Zen Verses for Mealtime

As I write this post, I am in Dublin, Ireland on a short trip (business, not pleasure), helping my daughter get settled in for college. Thanks to timezone differences my daughter and I were awake at 11:30pm on a Friday and starving.

Since a lot of pubs close their kitchens early, we went over to the local Supermac’s¹ :

It’s Friday night, so as we’re seated, people are stumbling in drunk looking for some cheap food, and there’s a steady stream of food delivery guys picking up orders. Still, even here, as I open my bag and eat my food, I try to still take a moment and appreciate the food, so I discreetly did gassho.

In Japanese culture, people will usually say itadakimasu before eating food, and gochisōsama deshita after finishing. The word itadakimasu is just the humble form of the verb “I receive”, and gochisōsama deshita means “It was a wonderful meal”.

But there’s also a set of verses that in the Zen tradition are recited before meals called the Shokuji Gokan (食事五観, “five observations at mealtime”). When I was watching a documentary recently, during mealtime, one of the Eiheiji monks walked the documentary host through the five verses. The five verses in Japanese for the Rinzai tradition are:

1. 一つには、功の多少を計り、彼の来処を量る。
   hitotsu ni wa, kō no tashō wo hakari, kano raisho wo hakaru
2. 二つには、己が徳行の全闕を忖って供に応ず。
   futatsu ni wa, onore ga tokugyō no zenketsu wo hakatte, ku ni ōzu
3. 三つには、心を防ぎ、過貪等を離るるを宗とす。
   mitsu ni wa, shin wo fusegi, togatontō wo hanaruru wo shū to su
4. 四つには、正に良薬を事とするは形枯を療ぜんが為なり。
   yotsu ni wa, masa ni ryōyaku wo koto to suru wa gyōko wo ryōzen ga tame nari
5. 五つには、道業を成ぜんが為に、応にこの食を受くべし。
   Itsutsu ni wa, dōgyō wo jōzen ga tame ni, ō ni kono jiki wo uku beshi.

The verses in Soto Zen appear to be slightly different. I am fairly certain, these are descended from Chinese Chan Buddhism, but I wasn’t able to find much information.

There are a lot of fine English translations available, though for now I am using the one from Sotozen.net:

1. We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us.
2. We reflect on our virtue and practice, and whether we are worthy of this offering.
3. We regard it as essential to free ourselves of excesses such as greed.
4. We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life.
5. For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food.

In either case, the meaning is the same: before we take in the food, we should first reflect where it came from (and the countless people who made it possible),² and whether we are living up to the practice or not. Finally, the verses remind us that food is essentially medicine (hence don’t be a pig), and that it helps us along the path toward Enlightenment. Even some chips (fries) at Supermac’s is something to be grateful for.

So, hello from Ireland, and will post more soon! 🇮🇪🖖🏼

¹ The local version of McDonald’s, but ten times better.

² The Jodo Shinshu tradition focuses on the concept of “gratitude“, so there’s a lot of overlap here.