Do-gen Zenji says that the best material is called funzo [excrement wiping cloth]-.There are between four and ten different types of funzo: material that has been chewed by cattle, material that has been chewed by mice, material burned by fire, and material from the clothing or shrouds of the dead.These are perfect as okesa material. Indians throw this cloth in the streets and in the fields just as they do excreta. It is called pãmsula.
Monks pick up such cloth and wear it after having washed it and sewn the various pieces together. Although some of this cloth is cotton and some silk,no discrimination should be made between the two.We should deeply reflect on the meaning of pãmsula, funzo.
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... Senryu Kamatani Roshi says the following in his book, Teisho-Kesakudoku: “The true meaning of funzo is ‘sweepings.’ Funzo-e is the okesa made from cast-off rags that were collected from garbage and from the streets.The unusable part was sorted away and the usable parts kept, washed and dyed into a darkish color, then sewn together into the rice-field pattern.You might feel it is dirty because the funzo-e was made entirely from material picked up from the garbage, but it is not; it is completely free from attachments such as love and hate. Nobody can create passion toward it, because there is no value or quality to measure. If people had any attachment to it, they would not have discarded it as garbage.”5
It is difficult to determine what is good and what is evil. Laymen say it is good to wear luxurious silks, embroidered garments,and brocades;and bad to wear tattered and discarded rags. But in Buddhism it is the opposite: tattered robes are good and pure, richly embroidered garments are evil and soiled. The same applies to all other things as well. ...