There’s an old Zen story that I like very much: A monk comes to the monastery of the storied Master Zhaozho. Diligent and serious, the monk asks for instruction, hoping for some esoteric teaching, some deep Buddhist wisdom, or, at the very least, a colorful response that will spur him on in his practice. Instead the master asks him, “Have you had your breakfast yet?” The monk says that he has. “Then wash your bowls,” the master replies. This is the only instruction he is willing to offer.
Although the Zen master’s response might seem gruff, odd, and cryptic, it actually makes a fundamental point. Zhaozho wants to bring the monk back to the immediate present. “Don’t look for some profound Zen instruction here,” he seems to be saying. “Open your eyes. Just be present with the actual stuff of your ordinary, everyday life” — in this case, bowls.
Like the monk in the story, I came to the San Francisco Zen Center years ago with huge metaphysical concerns. A student of literature, philosophy, and religion, I was full of questions about what was real, what was right, what was enlightenment, what was consciousness. The world that I had inherited from my parents, in which so much was taken for granted, no longer seemed tenable. Everything was up for grabs. I came to the Zen center propelled by this spirit, and I was willing to go to almost any length, do anything — meditate, read texts, practice austerities, listen to lectures — to answer my all-consuming questions.
But my questions seemed to have little to do with Zen as it was presented to me. Instead of engaging in study and discussion (the only modes of discovery I knew at the time), I learned how to mop the floor, wash the dishes, tend the garden. It was good training for me. Actually, it was exactly what I needed. As this experience grounded me, my metaphysical concerns began to be settled. The answers I was looking for were not to be found in spiritual teachings, enlightenment flashes, or meditative states — although there were enough of these over the years to keep me going. Little by little, through tending to the daily life of the temple, I began to breathe and feel my answers bodily instead of knowing them intellectually.
I did receive some Buddhist instruction, of course. I heard about impermanence, about emptiness, about nirvana. But more often I heard about simply being present, with body and mind fully engaged. Once, during a meal in the middle of a long retreat, my teacher began speaking in a grave tone, as if he were about to explain the secrets of the universe. “When you eat the three-bowl meal during retreat,” he intoned, “you should eat a little out of the first bowl, then eat some from the second bowl, then eat from the third bowl, and then go back to the first bowl. This is the best way to eat.”
Over and over again throughout Zen literature, we read of students approaching their masters with complicated matters, only to be brought down to earth. “What is Buddha?” a student asks. “The cypress tree in the courtyard!” the master replies. “What is the Way?” “A seven-pound shirt!” Like the teachers of old who saw that their students’ existential concerns could best be met here on earth rather than high up in the clouds, my teachers grounded me and helped me to keep my balance. “It’s right here in front of your nose,” they told me.
The word zen means “meditation,” and meditation is certainly the best-known Zen practice. But meditation is not mere spiritual contemplation. In the Soto Zen tradition that I follow, teachers continually stress the actual mechanics of sitting on the cushion. We are not given lofty objectives, mantras, or deep koans on which to meditate. Instead the instructor talks about the details of physical posture, the alignment of ears and shoulders, the correct position of hands and arms, the placement of hips and knees. The instruction is so physical, so specific, that one might well wonder when the “Zen” part begins. But this is the Zen part. To pay attention to the body in all its details, to be present with the body in its physical immediacy — this is the practice, and the depth of the practice derives from it.
This emphasis on the physical as the fountainhead of the spiritual extends to all aspects of Soto Zen monastic life. “Careful attention to detail” is the motto of the school. As Zhaozho instructed, monks are to be careful of their bowls, their robes, their shoes. The temple work is considered not a necessary and unfortunate series of chores, but rather an opportunity to realize the deepest truths of the tradition. Zen monastics clean the temple inside and out daily, wet-wiping the wood of the pillars and floors, raking leaves, cutting wood, drawing water. None of these maintenance jobs differs in any way from sutra chanting, text contemplation, or meditation itself. All is physical; all is immediate; all is the stuff of enlightenment. Meaning comes not so much from what you understand as from the way you do whatever it is you are doing.
The daily schedule usually calls for a period of mindful, silent cleaning immediately following meditation. Even the maintenance shop has a Buddhist altar in it. Tools are to be handled with respect and put away in their proper places — not after the work is done, but as an integral part of the work. Monks sew their own robes and are enjoined to care for them as sacred vestments. Bowls used for eating in the meditation hall are to be handled “as if they were Buddha’s own head.” The head monk not only gives lectures and meets privately with students; he or she is also in charge of taking out the garbage and cleaning the toilets. These traditional assignments are seen as holy tasks to be undertaken with full respect and honor. (An old koan: “What is Buddha?” “A shit stick!”) For students in training, the sight of the head monk diligently carrying garbage pails or wielding a toilet brush is as much a part of their teaching as the words uttered in the dharma hall.
Soto Zen temples are especially devoted to kitchen work. In our center, for instance, there is a “knife practice”: knives are always washed immediately after use rather than being placed in a sink for washing later on. (Someone might get cut.) There is also a “counter-cleaning practice” (wiping down with vinegar at the end of each work period), a “cutting-board practice” (different boards carefully stacked in different locations for fruit, onions, and other foods), and a “chopping practice” (specific ways of holding the knife and the food to be cut for various styles of chop). All of these teach the practitioner that the manner in which something is accomplished is just as important as the result — if not more so.
In the training period, too, Zhaozho’s words about bowls are taken quite literally in oryoki: formal Zen eating practice. Monastics take all of their meals with great formality in the meditation hall, eating out of a set of three bowls, which are wrapped ceremonially in cloths, often hand-sewn by the practitioner. The choreography of managing the cloths, laying out the chopsticks and spoons, receiving the formally served food, chanting, eating, and, yes, washing out the bowls with the hot water offered is truly prodigious. It takes years to master and feel comfortable with the practice, but when one does, one finds the movements enjoyable and beautiful. What previously seemed fussy, complicated, and arbitrary now, having fully entered into the fingers and palms of the hands, seems lovely in its quiet grace. Like playing the piano, which requires much clumsy exercise before fluency is achieved, the physical acuity of simply eating a meal is transformed through oryoki into a profound religious act.
Far from offering a means to transcend the material world, the process of Zen practice deepens and opens the material world, revealing its inner richness. This is accomplished not by making the physical world symbolic nor by filling it up with explanations or complications, but simply by entering it wholeheartedly, on its own terms. When you do that, you see that the material world is not superficial or mundane. What is superficial and mundane is our habit of reducing it to a single dimension. Dissatisfied with this flat view of the material world, we look elsewhere for depth.
Seeing the material world as it really is, we recognize that it’s no different from the highest spiritual reality. For where is spiritual reality if it isn’t right here in the material realm, bleeding through space and time at every point? Zen training is an effort to enter the material world at such a depth and to appreciate it. As the story of Zhaozho indicates, the way to see the material world in all its fullness is to be present with it and to take care of it: “Wash your bowls!”
Once, not long after I was ordained as a Zen priest, I visited my cousin in Miami. An oral surgeon, my cousin is good at what he does and consequently rather wealthy. He is also quite enamored of cars. When he takes a fancy to a particular kind of car, he buys several, so that he typically has a small fleet of the same model, in different colors and with slightly different features. On this particular visit, he was taken with the Chevrolet Corvette. Tentatively he asked whether I’d like to take a ride in one, and I said sure. He rolled the convertible top down, and we went speeding along in the wonderful, warm south-Florida weather. I was impressed with the automobile’s smooth handling and considerable power, and I enjoyed the ride thoroughly.
On our return, when I expressed my enthusiasm for the car, my cousin was surprised at my reaction. He’d expected that, as a religious person, I’d disapprove of his conspicuous consumption. And maybe I did. But apart from any ideas I had about consumption, I told him, I could appreciate the actual experience of riding in the automobile. “In experiencing the material world,” I explained, with all the didactic authority of a newly ordained priest, “there are always two elements at play: the material object — in this case the car, the highway, the scenery going by — and the sense organs and mind that apprehend that object. So-called materialists emphasize the object; so-called nonmaterialists, or religious people, emphasize the sense organs and the mind. But we need both. The key point is, though, that if the mind and the sense organs are acute enough, even a fairly humble object can bring a great deal of satisfaction. Think of how much money I save by practicing Zen: I can get all the satisfaction I need out of just one ride; I don’t have to buy the car!”
The truth is, what we call “materialism” isn’t really materialistic; it is idealistic. In other words, it is not the objects that we are after in our consuming; it is the ideals those objects represent. Just consider advertising, the function of which is to create an aura of emotion and ideology around an object, so as to make it more desirable than it actually is. In a magazine ad, a van is parked on a gorgeous beach. On one side of the van, a man is reclining. On the other side a beautiful woman in a bathing suit is lying on the sand with her feet in the sea. A luminous, almost ethereal shaft of sunlight shines through the open doors of the van and onto the woman’s face. The setting, the man, the woman, the light — all of this has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual van.
This is a far cry from “wash your bowls,” which makes a humble object magnificent not by associating it with desirable images, but simply by the act of taking care of it mindfully. Once, the twentieth-century Japanese Zen master Nakagawa Soen Roshi gave a retreat in America. The retreat took place in a rented school building, and there wasn’t much kitchenware available for serving meals. The daily schedule included a tea service, and since there were no teacups, paper cups had to be used. On the first day of the retreat, after the tea service, the students began to throw the cups away, but Soen Roshi stopped them. “No!” he scolded. “We need to use these same cups each day. You have to save them.” For seven days the students used the same paper cups for tea. When the retreat was over, Soen Roshi said, “OK, now you can throw away the paper cups.” But the students wouldn’t hear of it. They couldn’t possibly throw away the cups. They had become too precious.
My friends are always astonished when I tell them how much I like going to shopping malls, especially at Christmas. I enjoy being around people who are looking for gifts for their loved ones, anticipating a festive meal, happy to be spending lots of money in a celebration of life. I am, of course, aware of the waste and misery that also accompany the holiday season. Yes, the parking lot is too crowded, and yes, the amount of merchandise in the stores is overwhelming. But I can’t help it; I still have a good time.
The contemporary American shopping mall may seem like a blight, but such shopping districts are as old as human civilization. I have visited Jerusalem several times and walked through the narrow streets of the Old City. They are now, as they have been for millennia, crowded with shops overflowing with merchandise. I have also spent many happy hours at the great market in Oaxaca, Mexico, where vendors sell all manner of clothing, jewelry, liquor, and food, including that Oaxacan specialty, peppered grasshoppers. Although I don’t buy much at any of these places, I enjoy the spectacle of people coming together in one teeming location to purchase material goods they hope will bring pleasure, comfort, and sustenance.
In the end, commerce is a way of helping each other fulfill our human needs. Thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master Dogen says in his essay “Bodhisattva’s Four Methods of Guidance”: “To launch a boat or build a bridge is an act of giving. . . . Making a living and producing things can be nothing other than giving.” It is possible for us to buy and sell in a spirit of participation and compassion. We can recognize in material goods an opportunity to meet each other on the ground of our shared human needs.
When you do business with someone, you are entering into a relationship with that person. You could see the relationship as adversarial (who will get the best of whom?), but you could just as easily see it as mutual, each of you providing, as fairly and as pleasantly as possible, what the other needs. We could see our customer, our supplier, our shopkeeper, and our banker as friends, people who, like us, want to be happy. To look at commercial life in this way takes sensitivity and mindful awareness. This we can develop by working with our thoughts and responses just as we work with our breath on the meditation cushion.
Part of this work is to be honest and realistic about our greed, fear, and confusion. To what extent is our attitude about money connected to our sense of self — our sense of being powerful and important, or weak and unimportant? Clearly, whatever self-esteem, or lack of it, we may have probably exists independently of money. We project these feelings onto money and likely conduct our financial lives in a distorted, or at least an unconscious, way. Perhaps we are just playing out our childhood conditioning. Having grown up deprived, we may worry that there won’t be enough. Or, having grown up with plenty, we may feel guilty about owning too much. By observing in detail what we do, say, and feel as we deal with money, we can bring these unconscious and dysfunctional feelings to conscious awareness. Eventually we might be able to view money less as a source of worry, pride, or guilt and more as a means of exchange between people, a convenient device for the distribution of the material goods necessary for living, a way for us to share life together.
To conduct our economic lives mindfully requires us not only to be mindful of our attitudes, the goods we buy, and our relationships to the people who supply these goods, but also to be as informed as we can be about the possible exploitation involved in our purchases, and to use our purchasing power to reinforce justice. When we know that a company is harming its workers, its competitors, or the environment, we simply don’t buy its product. When we know that a company is making a conscious effort to offer something useful in as harmless a way as possible, we go out of our way to buy what it sells. When this is our consideration, price and convenience become less important than relationship. We want to give our business to people whose efforts we are interested in encouraging.
Companies change policies constantly, however, and are bought and sold with alarming frequency. The effort to keep informed about the companies we do business with could become too much in the context of the complicated lives we all lead. Knowing that it is impossible to do it perfectly, we can nevertheless do it as perfectly as possible, trusting our intention more than our information. Information in the modern age goes out of date almost as soon as it’s gathered. Intention, on the other hand, can remain firm and help keep us on a wholesome course. Although it is shortsighted to trust to intention alone, intention’s power to transform the world should never be underestimated.
It seems to me that the world is in need of a new economic theory to replace unrestrained free-market capitalism, which operates on the faith that an “unseen hand,” as economist Adam Smith called it, will see to it that things don’t get out of control. Free-market capitalists trust that somehow the market (which often seems to take on the proportions of a deity) will, in the end, serve us as well as anything else could, and is less subject to corruption and disaster than other, more rational systems.
In fact, the “unseen hand” has been relatively reliable. Although our world economy is in terrible shape (especially when you consider its ecological costs), it is in miraculously good shape considering its complexity and the fact that it is ruled by people who are motivated by self-interest. Many people starve, but more are being fed every day. And little by little, some of the more enlightened nations are joining together to cooperate for the collective good of the planet.
I don’t know if Adam Smith ever proposed a definition of the “unseen hand,” but here’s mine: it is the sum total of human goodness, of our love for ourselves and each other, and of our hopes for a future that will be more humane than the present or the past. Perhaps we can trust this unseen hand to inspire us to more mindful consumption and production as time goes on, and to discover, eventually, some new organizing principles for our economic life.
“Wash Your Bowls” is reprinted from the anthology Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume (Shambhala), edited by Stephanie Kaza. It appears here by permission of the author. © 2005 by Norman Fischer.
