Regarding mealtime rituals, Chanyuan qinggui indicates that before taking their meals, monks would chant the ten epithets of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, a custom preserved in Chinese monasteries to the present day. The content of the chant is as follows:
“The Pure Dharma Body Vairocana Buddha, the Perfect Reward Body
Vairocana, the Ùâkyamuni Buddha with His Myriad Transformation
Bodies, the Venerable Buddha Maitreya Who Will Descend and Be
Reborn in This World in the Future, All the Buddhas in Ten Directions and Three Ages, the Great Holy Mañjuùrî Bodhisattva, the Great
Practice Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, the Great Compassion Avalokiteùvara Bodhisattva, and All the Great Bodhisattvas. Great Prajñâpâramitâ!”48
Ui Hakuju asserts that this chant originated with Daoan and his regulations.49
According to the Four Part Vinaya, Indian monks chanted verses after their meals.50 As Daoxuan tells us this tradition was altered in China by Daoan, who began the practice of circumambulating with burning incense and chanting prior to the meal. Daoxuan himself considered this change to be appropriate and adopted the routine for the Chinese Lü school.51 This represents yet another monastic practice that to the present day is thought to have originated with Daoan
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Chanyuan qinggui describes mealtime protocol in great detail, providing instructions on which door to use to enter the dining hall; when, where, and how to sit; how bowls and utensils must be arranged; what verses to recite; how to eat; how to clean up afterwards; and so on. For example, “Attendance at Meals” in Fascicle 1
[42] describes the proper procedure for ringing the bell to signal the beginning of a meal. According to the Vinaya texts, the striking of a bell to indicate mealtime was already established as a practice during the time of the Buddha. Initially, monks were not in the habit of arriving in unison to receive their meals. This lack of order tended to frustrate the laypeople offering food. Thus the Buddha pronounced that a regular mealtime should be arranged.24 When Rahula, the son
of the Buddha, complained that the senior monk Ùâriputra consistently received the best food offered by laypeople, the Buddha established the rule that food should be distributed equally to all. He further decreed that a special instrument should be used to summon all monks to the meals.25 In the Five Part Vinaya26 a story is told in which several monks had started to eat their food without waiting until everyone had been served. When laypeople criticized this behavior, the Buddha instructed the monks to wait until all had received their food
... From “Attendance at Meals” we learn that in Chan monasteries monks took their two meals seated on the platforms in the Sangha hall. Yijing [Chinese monk who travelled to India to find the "True" customs there ... kind of like Shinshi now searching for the True Oryoki
] criticized this practice, asserting that while the custom in China is for monks to sit in rows and consume their food in a crosslegged position, such practices are unheard of in India, where monks sit on small chairs (seven inches high and one foot square on top) with their legs dropping to the floor. Yijing argued that when Buddhism was first introduced to China, monks followed the Indian practice, but beginning in the Jin dynasty the error of sitting on platforms with legs crossed was introduced. Even monks who came to China from India, Yijing contended, whether Indian or Chinese, were never able to correct this practice. According to the sacred tradition established by the Buddha, the platform should be one and a half feet in height. In China the platforms are higher than two feet. Thus it is inappropriate to sit on such a platform, Yijing concluded, for to do so violates the precepts.
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Chanyuan qinggui specifies that the serving of meals should be done by a specific class of untonsured servers called purity-keepers (jingren),79 a term adopted from the Vinayas. In the Vinaya texts, the role of the purity-keeper (Pâli kappiya-kâraka) is to serve as mediator, keeping monks away from activities that are improper for them to undertake yet need to be fulfilled. Thus the jingren, by performing these tasks, help maintain the purity of the clergy.80