11-27-14 - Craig's Oryoki Meal

To me the greatest of all Tassajara stories is already on cuke in two old interviews. It happened during the first practice period that Tatsugami Roshi came from Japan to lead. It was brought up in an officer's meeting that some students were stealing from the kitchen. Tatsugami said the solution to that is to put a lock on the door. The officers argued with him. No one wanted to do that but he couldn't understand why not so it happened. A number of people were upset by the new lock that appeared on the kitchen door. Niels and I didn't care. We understood. We liked to stay up late and now and then would go over to the kitchen and make a midnight snack. We might have been the main culprits. The new kitchen wasn't finished yet so we were still cooking out of that little shack on the back deck overlooking the creek.

Here's Daya Goldschlag's version. And here's Craig Boyan mentioning it in his interview.

But first, in case you don't know what oryoki is: oryoki - Ōryōki (応量器?, "Just enough") -- set of eating bowls and utensils, wrapped in a cloth, with which Zen monks eat their meals. The procedure for unwrapping the bowls, eating from them, cleaning, and re-wrapping them has been formalized, and is performed in unison at mealtime.- wikipedia

The image of the wrapped oryoki from Globalsotozen-net.or.jp, the three bowls with food from shakyamuni.blogspot.com, and the one with the seated person eating this way from Elephant Journal run by the cool Waylon Lewis. As you can see if you click that link, oryoki was picked up by Trungpa Rinpoche and included in his sangha's practice.