One Heart Grace

As we make ready to eat this food

we remember with gratitude

the many people, tools, animals and plants,

air and water, sky and earth,

turned in the wheel of living and dying,

whose joyful exertion

provide our sustenance this day.

May we with the blessing of this food

join our hearts

to the one heart of the world

in awareness and love,

and may we together with everyone

realize the path of awakening,

and never stop making effort

for the benefit of others.

— Zoketsu Norman Fischer

 

This poem begins with a prayer of gratitude for the food we put into our bodies,  

and then opens us up to the higher meaning of nourishment – that it is not 

exclusively for our bodies. Every meal we receive is dependent on the coming 

together of all life: plants, animals, people. Even the air, water, sky and earth must 

be in participating alignment for us to receive the miraculous grace of a meal. 

The poet asks us to consciously receive this profound offering in the awareness 

that we are one—“join our hearts together/ to the one heart of the world.” He 

suggests that we do not live for ourselves alone, but that we are here to provide 

nourishment to each other, in all ways. We are each other’s keeper in our quest 

for awakening. The grace of the Divine comes through the food and into our 

hearts so that we become truly, one loving world.

Zoketsu Norman Fischer is an American Soto Zen roshi, poet and Buddhist author practicing in 

the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki. He is a Dharma heir of Sojun Mel Weitsman, from whom he received 

Dharma transmission in 1988

Parthenia M. Hicks, M. Div, Poet Laureate Emerita, Los Gatos, is the poetry editor of the  

Enlightenment Journal. 

SPIRITUALLY INSPIRED POETRY