Zen Seeds by Shundo Aoyama

Author:Shundo Aoyama
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

A MONK’S MOUTH IS LIKE A STOVE’S

IN DOGEN’S Instructions to the Kitchen Supervisor we find this saying of Kaccayana, a disciple of Shakyamuni Buddha: “A monk’s mouth is like a stove’s.” More than thirty years ago, when I was a newly ordained nun and enrolled in the training temple, I would always sit behind the senior nuns. One day in a shosan talk [a talk by a senior nun] after the morning sutra service, I heard that saying for the first time. At the age of fifteen I only understood it to mean that monastics should eat anything put in front of them, whether they like it or not. I thought the saying referred only to eating, and forgot about it for a long time.

Recently that saying came back to me, and without thinking I repeated it aloud. I realized that “a monk’s mouth” does not have to be taken literally, but can mean the “mouth” of one’s life or the “mouth” of heaven and earth and the whole universe. For instance, all kinds of experiences go into the “mouth” of one’s life, including the things we dread, such as the deaths of loved ones or one’s own death. How are these unwelcome things to be “burned”?

A stove takes in anything; it has no likes or dislikes. It burns alike the smoothest wood and the thorniest branches in order to steam rice, cook vegetables, or heat bath water.

All experiences enrich and purify us spiritually and physically. Joy, sorrow, failure, success, love, and hate all go into the stove of life. We should accept all our experiences and use them to benefit ourselves and other people. A stove that rejects hateful things will not burn well, and no meals can be cooked on it. Eventually it will stop functioning altogether. Its smoke will add to the problem and create a big nuisance.

While continuing to ponder over these things, one day I came across the following poem in a newspaper. It is by Eiichi Enomoto, a lay nembutsu practitioner who believes in salvation through Amida Buddha.

My wastebasket accepts anything—

Scraps of paper or my mistakes in composition.

Without a word, it just swallows them up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.