in the teisho
series entitled “The Pathless Path.”
Students practising at Dainen-ji or its branch
centres and public students practising in other parts of the world can
recite the meal chant before each meal just as monastics do. If you are
by yourself, you can bring your hands together, palm-to-palm in whole-bodily
mindfulness and recite the chant through before beginning to eat. If you
are with others, recite it silently. Years ago, when Roshi would eat at
a restaurant with someone, he showed us that by just taking our time while
picking up a napkin or arranging cutlery we could silently review and
recite the Gokan-no-ge before eating without anything standing out to
others as unusual. When sitting a retreat, attending a Dharma Assembly
or at other formal occasions when meals are served, the chant should be
recited twice without including the last line, “Prajnaparamita” and on
the third recitation, include it. When eating a snack which does not constitute
a meal, you can simply say “Prajnaparamita” while flashing on the meaning
of the chant before beginning to eat.
For
those monastics training in the Office of the Tenzo, under Roshi's direction,
the Go-kan-no-ge has great significance. In his translation of the Tenzokyokan
by Eihei Dogen zenji, it says:
The
Zen Monastic Standards states, “The monastic community is the most excellent
of all things because those who live thus live beyond the narrowness
of social fabrications.”
Not
only do we have the fortune of being born as human beings but also of
being able to cook meals to be offered to the Three Jewels. We should
rejoice and be grateful for this.
We
can also reflect on how our lives would be were we to have been born
in the realms of hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, or jealous gods.
How difficult our lives would be in those four situations or if we had
been born in any of the eight adverse conditions. We would not then
be able to practice together with the strength of a monastic community
even should it occur to us to aspire to it, let alone be able to offer
food to the Three Jewels with our own hands. Instead our bodies and
minds would be bound within the limits of those circumstances, merely
vessels of contraction.
This
life we live is a life of rejoicing, this body a body of joy which can
be used to present offerings to the Three Jewels. It arises through
the merits of eons and using it thus its merit extends endlessly. I
hope that you will work and cook in this way, using this body which
is the fruition of thousands of lifetimes and births to create limitless
benefit for numberless beings. To understand this opportunity is a joyous
heart because even if you had been born a ruler of the world the merit
of your actions would merely disperse like foam, like sparks.
A
“motherly heart” is a heart which maintains the Three Jewels as a parent
cares for a child. A parent raises a child with deep love, regardless
of poverty or difficulties. Their hearts cannot be understood by another;
only a parent can understand it. A parent protects their child from
heat or cold before worrying about whether they themselves are hot or
cold. This kind of care can only be understood by those who have given
rise to it and realized only by those who practice it. This, brought
to its fullest, is how you must care for water and rice, as though they
were your own children.
The
Great Master Sakyamuni offered to us the final twenty years of his own
lifetime to protect us through these days of decline. What is this other
than the exertion of this “parental heart”? The Thus Come One did not
do this hoping to get something out of it but sheerly out of munificence.
“Vast
heart” is like a great expanse of ocean or a towering mountain. It views
everything from the most inclusive and broadest perspective. This vast
heart does not regard a gram as too light nor five kilos as too heavy.
It does not follow the sounds of spring or try to nest in a spring garden;
it does not darken with the colours of autumn. See the changes of the
seasons as all one movement, understand light and heavy in relation
to each other within a view which includes both. When you write or study
the character “vast,” this is how you should understand its meaning.
If
the tenzo at Jiashan had not thus studied the word “vast,” he could
not have woken up Elder Fu by laughing at him. If Zen master Guishan
had not understand the word “vast,” he would not have blown on dead
firewood three times. If the monk Dongshan had not understood the word
“vast,” he could not have taught the monk through his expression, “Three
pounds of flax.”
All
of these and other great masters through the ages have studied the meaning
of “vast” or “great” not only though the word for it but through all
of the events and activities of their lives. Thus they lived as a great
shout of freedom through presenting the Great Matter, penetrating the
Great Question, training great disciples and in this way bringing it
all forth to us.
The
abbot, senior officers and staff, and all monks should always maintain
these three hearts or understandings.
Interestingly enough, a question about Zen practice
that I am often asked by beginning students is, “If there any feeling
in Zen?” This is because they are worried that practising Zen might make
them cold and indifferent. Hahahaha.
As
pointed out by Eihei Dogen zenji, food is chosen, prepared, and served
with great care. He uses the metaphor of parent and child to emphasize
the degree of care. I personally don't much care for that metaphor because
when one is really practising, the kind of care, intimacy, attention to
detail and willingness to practice whole-heartedly far surpasses familial
relationships which I can say as someone who is not only a Zen monk and
a Teacher but has also been a daughter, a sister, and a mother. At the
same time, I can understand why he used it. We simply do not have any
models for practice that are accurate. Words can never be what experiencing
is.
But they can point us to pay attention to what
is going on here. I remember what Roshi said when instructing me in oryoki,
the practice of using the traditional set of nested bowls and cloths that
we use in sesshin. He said that when he lifts up the bowl and chants “This
meal arises from the labour of all beings…” his heart breaks. And that
after many years of doing this I would know what he meant. And now I do.
Another chant we recite, the Fukanzazengi, says that
we have the treasure of this body and birth. It is here for an instant
and vanished in a moment.
I say that if we want to feel that we have truly lived
before we die, we must open attention to each moment of experiencing and
remember Reality. The taste of practice, the taste of food, these are
not different from each other. In tasting food, we taste Awareness in
itself. We Wake Up and take the next bite.
Have a good morning.
 
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1999-2004 White Wind Zen Community. All rights reserved.
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