For centuries, Zen Buddhists have been supported by, and been, artists, craftspeople and artisans. They make the beautiful implements that we use in our rituals, temples and practice places, from Buddha Statues to incense burners. Now, we have had such a gift to our Sangha. As you know, this Sunday, we will be celebrating the Home-leaving Ordination of Koujitsu, Kouriki and Shinkon as Novice Soto Zen Priests, which you are invited to come witness (LINK). The receipt of the Oryoki Bowls and, specifically, the large Monk’s Bowl (頭鉢), is a key part of the Ceremony, together with receipt of Robes, Bowing Cloth and other items. Shinkon was previously a Zen priest in another Lineage and has bowls, but Koujitsu and Kouriki are receiving the Bowls for the first time.
Our Treeleaf member and friend, Tōsei 東西 Peter Shoemaker, is a gifted and experienced professional potter, and asked if he might volunteer to provide their Bowls for this Ordination. Working with great care for many hours and days, he fashioned and kilned the bowls at his studio in France, consulted with me for a fitting inscription to be baked into each bowl, and then delivered them to our two priests in time for their Ordination. We are grateful. Here are the finished Bowls:
I asked him to write something about the process and his studio, and how he brings Zen practice into his creations. Tōsei writes:
For these bowls I used a local black clay, produced by a 150-years-old company still run by its founding family. This clay allows me to only glaze the inside (making it easy to clean) leaving the outside as raw black ceramic, with all of the textures and imperfections evident to the touch of those using these bowls, a reminder of the frictions that are necessary so that we may eat. While many oryoki sets of bowls are made of lacquered wood, I was attracted to the perceived fragility of ceramic bowls. They aren’t, of course, but do require a little more attention to detail in their use and particularly in the care that must be taken so that they don’t crash together and upset the quiet of the meal. In my use of them, I found a deeper level of attentiveness and presence is demanded in the unwrapping and wrapping of the bowls. This is good.
The bowls are formed entirely by hand, using no mechanical tools whatsoever. This ensures that the shapes derive from my efforts to translate an ideal into the real world of handiwork—with all the imperfections and idiosyncrasies that that engenders. Like the work we do with needle and thread in our Nyoho-e tradition, this work with clay and water is one of diligent effort, stopping and then starting again, fixing what must be fixed and accepting what cannot, knowing that in the end it will be just as it is.
These bowls were first shaped from the raw clay, the buddha bowl (zuhatsu) first, to establish the right size, and from then, the other two. Over the next couple of days, they were refined and trimmed and took on their final form. Once totally dry they were fired. There were two firings, in this instance, in an electric kiln. The first was to transform the clay into an immutable object (but still porous enough to accept the glaze). Then the bowls were glazed and fired for a second time to fuse the silica in the ceramic and glaze into an impermeable barrier. Before this second firing, I inscribed a treasured passage from The Heart Sutra (“beyond all delusions, nirvana is already here”) on roughly-torn pressed mulberry paper, and then added the dharma name of each recipient (as well as the chop for my atelier). These were fired with the bowls, consecrating them in the intermixing of the dharma, fire, glaze, and smoke.
I offer them to our new unsui with a deep sense of gratitude and hope.
BOWLS READY FOR FIRING:
I got my start as a ceramicist first as a collector—of Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, and later East African ceramics and art—and after a period of reporting and writing on indigenous American pottery traditions began to pay particular attention to the craft as craft. My entrée to making rather than admiring came through a profound appreciation of the tea bowls (chawans) used during Muromachi period tea ceremonies, and in particular with the work done over the last few centuries by the Raku clan. Creating such pieces—organic, imperfect, beautiful—and the processes necessary to reveal them, offered a way to support my deepening commitment to bringing zen practices into my everyday life.
I made my first chawan three years ago, and have continued since then to work with the form, paying more and more attention to the doing rather than the end. A year ago, I incorporated the use of a five-thousand-year-old stone tool in the shaping process—recognizing and honoring, through this connection, the role pottery has had in human development. A year or so ago, during Ango, I made my first oryoki set of three bowls. The work on those, and the lessons they taught me, suggested an appropriate sort of dana, supporting those making the profound commitment to encourage and support the sangha in the salvation of all sentient beings. Jundo concurred.
My atelier—named TuShu—is located in the gardens of my house in the French Norman countryside. TuShu is not a bit of Japanese linguistic arcana (although the Chinese translation of ‘books’ is not entirely inappropriate), but rather is a portmanteau of Two Shoe, a play on my last name—Shoemaker—and the work my wife will do next door as a garden designer and sumi artist. I do mostly ceramics, and a combination of traditional forms and more contemporary work.
Some other works in his studio …
You can see some examples of his artistic creations here: Atelier Tushu
Lovely, Tōsei. Nine Bows. Jundo
This food comes from the efforts of all sentient beings past and present, and is medicine for nourishment of our Practice-Life. We offer this meal of many virtues and tastes to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and to all life in every realm of existence. May all sentient beings in the universe be sufficiently nourished.
