After all, the preparations for the meal are complete, clean up thoroughly, putting everything back where it ought to be. When the drum sounds and the bell rings both morning and evening, be sure not to miss Zen, nor going to see the master to receive his teaching. So this really reminds me of being head cook. It's a shame to do this work. But I mean, I've heard at some centers that if you're assigned to be head cook for sushi and then that's your machine, you don't do sitting or at least you don't do much sitting you do that work offering instead. But in our center in our tradition, we don't miss any sitting is had cooked you. You do you get in their freezers and you go to Dark Sun as well as doing the job. And then there's also a ritual aspect of the work. The ritual we have is different than what Dogon has. But he says after each meal has been carefully prepared, place it on a table put on your case and spread out years ago facing the Zendo after incense and bow nine times. So for us, we light incense, we set our offering dishes, we play the unpin the gong that calls people to the meal. And then Dogon says all day and all night the Tencel has to make arrangements and prepare meals without wasting a moment. If he throws all his energy into whatever the situation truly calls for. Then both the activity and the method by which he carries it out will naturally work to nurture the seeds of Buddha Dharma so attention energy. One more thing that Dogon includes for us in His instructions, is doing our work without prejudice or preferences. He says when the tensor receives the food from the Kusu, he must never complain about its quality or quantity. But always handle everything with the greatest care and attention. Nothing could be worse than to complain about too much or too little of something, or of inferior quality. When you prepare food, never view the ingredients from some commonly held perspective. Don't think about them only with your emotions, maintain an attitude that tries to build great temples from ordinary greens, that expounds the Buddha Dharma through the most trivial activity, do not be negligent and careless, just because the materials seem plain and hesitate to work more diligently with materials of superior quality, your attitude toward things should not be contingent upon their quality. One of the ways that we try to capture this spirit here at the center is the training rule that we have that we're not allowed to comment on the food. Some people like that rule, some people don't. But it's definitely one way that we, we try to carry on this tradition that Dogon is talking about, of not having preferences on the food. At one point, he quotes an old old saying, and the old saying is, the mouth of a monkey is like an oven. And I take it by any means that you know, you put bad food into an oven, you put good food into an oven, the oven doesn't care, it just cooks the food. And so that's how the mouth of a monkey is supposed to be. But as I was Dogons, never just talking about food. Later on, he says, understand that it's simple green has the power to become the practice of the Buddha, quite adequately nurturing the desire to live out the way. Never feel aversion toward plain ingredients, as a teacher of man and of heavenly beings make the best use of whatever greens you have. Similarly, do not judge monks is deserving of respect or is being worthless, nor pay attention to whether a person has been practicing for only a short time or for many years. Without knowing where to find our own stability. How are we to know where someone else would be most stable. If the standard with which we evaluate others is incorrect, we are likely to see their good points is bad, and vice versa. What a mistake to make. There may very well be differences between those who have been practicing over many years. And those who have just begun, are between those gifted with great intelligence and those not so gifted. Even so, all are the treasures of the Sangha. Though someone may have been mistaken in the past, he may very well be correct in the context of things now, who is to say whether someone is a fool or a sage. So he tells us, all of us are treasures of the Sangha. Each person is a jewel. As John says, Sensei said in a recent teisho, teisho, everybody is amazing. And when we're truly paying attention, if we can put aside our own agendas, our own emotional reactions, judgments, we can just start to see this. Which is not to say that it's easy. Living in a community, we certainly become aware of how hard it is to put aside our preferences, about food, and even more so really hard to put aside our preferences about people. But just as we have little ways to practice, putting aside our preferences about food, there's little ways that we can practice with our preferences about people to I remember when I was first training here at the center, and I go into the kitchen to get my noontime meal. And then I'd come into the dining room with my plate. And I'd suddenly have that feeling that you get in middle school, you know, like, where am I supposed to sit? Who am I? Who should I sit next to? Who wants to talk to me who finds me really annoying, you know, who should I Who do I find annoying? Who should I avoid? And after a few days just realized you don't have to think about any of that. Just take the next seat. Doesn't matter who's there. Just enjoy that person that's there. At the end of his text, Dogan gives names to the three qualities of mind that he's been discussing, and that he considers most important for the Tencel. So the first he calls joyful mind, putting all our energy joyfully enter work, as well as experiencing gratitude for being able to do it. The second one is parental mind. This is the quality of caring for radiance utensils, coworkers with the attention and devotion of a parent. He says a parent irrespective of poverty or difficult circumstances, loves and raises a child with care how deep is love like this, only a parent can understand it. The parent protects the children from the cold and shade them from the hot sun with no concern for their own personal welfare. Only a person in whom this mind has arisen can understand it. In the same manner, when you handle water, rice or anything else, you must have the affectionate and caring concern of a parent raising a child. The third quality of mind he calls magnanimous mind. So magnanimous, literally in Latin means great soul, great soul or great hearted. But the way he uses it here is maybe a little bit different than what we expect. He's talking about this ability to encounter things and people without prejudices or preferences without attachments. And we should understand that it's not an indifference to things or to people, but rather the ability to recognize the beauty or value in each person. This is maybe a little more subtle for us to grasp than the qualities of joyful mind and parental mind. But it reminds me of the teaching of the Brahma the Horus, which some of you may know, the Brahma Vihara is also known in English as the divine abodes. These are four qualities of mind that the Buddha taught that when we put them into practice, make our world divine make that river tastes like nectar. And the first is loving kindness. The second is compassion. The third is sympathetic joy, that is feeling happiness at the joy of others. And the last one is equanimity. And these, these can in various traditions, these are done as practices. Many people are familiar with loving kindness, practice, metta meditation, you can also do compassion, meditation, sympathetic joy, meditation, and equanimity. And the point is that when we hear the word equanimity, we tend to think of it Oh, it's just, it's just an indifference. It's just being cool and not being involved. Just I'm calm, no matter what happens, I'm calm. But what we need to understand is that equanimity is presented as the culmination of what starts as loving kindness, practice. So we direct love towards others. They could sort of go in order of difficulty, compassion, really feeling for the suffering of others, feeling happy when others have joy, that's a lot harder than compassion, actually. And equanimity is considering considering everybody the same, in other words, feeling as much love and concern for each person, as we do for those closest to us or even for ourselves, loving others as ourselves. So this is the magnanimity that he's talking about the magnanimous mind.
