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Information for practice leaders
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.The traditional roku chiji 六知事, literally six managers of affairs, or six stewards in a monastic bureaucracy, are:
This group was also called "the east row" because it lined up in the front row on the east side of the Buddha Hall during ceremonies. Only the ino was directly concerned with training and monitoring the monks in the sodo; the other five were in the administration hall, managing the practical activities of the temple: finances, building maintenance, food supplies, etc. The administrative hall was on the east side of the temple complex, while the sodo or zendo was on the west side. In addition, there were six assistant officers (roku choshu 六頭首):
Today in Japan only senmon sodo (training temples) have this kind of officer structure, not the dankadera, or neighborhood temples. The titles are mainly honorific; the day to day work still gets done, but by rotating teams of people. Hybrid North American temples may appoint practitioners to roles like tenzo or ino on a yearly or event basis. They may also ask practitioners to take service positions such as jikido, jisha or doan. |
Perhaps two of the best known arenas for bodhisattva leadership are the roles of tenzo and ino. The tenzo holds leadership in the kitchen while the ino holds leadership in the zendo. These are two really important centers of practice. The zendo may be obvious, but the kitchen less so. Nonetheless, being in the kitchen is a lot more than just cooking meals. Traditionally, in the training temple, the tenzo is a high-ranking position requiring practice maturity and the ability to manage temple resources effectively
Resources for the tenzoResources for the inoWhen taking on a service position, it's important to understand that you're joining a mini-sangha of people engaged in a particular activity: morning practice, sesshin, ryaku fusatsu, Sunday practice or other things. Today it happens to be your turn to be jikido or ino, and tomorrow it will be someone else in the group. Meanwhile, the rest of the members of this mini-sangha are simply continuing to practice together. Your participation is not aimed at filling a volunteer slot and your purpose is not simply to "cover your shift." Thus you should expect to attend and participate on days other than those on which you have responsibility. Not only do you need to be observing others in various roles and learning from them, as well as becoming familiar with the overall pattern of the activity, but if the only ones who show up to practice on a given day are those who are required to be there, it says that our practice is driven by obligation rather than bodhicitta. We're simply going through the motions, which is meaningless.
Sometimes people with good intentions but limited focus decide to take on a leadership position "because it will get me into the zendo regularly." That might sound reasonable on the surface, but actually that kind of thinking is backwards. Our desire to serve is a natural outgrowth of our established practice. Service is not a prod to drive us onto the cushion; that's just using practice activity for our own ends. At Sanshin, we rely on nothing but our own aspiration. Establish a regular practice first, show up frequently in the zendo, and then consider a service position. |