Personal note:

You clean and wipe your dishes at the table, with a piece of "takuan" (Radish Pickle), which you eat after wiping your bowls. Clean up after yourself so that others don't have to. What simplicity and common sense. When I went to Japanese school for 3 years in Japan when I was 7 years old, all the kids in the ENTIRE school had to wipe all the floors, clean all the bathrooms, - it was part of the curriculum EVERY DAY. I came to a realization that Zen has had a huge impact on Japanese culture as a whole even today, teaching kids to clean up what they create, to take the responsibility of taking care of your own shit. What a simple yet powerful value to engage the entire population of a country from an early age. Perhaps this is why there is hardly any crime in Tokyo, a city of 40 million with hardly any police. Perhaps this is why Tokyo is simply the cleanest city I have ever seen. Perhaps this is why SARS never spread to Japan. Perhaps this is why even the few homeless that live in the parks in Tokyo, have created themselves imaculate surroundings, constantly cleaning their futons and their clothes. Perhaps if countries cleaned up after themselves, we wouldn't have events such as 9/11. Peace can start with cleaning up the mess you create - both physical mess, psychological mess, energetic mess. Clean your dishes!