There's a whole world out there that we see, and we divide it up into different things called people and books and rooms and things like that.  We pick out, out of all this stuff, things that we like and things we don't like, and we really give those a lot of attention.  It's putting the "I" -- "I" think - in front of everything else.  "I like that.  I don't like that."  It's all just here in ourselves.

Once after I started practicing, I went to San Francisco Zen Center.  It was 1972 or 1973.  In those days, everyone was eating brown rice.  I think it was kind of a new thing.  Everyone would walk around the Zen Center saying, "Oh, I love brown rice.  It's so healthy and makes you feel so good."  Personally, I didn't like brown rice.  I liked white rice.  If I had to eat rice, I liked white rice better than brown rice, and I liked potatoes better than either one.  Then I read Suzuki Roshi's book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind for the first time and found a passage about brown rice.  It said, "You should eat brown rice until you're sick of it."  I thought, oh, he didn't like that either, these people going around saying they liked brown rice.  They're picking something out too much.

In our oryoki practice, there are a lot of ritual movements: put this here, put this there, fold the napkin like this, on and on. I don't know how many times I've used oryoki, maybe a thousand or ten thousand times, and now I don't really care whether I like it or don't like it.  After awhile, you just don't care.  What happens sometimes, especially after sitting quietly for quite awhile, is that when I go to eat a meal some of my quietest and most lucid moments occur while using oryoki.  Probably it has to do with the fact that I'm eating, and I'm happy, but I'm also more relaxed.  I just look down at it and think, "This is really interesting.  This bowl and spoon -- I've never seen anything like this before!"  Later on, I'll think, "I really like oryoki."

When sesshin is over, we start talking again with each other.  We might ask someone how his sesshin was, and he might say, "My sesshin was really good except that I really hate oryoki.  I can't stand all that obsessive detail."  Then we might get into a little argument about oryoki.  That's how our likes and dislikes come up.

Once I was in the office at Minnesota Zen Center doing some work, and Katagiri Roshi came in.  I had just had a difficult situation with another person, and when I looked up and saw him in the doorway, I said, "Roshi, my biggest problem is people."  He just looked at me and said, "Me too."

We should just watch our preferences, our likes and dislikes.  They come up most often with people.  That's where they hit us the hardest.  I encourage you just to see where your own likes and dislikes arise.  Where do they come from?  Explore them and see where they take you.

The excerpt above is from Dokai's October 18 talk at Clouds in Water Zen Center in St. Paul, MN.  You can hear the complete talk here.