Oryoki: It's like breakfast in bed...

The first time I did oryoki (eat a meal in the zendo (the meditation hall)), I was terrified of making mistakes because I had heard that there were all kinds of rules about it. So, I searched the internet, found a really great explanation of how to do oryoki, and promptly memorized it. As I was memorizing the steps to oryoki, I got to this part where they tell you to fold the cloth in a "lotus" shape. I thought to myself, "This doesn't make sense. Why would they be all focused on making sure you have some sort of lotus shape with your cloth, all you're doing is folding it."
But then I noticed the cloth. The cloth was super long- it has to be long enough to wrap around the bowls you use to eat oryoki- but you need it to be super short, because it has to fit on the meal board in front of you. And I thought, "Oh, they're doing this whole foldy thing to deal with the fact that the cloth has to be long for one thing and short for another- they're just teaching you how to tuck in the corners, in a really efficient way."
And so I started looking at the rest of the forms for oryoki in the same way: rules that help you eat, in the zendo, at the same time as a bunch of other people. I thought about how you put out the cloth: how you want it to be wide enough to keep the meal board from getting wet if you spill, but not so long that it sticks out and gets in the way when someone comes to serve you. I thought about how you tuck your utensil holder under your cloth: you won't need it 'till the end so you might as well get it out of the way so that you have room for your utensils.
And then I thought about eating breakfast in bed. My mom had this really cool breakfast-in-bed tray when we were growing up. It had a flat tray on it so that you could put your food on there and not have to worry about it spilling. It also had two baskets on the side, presumably for your newspapers and magazines. It allowed you to actually eat in your bed. And I thought about the zendo, how it's where people spend their time meditating and how you wouldn't want crumbs or spills on your cushion. And I thought about the fact that when you're eating in the zendo, you're kind of meditating at the same time and so it would be good if you could do it in a way that was efficient and didn't require a whole lot of thought. And I thought about all those people, who actually serve the food to you and how it makes sense that there are rules saying who gets served first and how to hand them your bowl because they have to feed everyone in the zendo, and quickly, so the food doesn't get cold. And then I thought about the fact that we even have to wash our bowls, in the zendo, like, on the cushions and I thought, "Hmmm, ya know, the person who made up all these rules was really thinking- making this whole eating-meditation thing into a pretty efficient process."
And then I didn't feel so resentful of all the rules- they made sense to me. There's still too many to memorize but I'm learning them, feeling them, practicing them, and not so much worrying about them anymore. I know I'm going to mess up every time- it wouldn't be oryoki if I didn't do something wrong- but that's what makes it kind of cool, everyone messes it up some way or another...