Just Enough

Oryoki reminds me of Dorothy Parker.

Among the many anecdotes from Parker's life – most of them entered into the record by the subject herself – my favourite entails the strategy she used to attract men during a particularly dry spell in that department. It seems members of the opposite sex were simply walking past her without slowing. So Parker wrote a single word in large block letters on an index card and posted it on her office door.

The tactic proved immediately and continuously effective. By her own account, into her office flowed an endless stream of "…older men. Young men. Rich men. Poor men. Married men. Unmarried men. Men who were not too sure."

Whatever, one wonders, could Parker have written on that card to produce such results?

It's elementary, really.

MEN

I think about this epigram in my Zen practice. How perfectly it encapsulates the literal meaning of oryoki (応量器), which I'm told ultimately comes from the Chinese for "the bowl that holds just enough". (Yes, I'm aware that the way we use this word in modern Soto means exactly the opposite. More like, "how many ways can we complicate things normal people do quickly, easily, and naturally". But that's religion for you.)

But this notion that needs are finite and definable – and that serving more than a bowl can receive just results in more dukkha – is inspired. And in the end it even accomodates the current use of "oryoki" – which refers in Soto to the intricate, shame-manufacturing rituals our zendos impose at meal time – because they are in fact the precise amount of attention required to get the whole sangha through a meal in little time and with the least amount of fallout.

It occurs to me that our world has largely forgotten this value. Notions of effective action, and our duty to produce it, have been tossed aside and replaced with an odd and very irritating loyalty to stasis; the belief that "just enough" means holding to a conservative present, in which change itself is tolerated only if it results in shrinking our servings even further.

We leave ten thousand bowls empty and call it discipline, at the insistence of leaders who empty ten thousand bowls into one and justify it as their imagined right.

This is not just enough, in either the positive or negative sense.

As for me, I find living the oryoki model challenging. It's not that I'm greedy – I'm not, by nature – but I'm scared. I want a bumper, a safety net, and famously, when you surrender to that goal, you never reach it.

So I do my best to pose the oryoki question often: "Do I have enough in this moment?" It works well for small stuff, like lunch, or attention, or diversion. When it comes to the wherewithal of survival, it's less productive.

But in true Zen style, just asking the question – just that – broadens the view.

Just enough.


(Photo courtesy of Shigeru Sakuma and Unsplash.com.)