Just Enough...

Oryoki is a Japanese word that names both an item, a monk’s begging bowl, and an attitude or philosophy that of… “Just Enough”.

Just Enough is a concept foreign to Americans in almost every form. We supersize our food and subsequently our waistlines, our houses grow well beyond our needs, our schedules overwhelm us with busyness and activities beyond our ability to emotionally cope. We would not be satisfied with the simple bowl of the Japanese monk; even a tractor-trailer might cause us to still decry “NOT enough”, rather than the remarkable humility of Just Enough.

The concept of Oryoki is that the monk’s duty is to begin his day with an empty bowl, to set out into the world with only his faith and his small bowl…and to be grateful for what appears in his bowl or doesn’t, as the case may be, when the day is done. If for some reason the bowl is overfilled by some well meaning stranger, the commitment to Just Enough requires that the monk accept only what will gently fill his stomach and nothing more, there is no saving for tomorrow or the “rainy day” that might be headed his way. No hoarding, or controlling, or even evading the emptiness of the bowl.

Simple, humble, careful and care filled acceptance lies at the heart of Just Enough.

Just Enough cannot be accomplished by the mind that loses itself in an imaginary future running toward a goal or accomplishment where the illusory promise of satisfaction awaits, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It is my belief that the oddly American disease of… WAY TOO MUCH… is born entirely of the lack of ease that prevents even the most basic recognition of satisfaction.

When the mind that devours us in it’s demands for more and ever more, is finally overcome, when the quiet can fill the pores of our skin like a soft spring rain shower. When we are so aware of the breath that it’s rhythms and movements are like a miracle of harmony and wonder. When the feel of the soft fur on the pink and downy underbelly of our companion animals tiny tummy, fills our hearts with gratitude and joy, we have come home to Just Enough.

My life has become a study in emptiness, I let go of more and more day after day, and yet each day my bowl threatens to be filled beyond measure with joy, ease, and a sweeping Gratitude that seems limitless to me. My Teacher says that Gratitude, one of the most valuable of the 24 virtues, is a “thought form of harmony that defies gravity and rises to the highest”.

I have often wondered if Gratitude is not some form of nourishment, that somewhere light-filled beings in some other vibration, are fed by our gratitude and its vibration of harmony…that their bowl of Just Enough is gently filled with our continuing awakening to simple and easy gratefulness.

I am grateful for the strangest things, the feel of my hips moving in their sockets as I walk across the room…my dogs limpid and liquid brown eyes following me, as they do, no matter where I move to or what I am doing. The sound of my air conditioner as it works to make my small world a comfort filled one. The loss of a job that has caused me to find a deeper version of myself and to finally meet the shared Oneself that lies at the Heart of the All.

This is of course my deepest most profound experience of gratitude. To know the Silence, to feel the Emptiness, to hold in my hand the wonder of Stillness, to discover that I exist beyond my thinking mind’s many voices. A discovery of such magnitude causes all else to pale by comparison.

Here in my small bowl is my offering to you, the wonder and miracle of Just Enough. Just Enough is the breath in your lungs, the warmth in your heart, the pulse in your veins, the strength in your sinew. The discovery that Just Enough is so extraordinarily simple, and more, that it is available for the taking to every human being on the planet is the Great Good News that all the world’s spiritual leaders have defined for millennia.

Nothing needs to be added to your life, not health, wealth, fame or fortune…indeed subtraction is the wisest course. From the right here and the right now of your life, you can find the doorway into the limitless Oneself. The No Thought mind has the love, the joy, the ease, the kindness, the acceptance and the wonder you have been searching for since the day you arrived.

Let go the demand for more. Give up the conceptual in favor of the simplified. Stop searching and start finding. Rid yourself of the competition and fever of “getting somewhere”. Relax and repose in the deep abiding arms of the Oneself.

Discover the beauty and abiding nature of Just Enough.

Adayre R. Miller

8/16/10