This story from the Buddha’s time expresses the gratitude that we have for the things that we are lucky enough to have the use of, as well as our care for the environment. As Buddhists, using things carefully, and expressing our gratitude for what we have, is part of our basic practice, whether we train as monks or as lay people.

For the monastic community, the gratitude for all that we have is particularly highlighted by the fact that monks are supported by donations, a practice which goes back to the time of the Buddha. The Buddha and his disciples, for example, would go out with their alms bowls, and whatever food they were offered, that would be their meal for that day. When that is all you have to eat for the day you really look after it, because if you waste it or lose it you won’t get any more until the next day.

This is also a very skilful way of training with, and learning to let go of, our preferences. Irrespective of whether the food that comes into our bowl is something that we ‘liked’ or ‘wanted’, it is all we have to survive on for the next 24hrs, and so of course we are grateful for it, for just being supported. We make the best use of what is offered, and we don’t waste a single bit of it. That gratitude is the basis for treating all things respectfully. We look after things and are careful in using them, because that is just the right thing to do, and the right way to see the world around us; the things of the world don’t belong to us, so we don’t have any rights over them; but if they are available to us then we have a responsibility to make the best use of them that we can.

If we do have preferences for one thing rather than another, then that very preference is something that comes into the ‘alms bowl’ of our practice, giving us the opportunity to work with it, and see the suffering that we cause ourselves if we indulge it. This is true for all Buddhist practitioners, whether we are lay trainees or monastic trainees.

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This story from the time of the Buddha expresses this attitude of respect and custodianship for all things that come into our possession, or that we have the use of:

In the time of the Buddha there was a ruler called King Udena, who lived in the city of Kosambi. He had a great palace with a very large household, and members of his household were very generous in supporting the Buddha’s community. One day they went to visit Venerable Ānanda, and after hearing a Dharma Talk by him, presented him with five hundred inner robes.

When King Udena heard about this gift he was a bit taken aback, and was immediately sceptical and suspicious of Venerable Ānanda, saying, ‘How can this one single monk accept so many robes for himself? What on earth is he going to do with them all? Is he going into the clothing trade? Is he going to open a shop?’

Fortunately, the king didn’t just leave it at that. He didn’t just hold on to his suspicions about Venerable Ānanda and let them fester in his heart, but went to question Venerable Ānanda about the gift that he had just been given. When King Udena reached the place where Venerable Ānanda was staying, he approached Venerable Ānanda and asked him directly, ‘Venerable Ānanda, what possible use can you have for so many robes?’

Venerable Ānanda replied straightforwardly, ‘Your majesty, I will share them with those monks whose robes are worn thin.’

The king was rather wrong-footed by this reply. He had been ascribing all sorts of unscrupulous motives to Venerable Ānanda, but this struck him as a perfectly reasonable answer, and a completely appropriate use for the robes. You would have thought then, that at this point he might have just said, ‘OK that’s fair enough, have a lovely day’, and left it at that. For some reason though, the king didn’t leave it at that, and continued to question Venerable Ānanda, perhaps because he couldn’t quite let go of that suspicious frame of mind that he had arrived with.

King Udena then asked, ‘Venerable Ānanda, what will you do with those old robes that are worn thin?’

These days that question might not occur to us, but in the Buddha’s day cloth would have been very expensive, as the whole process of making it was very labour intensive and time-consuming. As a result, even used cloth was still valuable, and people would not have discarded it easily. It was the monks’ practice to make best use of all that they were given, so Venerable Ānanda didn’t have to come up with a good answer to the question, he just told the king what they would actually do.

Venerable Ānanda replied, ‘Your majesty, we will make them into upper coverings.’

The upper covering was a garment that was worn on top of the inner robe, but was usually not seen as it was beneath the third robe, known as the Saṃghāti robe.

Again, you would think that this might have satisfied King Udena, but having started on this line of questioning, he just wouldn’t let go of it, and he just kept on asking, ‘but what about…’. This is kind of him to be so persistent, because as a result we have this small section of scripture, which brings out this aspect of making the best use of things.

The king continued, ‘Venerable Ānanda, what will you do with those upper coverings that are old?’

‘Your majesty, we will make them into mattress coverings.’

‘Venerable Ānanda, what will you do with those mattress coverings that are old?’

‘Your majesty, we will make them into ground coverings.’

‘Venerable Ānanda, what will you do with those ground coverings that are old?’

‘Your majesty, we will make them into foot-wipers.’

At any point we might expect the king to say, ‘OK fair enough, you’ve made good use of them’, but he just continued:

‘Venerable Ānanda, what will you do with those foot-wipers that are old?’

‘Your majesty, we will make them into dusters.’

‘Venerable Ānanda, what will you do with those dusters that are old?’

We know this can’t go on for ever, and finally Venerable Ānanda answers:

‘Your majesty, having torn them into shreds, having kneaded them with mud, we will smear a plaster-flooring.’

So the cloth eventually has a final use, and becomes embedded in the monks’ dwellings.

Then King Udena thought to himself, ‘These renunciants, these Sakyans, they use everything in such an orderly way and do not let anything go to waste, even the smallest bit of cloth’. He was so impressed by the monks’ careful use of their resources, that he offered another five hundred woven cloths to Venerable Ānanda!

This is quite a turnaround, that the king goes from being sceptical and suspicious of what Venerable Ānanda can possibly want with five hundred robes, to actually giving him a similar amount all over again.

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For all those who live by the Buddha’s teachings, this approach of conserving the resources that we have and making best use of them is still an essential part of our practice today. Anyone who has visited our main monastery in the UK, Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey, for example, may well have noticed that old towels are cut up to make cleaning cloths and floor cloths.

Similarly, old kitchen towels are cut up to make counter-cloths. Once these are well worn they are then replaced with newer ones, and the old ones used to clean the griddle. The griddle-rags might be used two or three times, but this is then the end of their useful life, and they are put in the bin. These days we don’t mix them with plaster to make a floor, as modern building regulations wouldn’t allow that!

At our other main temple, Shasta Abbey in California, the community had very little in the early days, but wanted to build monastic buildings for the monks and for visitors. What they did was to take down (with permission!) old timber-framed buildings that had been condemned, and re-use the timber to build the cloisters and other structures at the Abbey. Once the old buildings had been disassembled there was a long process of sorting out the lumber, and pulling nails out so that it could be re-cut and used. Not only that, but for many years it was a regular working meditation task on retreats, for visitors to be asked to straighten the old nails, so that they too could be re-used.

The monks weren’t doing all this to make an ecological point; they just had very little money and had to re-use whatever they were able to. In doing so they were also following a long tradition of making the best use of whatever was available to them.

In Buddhism, when we talk about the Buddha’s enlightenment, we sometime use the words realisation or actualising. This emphasises that we need to express our understanding of the Buddha’s teaching in the way that we live our lives; it can’t just be a theory, or something that is only known in our minds, it needs to be made real and expressed in our actions and behaviour.

Dōgen emphasises this in his Instructions to the Chief Cook, where he urges the cook to pay the same attention to a ‘poor’ dish made with cabbage stalks as would be paid to a ‘fine’ dish made with milk. We shouldn’t discriminate; we should be grateful for all of the things which support our life.

This is one of the reasons that we recite ‘the five thoughts’ before each meal, as they remind us how fortunate we are to be able to eat today:

The Five Thoughts
We must think deeply of the ways and means by which this food has come.
We must consider our merit when accepting it.
We must protect ourselves from error by excluding greed from our minds.
We will eat lest we become lean and die.
We accept this food so that we may become enlightened.

We also try not to waste food. Dōgen urges the chief cook to treat food as carefully as we would our own eyesight, and to make sure that not a single grain is lost when rice is being washed. Similarly, at the end of meals we take the leftover food back to the kitchen and carefully scrape out the containers so that nothing is wasted, and the leftover food is carefully stored so that it can be served at another meal.

When we have formal meals we wash our plates and bowls at the table using plain water. We pour it from vessel to vessel, cleaning the cutlery too, and then either drink it, so that not a morsel of food is wasted, or collect it up and and use it to water plants with.

We can of course practice this care for food in our own homes too, although the details of how we do it might be different. Another practice which is really simple, but can save quite a bit of energy, is to make sure we are only boiling the exact amount of water that we actually need. Many people boil a full kettle of water when they only need enough for one or two cups of tea. Not only does this needlessly use up more of the earth’s limited resources, but it costs us more money too! Having a measuring jug by the kettle, and just measuring out the amount that we need, can be a saving for both us and the planet. (Some electric kettles do have a minimum amount that they can safely boil, so we need to pay attention to this too.)

There are many other things that we individually can do to save our resources, such as turning our thermostats down a little, or switching electrical items off completely, rather than leaving them on standby. Individually, our actions might seem to make little difference, but if everyone only boiled the water they actually needed, then we might be saving enough energy to be able to close a power station. In doing this we are continuing the tradition of caring for the world, and all that comes to us, that is expressed in Venerable Ānanda’s conversation with King Udena over 2,500 years ago. Acting in harmony with this saves us money and helps conserve our environment, but our fundamental reason for doing it is simply that it is part of our Buddhist practice to be grateful for all that we have, and to treat it with respect.

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Sources:

The story of the gift of robes to Venerable Ananda can be found here:

https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-kd21/en/horner

Information on monastic robes can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasaya_(clothing)

Great Master Dōgen’s Instructions to the Chief Cook, (Tenzo-kyōkun) can be found in:

Jiyu-Kennet, P.T.N.H. (1999) Zen Is Eternal Life. Fourth Edition, Shasta Abbey Press, Mt. Shasta. ISBN 0-930066-20-0

The Five Thoughts and other mealtime ceremonial can be found in:

The Liturgy of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives for the Laity. Shasta Abbey Press, Mt. Shasta, Second Edition 1990, ISBN 0-930066-12-X