Oryoki is a formal meal, taken in the zendo, and during sesshin, breakfast and lunch are taken this way. There have been whole books written on oryoki, but to put it very briefly, it’s the act of taking a meal in which every action is deliberate. Each person has a small bundle, consisting of bowls, utensils, and a napkin wrapped in a cloth. At the start of the meal, this bundle is unwrapped and precisely arrayed, and at the end, dishes are done in place and everything carefully put away. The whole process from start to finish takes about 25 minutes.

Like the rest of sesshin, most of the normal set of distractions to awareness are removed. There’s no conversation, no muzak, no waiter interrupting every 3 minutes with a “how is everything?” And after so much zazen, the thoughts associated with food go away, so you’re not thinking about how much better this dish might be if only there were extra tarragon, or how you’d rather be having tomato bisque, and so on. It’s just the food.

Oryoki is a meal and a liturgical service all in one; I’ve heard it referred to as “interactive dinner theater.” At the start of the meal, there’s an offering of food to the Buddha, in which the tenzo (head cook), slowly crosses the zendo to an ever-loudening bass drum rumble. It’s as if the earth itself is anticipating the food, about to be brought to your cushion by the servers.

Before the actual eating begins, there is a meal gatha, which I suppose is like saying grace. At the monastery, it’s recited before breakfast and lunch every day, but it takes on a much greater meaning for me during oryoki. The first line, for example, says “we should know how our food comes to us.” The very act of eating is a very real proof of interdependence. Looking at the rice in my bowl, I can think about how it comes to me. Who and what is responsible for bringing this food to be here? An incredibly short and incomplete list:

1. The server.
2. The person who cooked the rice.
3. The driver who delivered the rice to the kitchen.
4. The person who arranged the sale of the rice.
5. The person who packaged the rice in a warehouse.
6. The driver who carried the rice from the farm to the warehouse.
7. The farmers who grew the rice.
8. The water and soil.
9. The people who made the rice cooker that cooked the rice.
10. The people who built and maintained the delivery trucks and farm equipment.
11. The families of the farmers and other workers, and the communities who support them.
12. The people who ensure that the water and soil are safe and nourishing for growing rice.

The traditional number of tasks involved in preparing food is 72, but you could go on forever, because it does go on forever. The very presence of a bowl of rice, when you consider the vast amount of effort and coincidence and confluence that went in to bringing it to be eaten, is humbling. Next time you eat, think for just a moment about how your food came to you. It will make you much more grateful for it, and it might just taste better.

And that’s just the first line of the meal gatha. There’s a lot more in there, but you get the point that oryoki is thick with meaning. It’s an incredible experience. The final words in oryoki are “may we exist in muddy waters with the purity of the lotus. Thus we vow to Buddha.” The lotus needs muddy waters to thrive, and blossoms to be a radiant flower; no wonder it’s such a central image in Buddhism. We work with what we have, pay attention to it, and the blossoming will come.