One Time, One Meeting

One evening a few months ago, my wife and I went out to dinner with a couple of friends. I ordered Shepherd’s Pie, one of my favorite comfort foods. “There you go,” our server chirped, as she handed me an oversized plate, heaped high with ground beef, onions, mashed potatoes, carrots, and peas. The volume of this miniature Everest (which reminded my wife of the mashed-potato scene in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind) far exceeded what I would have served myself at home. Yet over the next half hour or so, absorbed in conversation, I consumed every bit of it, accompanied appropriately by a pint of Guinness. And when, a few hours later, I didn’t feel so good, I had little doubt as to the cause of my distress. For reasons both understandable and regrettable, I had ignored my intuitive sense of how much was enough.

In the Zen tradition, the ability to recognize appropriate limits and live within them is known as chisoku (Ch. zhizu), which literally means “know enough.” In his book Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan and Zen (Shambhala, 2024), the Zen teacher Nelson Foster examines this principle in detail, tracing its origins in ancient Chinese texts. As Foster explains, chisoku “doesn’t refer to having adequate knowledge but rather to knowing how much—how little—is enough.” And like loving-kindness, compassion, empathy, and other wholesome qualities of heart and mind, chisoku can be actively developed through meditative practice. In Foster’s words, we can consciously “cultivate an acceptance of life within limits,” should we choose to do so.

Unfortunately, as Foster duly acknowledges, the venerable practice of chisoku runs sharply against the grain of modern, consumer-oriented societies, where we are aggressively encouraged to want more than enough: more living space, more comfort, more convenience, more efficiency, more power, wealth, and social status. To be sure, there is a countervailing strain in Western culture: a desire for simplicity, for modest but sufficient living conditions, and for a way of life marked not by conspicuous affluence but by humility and environmental awareness. In American culture, the locus classicus of this collective longing is Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854), its ruling icon Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond. Contemporary manifestations can be observed in the “tiny-house” and “simple-living” movements, in off-the-grid, self-sufficient housing, and in community-based and eco-friendly markets and gardens. But those laudable endeavors must contend with powerful commercial interests in general and advertising in particular, which relentlessly urge us to want more than we need and to consume at a rate and to a degree that is both unnecessary and unsustainable. Whether the product being marketed is a time-saving kitchen device, a softer disposable diaper, the latest smart phone, or central, “energy-efficient” air-conditioning, we are implored at every turn to exceed our actual needs.

The ancient Chan texts teach otherwise. As the most famous of those texts, the Tao Te Ching, puts it, “No offense exceeds that of greediness, / no disaster exceeds that of not knowing enough / and no fault brings on grief like covetousness.” Conversely, the conscious cultivation of “knowing enough” can relieve fear and anxiety, and over time its effects can be transformative. Beyond “food, shelter, clothing, and medicine,” which classical Buddhism views as foundational to human well-being, the practice of chisoku offers a path to lasting satisfaction and a sense of profound contentment. “Just secure a heartmind of ease,” asserts one of the “capping phrases” used in Zen training, “and everywhere brings delight / you don’t weigh the morning market against the cloudy mountain.” Or, as the Japanese poet and Zen priest Daigu Ryokan, who lived alone in a thatched-roof, mountainside hut for thirteen years, declared, “Desire nothing, and you’re content with everything.”

The practice of chisoku is integral to Zen teachings, and it is strictly enforced in Zen monastic training, where monks and nuns are admonished to take only as much rice as they need and to eat every grain they have taken. But the underlying principle of recognizing limits and being gratefully content with what one already has is hardly unique to Zen. Similar teachings and practices can be found in other spiritual traditions, including the Confucian, the Islamic, the Hindu, and the Judeo-Christian. Likewise, the wisdom literature of secular, literary culture abounds in Western versions of chisoku. Foster quotes with relish an English proverb that first appeared in print in Thomas Malory’s poem Morte d’Arthur (c. 1450): “Enough is as good as a feast.”

Reflecting on that proverb, I’m reminded of a remark by a former colleague who had recently retired, a fellow professor who had loved his job and had for decades performed it with distinction. Asked by a reporter how he felt, he replied, “Enough is enough”—and expressed no regrets whatsoever.

Nelson Foster, Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan and Zen (Shambhala, 2024), 152, 156, 168.

Photo: A replica of Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond, Walden Pond State Reservation.