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Information for practice leaders
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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.
These two aren’t the only leadership roles in the temple. They're two of the traditional roku chiji 六知事, literally six managers of affairs, or six stewards in a monastic bureaucracy.
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. |
Resources for the tenzoResources for the ino |