The Taste of the Ordinary: Beyond Buddhas and Ancestors

A teisho on Ummon’s Farm Rice Cake (Shōyōroku, Case 78)

You know, Sangha is a great refuge—but we're often hard-pressed to say precisely why. In other words, you can't quite put your finger on it. Why is it so special—the way we come together, share with one another, labor and laugh, showing ourselves strong and vulnerable? We see each other at our best, and occasionally, we see each other at our worst. That's how it works. If you aren’t seeing all of that, you're not practicing well. Everything's included in this. All the ingredients come in.

If we aren't including everything, we aren't practicing well. And yet, sometimes we think things are too ordinary or too mundane, and so we try to pass over them. There's a case in the Shōyōroku—it’s the seventy-eighth case—that says something about this.

It’s called Ummon’s Farm Rice Cake.
The case goes:

A monk asked Ummon, “What is speech that transcends the Buddhas and goes beyond the ancestors?”
Ummon replied, “Farm rice cake.”

Just that. Farm rice cake.

Now, for those of you who’ve walked through many of these kōan collections, you'll recognize this Ummon character—he comes up over and over again. He appears more often than any other teacher in all the cases. He taught for over forty years. He actually started his teaching career at age 47—which, ironically, is the same age I received transmission and began mine.

He had a way of pointing that was disarming in its simplicity—yet uncompromising in its depth.

So what is this “speech that transcends Buddhas and goes beyond ancestors”? When we hear that, we expect something profound. Something weighty. Some obscure fascicle that sends us reeling, or a kōan that splits us open so we never quite see the same way again.

But instead, Ummon hands us one of the most banal nourishments you can imagine: a farm rice cake.

David loves rice cakes. Loves them. And if you go out to the store, you'll see all the varieties—he particularly loves the caramel ones. When we went to Spain—Madrid—they had even more. We got a tomato-flavored rice cake, and he was amused. He wasn’t impressed, but he was amused.

But Ummon’s not talking about novelty here. He’s not talking about flavored rice cakes. He’s talking about the humble, hearty kind—farm rice cakes. The kind meant to sustain you while you labor in the fields.

If you think they’re plain, it’s only because you haven’t really tasted them.

When we gather together to eat here, we recite the meal gatha.
And the gatha begins:

“First, 72 laborers brought us this food; we should know how it comes to us.”

Do we? Do we reflect on that? Do we know?

When you give it your full attention, you begin to taste more than grain. You taste the rain and the wind, the sweat and the soil and the sun—the effort, the care, all the invisible lives. All the moments that make that one bite possible. All of it is there, moment by moment, offered up. Nothing missing, nothing excluded. Nothing needs to be added.

The next verse of the gatha says:

“Second, as we receive this offering, we should consider whether our virtue and practice deserve it.”

Do they?

Because here’s the truth:
If anything is left out of your conscious awareness—if there’s anything you discard or push aside—if there’s some part of your life or self you’ve labeled as unworthy or too profane or too messy to be included—then you’ve defiled the very offering that’s in front of you.

That offering is your life.

You’ve taken the gift, but you’ve separated some notion of self from it. And now, it’s incomplete.

In the longer version of this case—because many kōans have extended versions—the monk continues by asking,

“What connection is there between a farm rice cake and transcending the Buddhas and ancestors?”

Exactly the question we all want to ask. The one this case is pointing to.

And Ummon answers:

“Exactly. What’s the connection?”

Then he follows with:

“What are you calling Buddhas? And what are you calling ancestors?”

He’s turning the whole question inside out.

We have this tendency to lift up Buddhas and push down demons. We revere the sacred and reject the flawed. But Zen is not interested in that kind of duality.

If there’s any part of your experience you’re hiding—some guilt, some grief, some shadow that you pretend doesn’t belong—it will keep showing up. It will gnaw at the edge of practice until you finally turn toward it. Until you actually taste it.

Ummon isn’t trying to be difficult. He’s revealing our error—our tendency to put Buddha over here and rice cake over there. Sacred on one side, ordinary on the other. We’re always sorting, always ranking, always splitting reality in two.

That brings us to the pointer that comes before the case.
Every case in the Shōyōroku begins with one.
This one says:

“When you seek the cost all over heaven, you'll be paid the price all over the earth. To seek after a hundred schemes is just a shame. Isn't there someone who knows how to advance and retreat and who recognizes the duality?”

This is a warning.

If you keep chasing some exalted experience, some heavenly notion of awakening, you’ll pay the price in your actual life. You’ll pay it in your body. You’ll pay it in your relationships. You’ll especially pay it in your present-moment awareness. You’ll be turning in circles, exhausting yourself with a hundred schemes.

It’s not uncommon for us to seek enlightenment by going somewhere else. Maybe that “somewhere else” is mental or spiritual. Sometimes we even physically remove ourselves—put our bodies somewhere else. And when we do that, we miss the life that’s already unfolding. The rice cake’s already here. The Dharma is already unfolding in your everyday movements.

We have to recognize it.

To “advance and retreat” means to know when to step forward and when to yield. It means not grasping. Not looking for some rarefied notion of what this is. Not resisting, but flowing with the truth of the moment as it presents itself.

When we recognize the duality, we see the trap.
The minute we split reality into better and worse, sacred and profane, we’re outside the Dharma gate.

That Dharma gate is created by our own picking and choosing.
And we never seem to end up on the right side of it.

That’s why the real work of the path is not polishing or cherishing what’s holy and discarding the rest. It’s bringing everything into view. Not just the Buddhas, but the demons too. Getting to know them extremely well. Seeing what makes them tick.

You created them, after all.

When you commune with them—when you open to them—they lose their power. Because there’s no more separateness at that stage.

We don’t want to look at just the clean and fragrant parts.
Sometimes, even the flies in the latrine tell an important story.

Ummon says of this:

“In the twenty-four hours of the day—wearing a robe, eating, defecating, urinating—even the flies in the latrine—is there still any speech that transcends the Buddhas and ancestors?”

There it is.

But you can only hear it when you stop dividing.

Dōgen picks up this same thread six centuries later. He writes:

“All Buddhas are realization. Thus, all things are realization.”

That includes a rice cake.
And a painting of a rice cake.

“Know that a painted rice cake is your face before your parents were born.”

Later he writes:

“Ummon’s rice cake is a statement that goes beyond Buddhas and surpasses ancestors—an activity that enters Buddhas and enters demons. When you understand this meaning with your body and mind, you’ll thoroughly master the ability to turn things and be turned by things.”

There is no experience we must exile.

And when you accept all of it, then you can work with skill and precision. You can show up, right on the spot, with everything at your disposal.

Nothing is omitted.

Not your confusion.
Not your weakness.
Not even your shadow.

And when you stop trying to exile it—when you gather it all up—when you include it, when you paint it lovingly with the full brush of your attention—then something happens.

You stop being the one who’s turning the Dharma.

And you recognize the Dharma turning you.

And then the distinction drops away.

So be on the lookout today.

Where’s your farm rice cake?

What’s the thing you’ve ignored because it seemed too ordinary?

Or what’s the part of you you’ve hidden away because it’s too profane?

Recognize it. Invite it to the table.

See it as the offering sitting right in front of you, waiting to be received—whole.

Take it up. Eat it fully. Taste all the 72 labors.

Let it nourish you.

And bow.

Because that is the speech that transcends all the Buddhas and ancestors.