Teachable

“There is just a mysterious tacit understanding and no more.”
- Zen Master Obaku (Huang Po), On the Transmission of Mind

The copies of this book you’ll find, even the one at the temple, are all entitled The Zen Teaching of Huang Po on the Transmission of Mind, but Huang Po is also known as the father of Rinzai Zen because he was Rinzai’s (Linji’s) teacher. Even though these 9th century teachers were Chinese, they were the founders of the school of Zen that is most closely associated with Japan, so in Rinzai schools they are referred to by their Japanese name: Linji becomes Rinzai, and Huang Po becomes Obaku.

We arrived at the temple last Saturday to help out with the grounds ahead of the memorial ceremonies for the previous Abbot of Daishu-in West. I was concerned about whether I was physically up to the demands ahead of me. Over these first few days, we were only doing a couple of hours of yard work twice a day, turning in as soon as it got dark, and getting up only about an hour before dawn.

On Wednesday we’d start getting up with hours of darkness remaining, and work hard at our practices all day until hours after darkness had settled down on the forest temple. 

As my friend and I raked leaves together, I expressed my concern to her: “I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I feel like my life force is at about a 2,” having in mind a 10 point scale. My blood pressure had been high for quite some time, I’d been sleeping poorly, had put on some unwanted pounds, and was living with so much stress and deep fatigue I could only explain having come to the temple this time because I hadn’t had enough energy to consider not coming.

I felt crushed when another student asked if I’d overheard I’d been assigned breakfast. It didn’t just feel like a challenge this time; it felt like one last weight on top of a stack of others that were already breaking me - the one that was going to lead not to a productive surrender, but to a sloppy and pathetic failure.

There was absolutely no enthusiasm to revisit the pressure cooker of preparing the morning meal during sesshin. Preparing breakfast means cooking for everyone - including the Roshi - and breakfast is always the same 5 dishes, 3 of which are made fresh every morning. The Roshi has such a refined palate and sharp senses, even the students whose only job is to eat are on high alert, knowing that the slightest wavering of attention can earn them a sharp reprimand. Common mistakes while sitting at the breakfast table include missing an opportunity to appropriately help, holding others up by not being quick enough to serve and pass food, making too much noise with one’s bowls, eating too slowly, or any number of other known and unknown outward displays of a break in completely focused attention.

Another student cooked Sunday morning, and I was on for Monday forward. I had two days to practice feeding only the Abbot and the other students before the Roshi started attending breakfast on Wednesday morning: two days to see if I could remember what I had learned from making the same breakfast in 2024.

Monday and Tuesday mornings I felt nauseated with anxiety, spacey, and too dull in my mind to move quickly and accurately. Breakfast turned out okay, but it was hard, even with the extra time the Abbot had allowed me. On Wednesday there would be no extra time, along with the Roshi’s attention on us all like a focused bird of prey gliding over a promising field.

Wednesday - the day arrived. I figured only that I would get through this meal and then know where things were likely to fall on the continuum between withering corrections and coasting by with minor suggestions.

Moving quickly through the kitchen, my wake of air snuffed out the burners more than once. I grabbed the lighter with wet hands and, coincidence or not, it selected that moment to give up the ghost for good. I noticed images in my mind of lighting something on fire to share the flame between burners - a chopstick? It was my next thought that was the helpful one: look somewhere reasonable for matches or lighters. Let me tell you, when you need a lighter while making breakfast for the Roshi and find one, the sense of victory is something like winning the grand prize in a raffle. With no time to stop and celebrate, though, that momentary elation was immediately folded back into the energy of cooking - I relit the stove with a dash of unearned confidence.

The dishes seemed at least passable, perhaps good: mochi puffed, rice hot and soft and watery, miso paste mixture a light enough brown to indicate more nut and seed butters than miso, pickles carefully and symmetrically cut and artfully arranged. The chopsticks were all in pairs of matching lengths; the ceremonial cloth was damp without the possibility of dripping; the serving dishes were perfectly lined up down the center of the table from the Roshi’s personal bowl set.

I heard my cue - the Abbot’s ending bells of the morning sutra - and hit my breakfast bell exactly on time. Within minutes, everyone had filed in and taken their seats, but I was swimming in the intense energy of cooking that was excessive for sitting down and eating.

My hands shook and my mind lost the present moment as I realized I didn’t have enough space on the benches for the empty dishes that were coming my way down the table. Forgetting what was most important, I rushed to move a serving dish and caught my sleeve on my full rice bowl. Hot rice gruel sloshed onto the table - somehow almost all of it, even though the bowl only tipped and didn’t turn over.

A solution offered itself up in my mind in the form of visual impressions of myself jumping up to get towels, but it was rejected for waste and disruption as quickly as it arose. The next thing I knew, I snatched up my chopsticks, used them as a flat rake, and guided every bit of the rice off the edge of the table and right back into my bowl. My hands and chopsticks and bowl and table edge and robes were wet and sticky, but the rice was where it belonged. I didn’t get a correction yet, but I was rattled.

I wanted to rearrange the serving dishes to prevent another jostle or spill, and strategically waited until after everyone else started eating to do so, but I was caught. I couldn’t tell you now whether I delayed eating 5 seconds, 15, or more, but the Roshi’s reprimand broke the spell: “Marcy, what are you doing? Start eating.” 

There was a flash of defensiveness in my body as I picked up my bowl and chopsticks, but by the time the first bite was in my mouth, I realized that I had not only been wrong, but that the Roshi had done me a deep kindness by jolting me back into the present.

The rest of Wednesday’s breakfast went smoothly, and Thursday did too except that there was a correction to one of the dishes.

“Who made the miso mixture?” the Roshi inquired of the whole table, as though there was any doubt it had been me. My hand went up to take responsibility, having no idea what was wrong with the dish. “The ratio is incorrect,” she stated, and then got up.

The ratio was incorrect - but how? Too much miso? Too much peanut butter? After the Roshi and the Abbot had left the kitchen, I asked Rie, who is a wonderful Japanese cook and experienced with the Roshi’s preferences, what she thought needed to be corrected. At first she claimed not to know, but I felt certain she could recall. “You know,” I encouraged her. “Remember what you tasted. Can you tell me what was wrong?”

Rie closed her eyes, paused, and then opened them with a look of satisfaction: “Not enough sesame,” and she mimed grinding the toasted seeds in the suribachi bowl.

I understood something, but I didn’t yet know what. I knew that Rie’s explanation made sense and that my guessing at the miso or the peanut butter weren’t the right directions. Then I saw in my mind pouring a thin layer of sesame seeds into the pan that morning for toasting. I knew it wasn’t enough.

I saw myself grinding them up and adding the other ingredients without gathering up the sesame butter with a fork to confirm how much I had in order to get the ratio right. 

I was able to remember my attention not being adequately focused.

Something clicked in that moment, but we were all busy washing and putting away the breakfast dishes. Shortly afterwards, we put on our work clothes and headed outside for morning cleaning. I began to pick up leaves on the dirt driveway I was about to rake and felt the lessons of breakfast reverberating.

There had been so little reactivity, and a quicker, clearer mind movement to understand my corrections. I could see my mistakes. They were all the same mistake. Do you see?

A thought arose in my mind: I’m just now becoming teachable.