You Are What You Eat (Prepare for Oryoki)

Rev. Tony Lorenzen

Horizon UU Church, Carrollton, Texas

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Prepare for Oryoki! Shouted the jikki jitsu. The jikki jitso is the time keeper – the person who leads the chanting. It wasn’t really a shout, but it was louder, at least it seemed louder than the introductions to the other sutras that we had chanted so far during my first sheshin. I made my first seshin or zen meditation retreat about one year ago. I was prepared for three days of meditation to a certain extent. Maybe not for my knees to hurt from the nine hours of meditation, broken into half-hour sitting periods each day, but I was prepared for the meditation. I have been meditating for many years and I had been attending a zen sitting group for a year before the sheshin. I was prepared to meditate. There is no talking during sheshin. Hmm. Silence for three days. I was ready for some silence. I had been teaching and ministering my whole adult life. I talked for a living (so you hear). I was prepared for some silence. I was not prepared for Oryoki.

I didn’t have an Oryoki set and had to buy one for the retreat. All of our food is going to be served in these? That’s a lot of bowls to have in front of each person on the table, I thought. Oh no, no, no. You see, you don’t get a break from the lotus position to sit at the table and eat. You put these bowls on the floor in front of you, in front of your zabutons, or meditation cushion, and eat while sitting on your zafus, or meditation pillows, still in meditation posture – kness to the floor – back straight. No silverware. Just chopsticks and a wooden spoon. Nothing to drink - just three small bowls. I was so not prepared for Oryoki.

Then I smelled the evening meal being cooked. I never noticed rice had such an aroma before. And vegetables – I could actually smell the sweet potatoes. What was up with that? Maybe I was ready for this Oryoki after all, but first more chanting. Wait – the food, I can smell it. This is not fair. It’s just in the other room…

The Buddha was born at Kapilavastu,

Attained the way at Magadha, preached at Varanasi,

Entered Nirvana at Kusinagara.

Now as we spread out Buddha’s bowls Tathagatha

We make our vows together with all beings.

We and this food and our eating are empty….

I was not prepared for Oryoki.

The chanting went on…and on. How long? I don’t know - an hour? Probably ten minutes, but it seemed like an hour. I was hungry, you know? In case you haven’t noticed this about me, the fancy minister robes kinda hide it a little – I’m fat. I like to eat. Too much. I’m someone who has always had a hard time watching the waistline. I like to cook and I like to eat. I was very happy when the servers entered the zendo.

It wasn’t family style, however. Like most things Zen, eating Oryoki proceeds in a measured fashion. The server approaches you, you hold out your bowl, and the server fills it. You make a hand gesture signifying enough, because there is no talking. I was sitting on the cushion next to one of the servers so I had to reach over and lift his bowls, communicating with our eyes when to stop each item on the menu. Like grandmother’s table, you had to wait until everyone was served before beginning to eat, and at that point there was a final chant before everyone began at the same time.

Finally! Boy, was I ready to tear into that rice and vegetables and soup, but somewhere between the beginning of the chanting and the finishing of the serving to this first bite my crazed famishedness had disappeared. Everything had slowed down. I still had to deal with chopsticks. I am no novice with chopsticks, but it’s not a knife and fork to me either. I ate. I love sweet potatoes. I savored every bite and the rice was perfect, as was the Miso soup. Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hahn teaches mindfulness by advising his students and followers to “wash the dishes to washes.” I was eating the soup to eat the soup. I concentrated on each bite. The meal seemed to last forever, but was probably only 15 minutes long. When the servers came around with seconds, I almost felt like I was having an out of body experience as I watched myself turn them down and give the hand signal for no thank you – was I out of my mind? No. I was full. I’d had enough.

Each Oryoki during the retreat I savored the organic, vegetarian meal. Relishing the strawberries bursting with flavor at breakfast, delighting in noodles at lunch, celebrating each carrot at dinner. I can honestly and without reservation say I have never enjoyed meals more. I certainly never paid attention to any meals I have ever eaten more than I did that weekend. I can hardly believe the three little Oryoki bowls held enough food for me, but they did.

That is what Oryoki is about, having enough. When a person becomes a monk, taking up the way of the Buddha, he or she is traditionally given two things to symbolize that commitment: a robe and a bowl. These represent the two things most necessary to sustain our life: shelter for external protection and food for internal nourishment. Neither is extravagant. The robe and the bowl are austere. One is a simple garment and the other is a simple vessel. Each is just enough to serve its purpose. The Chinese term for the monk’s bowl can be translated to “the instrument for appropriate measure.”[1]

I have given a lot of thought in the last year to taking up the practice of Oryoki for all my meals. My Oryoki set sits in the pantry and it would mock me if that were it nature, but it’s a Zen eating set and instead of mocking my overindulgence or poor food choices, it sits on the shelf and says plainly, eloquently, “Mu, mu, mu.” – “No, no, no.” It is reminding me that I am what I eat, both literally and spiritually and that these are one and the same.

As human beings we truly are what we eat. We become what we do. We are what we do and we do what we are. If we act with justice, we become more just. If we act out of loyalty, we become more loyal. If we act with kindness we become more kind. If we act with courage, we become braver. If we choose wisely, we become even more prudent. If we exercise self-care, we become healthy in body, mind, and spirit. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If we do not act in these ways, the less and less likely we are to be these kinds of people.

We are what we eat. And if your family is anything at all like mine, you do not eat together as families once did. When my wife was growing up, dinner was at 6 p.m. and you had better be at the table when it started. Everyone was there, her parents, her siblings. Just as everyone sat in the zendo for Oryoki, they sat, not in quiet but in noise, and paid attention to the meal and each other. And today they can’t bear to live more than five minutes from each other. We are what we eat.

Food has long been a part of human religious history and religious ceremony. Today, however, keepers of the traditional Sabbath among Jews are in decline, and among those Christian communities who celebrate the Lord’s Supper a common complaint is that many, especially among the younger generations miss the table symbolism. One reason for this is that western culture has lost its ability to appreciate food.

Theologian and ecologist Wendell Berry says that our culture produces “industrial eaters” who believe food to be just another product to be picked up at just another store. He says we no longer think of ourselves as “participants in agriculture” but as “passive consumers.”[2] This isn’t surprising given the urban shift in our population. In his 1995 article “Conserving Communities” from Orion Magazine Berry says that between 1910 and 1920 fully 33% of the American population lived on farms, but in 1991 only 2% of the population lived on farms. No wonder we think our food comes from the Supermarket.

This is important because I think it connects to passivity in other area of our lives. We are what we eat. Too often in modern life we speak in terms of things happening to us, of not being in control of our own existence as if we are not responsible in some manner for our own choices and behavior and we disconnect our behavior from the world around us. If our food comes from the supermarket, not the farm is it any wonder that our education comes only from school and our religion and spirituality only from church?

Wendell Berry says, “that how we eat determines to a large extent how the world is used.” The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices supports him with their recommended “priority actions” for Americans to eat less meat and to buy certified organic produce:

In the United States it takes 2,400 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef; over 70 percent of the U.S. grain harvest is fed to livestock each year, the majority of it to cattle…simply eating one less burger a month saves 600 gallons of water” (Schut 16).

In the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Barbara Kingsolver’s husband Steven L. Hopp writes,

“Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles…a quick way to improve food-related fuel economy would be to buy a quart of motor oil and drink it…If every U.S. citizen ate just one a meal a week, any meal, composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week” (Kingsolver 5).

If we are what we eat, what are we now? A disconnected, gluttonous, unhealthy time bomb hell-bent on over-consumption. Yuck. That’s exactly what I felt like while eating my Oryoki. I felt keenly aware of being overweight and how I really didn’t need what I ate. I felt keenly aware of the needless amounts of corn fed meat and sweets I ate. And all this, while I was eating small amounts of organic, vegetarian food. I tell you, there’s something about the Oryoki set that sits there, and if it were of any lesser character, would mock me. But it just says, “Mu, mu, mu.” No. no. no.

But it’s a good teacher. It comes from a long line of religious teachers who respected food and not only ate mindfully, but lived mindfully.

What happens when we pay attention to what we eat? To what we put inside ourselves for sustenance? We may realize, like I did eating Oryoki that we just don’t need a lot of it, that it’s not good for us or our environment. And that we have the power to stop. That we really need very little input. Just as we actually need very little food.

We need love. We need acceptance. We need to feel wanted and to have purpose. And we seek these things from others and the world around us. Mu. Mu. Mu. No. First of all we must love and accept ourselves. And like meditation, it is simple, but not easy. It is something we must practice daily. We can get caught up so easily in how others see us, in what the world wants to feed us: oily, genetically modified, chemically treated, food that’s been all over creation just to get to us and that we don’t need because all we really need is right here close to home all along.

As my favorite theologian Bruce Springsteen says – very Zen, the boss –

“It’s a sad man my friend,

who’s living in his own skin

and can’t stand the company.”[3]

The only way to get comfortable in your own skin is to practice another Zen concept - compassion. Be compassionate with yourself. Tend your own garden first. You can’t help another, take care of another, or be there for another until you help yourself, take care of yourself, and are there for yourself. You have to know where the food comes from. It must come from you – and you must be a healthy source. You can’t run to the supermarket for personal resources all the time, stock up at your friend’s house, at church, the social club, or the television. Eventually you have to be at home in yourself. Be aware that you are what you eat. Tend your own garden. A garden grown in poisonous contaminated soil will bear bad fruit. Be careful about what goes into to making you. You are too valuable to compromise.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s Community, The Order of Interbeing practices and teaches the traditional Buddhist Precepts as The Five Mindfulleness Trainings. The fifth precept or fifth mindfulness training is about mindful consumption. It’s about watching what you eat, both physically and spiritually. It begins:

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society.

We really are what we eat. Food comes the farm, not the supermarket, learning happens outside of school, and community worship is home base for the spiritual journey, not the only place on the map. May we all truly come to understand as the fifth mindfulness training concludes, “that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society.”

Prepare for Oryoki.

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[1] Thich Nhat Hanh Anger pg 20 Riverhead/Penguin. New York 2001

[2] Wendell Berry “The Pleasures of Eating” in What Are People For? San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990) p. 145 qtd in Food and Faith: Justice, Joy and Daily Bread, Michael Schut, ed. p.17

[3] Bruce Springsteen “Better Days” from the CD Lucky Town