When We Give It All to Buddha
SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI once told a story about offerings. As a young priest in Japan, he used to visit a British woman named Miss Ransom. He learned English from her and taught her some Japanese while they had tea. Someone had given her a carved wooden buddha statue, which she placed in the tokonoma—an altar-like recess for displaying scrolls, flowers, or ornaments—in the apartment where she was living. Because it was situated near the door, Miss Ransom found the tokonoma to be a convenient shoe rack, and when she came into her apartment, she left her dirty shoes on the platform next to the buddha. The young Suzuki, having been raised in a temple family, felt uncomfortable seeing this. One day, he took his cup of tea and respectfully offered it to the buddha. He began to do this each time he visited, and Miss Ransom took to teasing him about idol worship, insisting it was silly to relate to a wooden statue in this way. Her friends even started to leave burnt matches on the shelf and use the incense bowl as an ashtray.
Eventually, though, Miss Ransom became curious about Suzuki’s devotion and asked him about the meaning of his strange activity. He told her about the three bodies of buddha:
