You don't want to do a chant or anything before we start talking? Well good evening. I suppose it is just another talk, right? Well it's like cooking or food, you know, we keep eating every day, even though we've eaten these things before, so it seems to work like that. And talks, we sort of keep talking even though I'm not going to tell you anything you haven't heard or don't know, so. I appreciate that very much, you know, I used to go to talks and wait for somebody to say something that made all the difference in my life, and it never happened, so. And then I thought when I gave talks, like I should say something that makes all the

[01:04]

difference in somebody's life, or why bother, right? And that probably hasn't happened either, so. And it's interesting to give a talk, you know, largely with people I don't know, I haven't met, and I don't know then, you know, what to talk to you about exactly. Whereas if it's a group that you know and you're familiar with, you know, then you have sort of an ongoing conversation. And the talk comes out of knowing the people, and talking to the people that you know. Just like if you have guests coming over to cook for dinner, and you think about who they are and then so consequently you cook something for those people. I have a friend who doesn't do that. I actually have a friend who's a chef, and he forgets that basically my girlfriend and

[02:07]

I are vegetarians. He's a very fine cook, and the last time we went to his house for dinner he served us five meat lasagna. The meat is all in these little tiny little pieces, so it's not like you can separate out the vegetables and not eat the meat, you either eat it or you don't. And then the next course was roast rabbit. I think, you know, like, what, we're having roast bunny for dinner? Oh boy. He did apologize for forgetting. And he was very sweet. The first time I went to his house for dinner some mutual friends wanted us to meet because this is somebody who's been a chef for many years and teaches cooking classes, which I do, I teach cooking classes. So we had these mutual friends who actually run a cooking school in Berkeley.

[03:10]

She's a lawyer and he's an orthodontist. And then they moonlight, you know, they have a cooking school at their house, which is pretty nice. So they have a huge fabulous kitchen with a whole row of counter space and cupboards and drawers and a fabulous stovetop with about eight burners and two ovens. And so they wanted us to meet. So his restaurant was closed the night we wanted to meet. His restaurant is in, it's a kind of a small restaurant in San Francisco and it's in French, it's called Le Tru. My daughter lived in France for many years, so she knew the meaning of Le Tru, which is the hole. So she didn't understand why a restaurant is called Le Tru, but it's for the hole in the wall restaurant. It's short for the hole in the wall restaurant. But when I went to his house for dinner, we went there and I had brought two bottles of 10-year-old California wine, a white and a red. And on his mantle he had two 20-year-old Bordeauxs. I felt a little embarrassed like, well, but also you feel like, well, I've come to the

[04:16]

right place for dinner. And we sat down, he has a little room outside of his kitchen, which is in the dining room where we were kind of sitting around and he served us for the first course an appetizer of radishes. Radishes, they had down their little roots still and the little stems. They were long and narrow radishes with a little bit of white at the end and then the red and they were platters of them. They'd been washed. It was really sweet. And then there were little dishes of sweet butter and little dishes of salt. So you could have a plain radish, radish with butter, radish with salt or radish with butter and salt. It was really four dishes in one and we had sparkling French cider with it. And then, so this was, you know, somebody right away I liked him a lot because I thought

[05:19]

anybody who can appreciate radishes, you know, is somebody worth knowing. And anybody, you know, and this is a real cook because most cooks think they have to do something to improve on radishes. Like a radish isn't good enough so you have to cook it and you have to make a nice sauce for it and you have to do something to, like, make it edible or to demonstrate your skill or, you know, your expertise or to show what you can do with radishes. So this is something, you know, so this is very much like, you know, the idea in Zen, you know, to be able to appreciate something for what it is. And a radish is really good at being a radish. And each of us, you know, are the only one who can be good at being, you know, you being you, me being me. And we should be able to appreciate that and not think we need to do a whole lot to improve on ourselves. I think so anyway.

[06:20]

Because otherwise you begin to think, like, instead of being a radish, like, you think, well, I, you know, radish isn't good enough. I need to be a, what would you like to be? You know, nowadays in California, you know, they are the places, you know, they say, and if you were a vegetable, what would you be? Or if you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be? This sort of thing. Anyway, you know, maybe a radish isn't good enough and you should be an eggplant or something. I don't know. But radish is pretty nice. And it's so remarkable, of course, that a radish, none of us can do that. You know, we can't take the stuff out of the ground and the air and the sunlight and make a radish. But radishes do it perfectly. So it's pretty amazing. So, I spent a lot of years trying to be a really good Zen student, you know, and get

[07:22]

somewhere. And, of course, I ended up in about the same place, you know, kind of nowhere. Only tonight I've ended up here, see? I don't know. But these things happen, you know, you sort of end up someplace. And so, you know, Suzuki Roshi would say, when you are you, Zen is Zen. And I thought, you know, when you got to be really Zen, then that was really where it was at. But actually, when you are you, Zen is Zen. So it's all right just to be a radish, or for you to be you, you know. And there's not so much we can do about it anyway. I mean, who else are you going to be? But I went on a kind of self-improvement kick for a lot of years, you know, I was going to get enlightened. I figured that would be pretty good. Do you know the way that works? Because, like, then I didn't think it would be, you know, well, I thought if you get enlightened,

[08:28]

then if anybody, like, you have an argument with somebody, you can just say, like, hey, I'm enlightened. You know, you're not. So let's let it go with that, huh? I mean, like, so, I must be right, you must be wrong. You must not understand things, I must, and, you know, that will take care of it, right? So this would be, like, the ultimate kind of, you know, sort of weapon in interpersonal dialogue and stuff. And it seemed to actually work that way, you know, in certain sects and cults and Zen centers, you know. I was in one of them. We had a teacher like that for a lot of years. So it was kind of fun. Anyway, well, I did, I was thinking about talking a little bit about cooking tonight and sort of the flavor spirit of Zen practice and cooking, or, you know, in a sense about

[09:32]

spiritual life and cooking. I sort of hesitate. I like this sort of sense of, you know, in some traditions, they're pretty good about acknowledging that the spiritual life is something that takes care of itself and you don't have to worry about it so much, you know, and that you can sort of change things on a physical level or a psychological level, and then the spiritual unfolds and takes care of itself. And it's not something we have much to do with, you know. And so perhaps, you know, in that sense, you know, meditation is, you know, meditation is not really something we accomplish or do, you know, we try to in a certain sense to get out of the way and let things happen. But anyway, in the Zen tradition, perhaps you know, of course, early on, there was a Zen master, Hyakujo, who said that a day of no work is a day of no eating.

[10:37]

So this became, you know, very basic in Zen. And then the Zen tradition is also very Japanese. And as you may know, I think we're all aware the Japanese are very industrious. So Zen has a whole flavor of being industrious. And so when I started to cook at Tassajara, and I had been asked by Zen Center, I was 21 years old, and Zen Center asked me if I'd be the cook because they couldn't think of, you know, anybody better. I was sort of this obvious person to ask because I'd spent the last summer before Zen Center bought Tassajara, I worked at the last year that Tassajara was a resort. And I had gotten a job as a dishwasher, and I learned to make bread. And halfway through the summer, one of the cooks quit, and they said, would you like the job? And I said, well, okay. And I found out I had, you know, as a dishwasher, I was a nice, calm, reasonable person. And then two days later, I was yelling at people and, you know, stuff.

[11:38]

And so you can see this as kind of, you know, spiritual work, right? I mean, what happens is, like, you go to do something, and then you find out you're this person who you never met before who's really kind of off the wall, and you wonder, like, where this person came from and how they got there, and, you know, you start to ... And then other people are having meetings, like, what do we do about Ed? And you know you're sort of in trouble, and everybody's kind of concerned about you. But this is interesting, right? So then what do you do? Do you quit the job or do you go on doing what you do and, you know, work through it, right? And we all have to make these kind of decisions, right? Where's the best place to have your difficulty? Because it's probably going to be wherever you go, there, you know, that saying?

[12:40]

Wherever there you go, there you are, right? So probably this is going to come up someplace else. It's going to be very unlikely you can arrange your life so that you don't have to experience your cook's temperament. But there is this thing called cooking that actually really brings it to the surface and the forefront. So that's pretty interesting, huh? And they say the same thing about meditation, that it will give you many good problems. And they used to tell me this at Zen Center when I had problems. They'd say, and if you weren't meditating, you wouldn't have this problem, this really nice problem that you have. And we say then, you know, as a piece of advice, pick your difficulty. Don't try to pick your pleasure or your joy or to do what, you know, is wonderful for you or pleasurable for you. Pick the place and, you know, pick the place to have your difficulty. Pick the activity.

[13:42]

Pick the people you want to have your difficulty with because that's what's going to be there, right? And this is not usually the way we think about, you know, our work or our relationships and so on, but it's pretty good, you know? And that was part of the reason, like, when I finally got divorced, I finally decided, like, I may have these problems wherever I go, but I think it might be more useful if I had them with somebody else. I'm not trying to say I don't have problems, but maybe there'd be a more useful place to have them, you know? And I always thought, you know, having problems in the meditation was pretty useful, but it did nothing to prepare me for life in the world, do you know? I think it's really hard. I spent, you know, I lived in Cincinnati for nearly 20 years. You have, you know, your bills are all paid.

[14:46]

You know, I had a car, you know, I didn't pay any rent, I didn't have to pay for any of my food, I didn't have to pay for any of my insurance. You know, everything is paid. Everything is covered. You know, we even got health insurance after, you know, 15 or 16 years, and I was on Kaiser, you know, and it's all taken care of, and then you can concentrate on the, you know, like the quality of consciousness, you know, how you're doing, you know, what's going on, what is consciousness and, you know, what is life about and stuff. And then, after 20 years of this, I was nearly 40, and I decided to move out of Zen Center, and then suddenly I had to start paying bills, you know, and I had to get a job, and I had to start writing checks, you know, and I had to get a car, and then I'd walk into the supermarket, and I hadn't been in supermarkets much for 20 years, and it's really overwhelming. You know, like there's, you know, 10 or 20 yards of laundry soaks, you know, and you go like,

[15:53]

oh my God, what do I buy? And then people told me I wasn't watching enough TV, because that's how you find out, you know, what to buy. It was really hard, and then, you know, so you have to, I had to suddenly start paying bills and, you know, work and get a job, and it was such, it's such pressure, and I can't understand, you know, I just basically, it's so overwhelming to me. It's been really overwhelming for me. I don't understand how people do it. I mean, how do we do that? I spent all those years, and you know, like, it's like 100 people or 200 people are making this thing work. It's not just up to me to make sure that my life happens and that the bills get paid, you know, or maybe one other person or something. There's actually, there's this actual whole community of people who are making life happen. It's pretty amazing, and it makes you realize how

[16:55]

strange, you know, our culture is, that we're sort of, most of us are out there, it's one or two people sort of trying to keep it together and make ends meet, and, you know, we're driving places and, you know, appointments and, and then how do you get your car fixed, you know, and you have to get to work, and then there's the dentist, and then there's the kids, and, you know, and it's just, it's basically, to me, after all those years of the monastery, it's kind of overwhelming, and it's sort of, I think maybe it's sort of stabilizing now, but, then people say, well, have you started your IRA yet? What's that, you know? Do you have any life insurance? Oh, boy. Anyway, I didn't know how I, you know, got up on this stuff, but I, you know, what I want to say is just, you know, life, it's pretty hard. I think you probably noticed.

[17:58]

Anyway, so I got this, so after I worked at Tassajara the last summer, it was a resort, and after Zen Center bought Tassajara, I noticed a Zen student then. My friend and I used to sit, I was in one of the little cabins, and then at Tassajara, and then the woman across the way from us who worked in the office, she was kind of an alcoholic, and she had trouble sleeping, so when we hit our little mokugyo in the morning, we had a little, you know, Zen, they have this little drum you hit when you chant, and so we were doing that in the mornings, and she complained, so we had to move way down into the barn, but two of us, we would meditate, and then, and once or twice that summer, Suzuki, where she came to visit with a group of students from Zen Center, we were thinking about buying some land near Tassajara. Zen Center had $1,000 in the bank, and then finally we found out we could buy Tassajara for $300,000. What a deal, you know, 160 acres and all these buildings, and this is 1966.

[19:09]

Then there was a Zenefit, you know, we raised $25,000 in two months for the down payment on Tassajara, and the Zenefit, we had the Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Grateful Dead, and the Jefferson Airplane. They did this benefit that we call the Zenefit, it was at the Avalon Ballroom, and in the middle of the concert, Suzuki, she gave a little talk. It was pretty amazing, and then, so then we Zen Center bought Tassajara, and we turned the, what had been the bar into the meditation hall, and interesting enough, that winter, we had heard that we had to have a new, the people who were staying at Tassajara over the winter, and who were out of communication for a while because the phone goes out, they thought we needed to build a new kitchen before the next year, so they tore down the existing one. That's where I came in.

[20:16]

So we had this little makeshift kitchen, and I was offered this job, and I got down there in May, and there was this, there was two things that were interesting going on. One was that there was a whole group of people who said salt is poisonous. Of course, there was another group, you know, there's the macrobiotics who, salt is heaven, or, you know, we need more salt. There's the group like, we don't want any salt, and so I asked the Suzuki Rishi if it would be all right if I used salt. He said, you're the cook, so you can use salt if you want. And the other thing that was happening, you know, at breakfast we would serve a cereal. We'd have oatmeal, or cornmeal mush, or rice cream, or something. Then we'd serve milk, because some people liked cream, we'd serve some cream, and then not everybody wanted cream, so we had to have the milk, and then some people like canned milk, so we'd serve canned milk, and then there was the

[21:20]

people who wanted white sugar, so we'd serve white sugar, and then we'd serve brown sugar, because not everybody wants white sugar, and then the people wanted honey, and we'd have molasses, and we'd sit in the meditation hall, and we'd pass, we'd, servants would come around and serve the food, and then we would pass these trays of condiments down the row, for people to help themselves, what they wanted. And so one morning Suzuki Rishi gave a little talk, and he said, you know, I really, something like this, and he said, I don't understand you Americans, because to me, you take some, you know, your oatmeal, and you put honey, and brown sugar, and milk, and cream, and things on it, then you can't taste the oatmeal anymore. You won't know the true spirit of the grain. So that was the end of that. That's all he needed to say, and he didn't say, I don't want you to do that anymore, but then

[22:27]

everybody said, oh, we better stop not serving any of those things, so then it was always like oatmeal and sesame salt. That was it from then on, one condiment. And so theoretically, you see, we can taste the true spirit of the grain. It's a little bit like the radishes, isn't it? So I asked him, you know, for some advice, and he said, when you cut the carrots, cut the carrots. When you stir the soup, stir the soup. When you wash the rice, wash the rice. It's very simple, very basic Zen advice. And it turns out, you know, it's, you know, when Jerry Brown came to visit, he said that's the same thing they use in the Jesuits. They have it in Latin, do what you're doing. So it's not, you know, just Zen, it's all spiritual, a lot of spiritual traditions. And, of course, the idea is that, you know, wherever we are must be where it's at.

[23:34]

There's not some other universe or some other world or some other place to be. So every so often there's these stories in Zen like that, right? There's two monks walking along and one of them says, this is the summit of the mystic peak. And do you think so? Right now, is it good enough for you? And the other one says, yes, indeed, what a pity. It's kind of, it's kind of dry Zen humor. So it's very similar to one of the favorite, my favorite expressions of Suzuki Roshi is, everything is perfect just as it is, but there's room for improvement. Or you could do it the other way around, maybe it's better, you know.

[24:36]

There's certainly room for improvement, but this is perfect just as it is. And we forget, you know, we keep thinking like, we're going to make it better. It's going to get better. Tomorrow, next week, we'll do our meditation practice. We'll be a success at our business and it's all going to get better. And, you know, eventually we die. Maybe it's gotten better. I don't know. But this is the flavor, you know, of doing what you do. And interestingly enough, though, it also makes the food good, right? If the lettuce is actually when, if the lettuce is actually clean, when you eat the salad and that wasn't so complicated, but sometimes when people wash the lettuce, they don't actually wash the lettuce and then it's not very good. And you notice it, you know, and sometimes when people cut the carrots, they don't,

[25:39]

they haven't really cut the carrots. Sometimes when people salt something, who knows what they were doing because there's way too much salt and a lot of things can happen. Anyway, I worked very hard at that, you know, as the cook. I noticed that from my point of view, at least, I noticed other people weren't working so hard at that. Have you ever noticed that? Hey, I'm doing my part. And then the other people don't seem to be doing theirs. And I went finally to talk to Suzuki Roshi about it. Do you know at monasteries, like out in the world, people say, have you seen that movie, like Water for Chocolate yet? At Tassajara, they say, you know, when you're at the monastery, then people say,

[26:45]

because we're not silent all the time and we're supposed to be working in silence in the kitchen, right? But people say, let me tell you about the dream I had last night. This is like home movies, you know, instead of, instead of like the movie movies, people want to tell you. So I went to talk to Suzuki Roshi and I said, these people that come to work late, they want to talk about the dreams they had the night before. And they don't seem to be in their hands, you know, they're washing lettuce, but they're talking and their awareness seems to be not in their hands, but it seems to be coming out their mouth, you know, in words. And their hands seem to sort of stop and they get sort of dysfunctional in their hands and stuff is going on. And then they take long bathroom breaks. I don't know where they are. And they come back and say they've been, you know, they were at the bathroom. And it's really hard. I don't know what to do. What do I do with these people? You know, and I try to tell them, you know, when you cut the carrots, cut the carrots. And when you stir the soup, stir the soup and they don't seem to care.

[27:48]

So what should I do? And he seemed to listen, you know, very sympathetic, very understandingly. It's hard. It's really hard working with people like that, I know. But then he paused, you know, when I finished talking, he paused and he said, well, if you want to see virtue, you'll have to have a calm mind. And I thought, I didn't ask you that. And he went on talking. And then after a while, and he said, you know, when you're working on food, you're not just working on food, you're working on yourself. And you're working on other people. And of course, it turns out that that's, you know, more true than we think. Right. But I started trying to see virtue. And it turns out that, you know, that actually the food kind of takes care of itself.

[28:50]

And that the part that's difficult is, you know, what's going on with you and what's going on with you and the other people. And how to work with yourself and all the stuff that comes up and work with the other people and all the stuff that comes up. And how do you do that? So I started trying to see virtue. And especially if I ever found fault with somebody, I would try to remind myself to look more carefully and to calm down and look a little more closely and carefully and see if I couldn't find something virtuous. And I began to notice that people have virtue. Inherently. And I began to notice and appreciate how difficult it is to be a human being. You know, and to be, you know, for any of us, to be alive, it's really hard. And then to have to work and do these things and wash all this stuff and then to be around other people who are being so critical and finding fault with you.

[29:51]

And then you have to sort of go around anyway, you know, walk around anyway and all this people are like looking at you and like, he's really so angry all the time. Poor fellow. And people, I noticed people would sometimes would come up to me like they were looking around the side of the building to see what kind of mood I was in. This is really interesting. And I found I was angry a lot, but I was also trying to see virtue. And mostly I could see virtue in the food, you know, in the radishes and the bread and the food. After a while there was this kitchen rebellion. And they said that we don't want to work, you know, for you anymore if you're not going to change the way you do things because, you know, we can, we have taste and sensibility and you don't need to tell us everything and we want to have more responsibility. And I thought it was my job to tell everybody else what to do. But they didn't think that.

[30:52]

Similar to what happens with parents and children. Really interesting. So this one woman said, you treat us just like you do the bread. And then she thought about it for a minute. She said, actually, you treat the bread pretty nice. But I probably could see more virtue in bread dough than, you know, in people at the time, even though I was working on it. But they had more meetings then. And then the staff at Tussahara came to me and they said, you can keep on doing this job if you change the way you go about it. Or you could have some other job. So why don't you decide what you want to do? That's really embarrassing, you know, when this sort of thing happens. It's really, you know what the embarrassing thing is that you think you've hidden your faults from everybody else. And really the only person you've hidden it from is yourself. And then it's sort of embarrassing that everybody else already knew, you know, about

[31:56]

all this stuff. And you didn't. You were the only one who didn't. And then you have to go around and you have to go on living with these people. You know, sort of like, I'm sorry I've been so stupid all this time. And, you know, and thank you. I mean, it's sort of like, you know, you've been very kind too. And, you know, I didn't, you know, with all these things. So I started studying, you know, how to actually give people responsibility and empower people and teach people to cook, actually, and to make cooks. Started to study this. You know, where people don't just follow recipes. And a cook, it's interesting, there's little examples. I'll give you one, like, from an apostasy retreat I was at a while back, okay? I went into breakfast. You go down the breakfast line, you get cereal. And then get down to the end of the line. It's probably a lot like a lot of apostasy retreats are like this.

[32:59]

But down at the end of the breakfast line, there's a big bowl of fruit. Next to the bowl of fruit, big bowl of fruit, this big around. Next to the bowl of fruit is a cutting board. The cutting board is about this big. There's two little knives. Okay, and then what do you do with your peels? Or, I mean, there's a cutting board, there's knives. What are you going to cut? I mean, you're just supposed to cut it and then put everything on your, you know, like, and there's bananas, okay? And where do you put the peels? Oh, well, let's just toss them on the table. So, you know, to me, that's just, that's sort of simple. But it's kind of like, if you set it up, I mean, like, what's the process here, right? Like, you might take some peels off the oranges and some peels off the bananas, and you might cut the core out of the apples. And isn't that what the cutting board is there for? And maybe since there's, you know, there's a lot of people coming through the line, you could put out a little, there's lots of cutting boards there. You can put out one, two, three times that size. And then you can have a bowl there. And I noticed, like, the mornings that I did the breakfast setup and I put out the bowl,

[33:59]

that people put peels in it. To me, that makes sense, you know. And then the other mornings, there's peels all over the table. Now, to me, a cook is somebody who can, you know, actually sort of, you actually think through what's going on. And you figure these things out. That's not so complicated. But a lot of the times, we stop short of actually thinking. Another one of my things, I've been doing these demos and classes and things, but I've been doing bread. And so this week, I'm going to make some bread. But when I make the bread, I started this years ago, like, using a metal spoon. And you know, in the 60s, when we started Tessera, people said, metal. Oh, you can't use metal. You have to use wood. Metal is too hard. The wood has a much better vibration, you know, with the bread dough. But what I found is when you use wood, and there's all this dough on the side of the bowl. And then what happens to it, right?

[35:03]

And then people, like, so people think somehow, like, if you leave the dough on the side of the bowl, it's so much easier, right, than scraping the side of the bowl. That's easier. It's easier not to scrape the side of the bowl. What happens to the bowl then? It goes to the sink. And then afterwards, there's this goo in the sink. There's these sponges you can't use anymore because they're covered with bread dough. It's all through that green, little green stuff. And then there's this orange and yellow scour pads. There's dough all through them. And this is easier somehow. This is easier than just scraping the bowl in the first place and having to put it all in the bread. Now, to me, that's actually like, are you going to, you know, that's making, when you make the bread, make the bread. And then, you know, and then scrape the bowl, put it in the bread, and then make it easy. Make it easy instead of getting all that bread dough, you know, in the sponges, which then you have to throw out. And, you know, you spend all that time getting that dough out of the bowl anyway.

[36:07]

Only sometimes you get to dump it on somebody else. Because after all, I'm a cook and then you're the dishwasher, right? And I'm above that sort of stuff. So you take care of my mess for me, right? So some places you get to do that, right? But my school is like, hey, well, let's, you know, let's take care of it, right? And let's not leave messes behind for other people. And actually, let's make it easy. I've been to spiritual centers where they put five-gallon buckets of, you know, peanut butter, and there's still an inch of peanut butter in the bottom of that, and they just toss it in the wash sink. Now, do you think that's, you're going to be able to wash many dishes after you get an inch of peanut butter from a five-gallon barrel in your wash water? I don't think so. But somebody thinks this is the easy way. I don't need to clean this out. I'm going to leave this for somebody else. It's strange. And we went through this all when we did the Green's Cookbook. I'm talking now about, you know, how, you know, what makes a cook a cook, right? And, I mean, somebody has to make up the menu and, you know, lots of things.

[37:14]

And actually decide stuff. And when we wrote the Green's Cookbook, this is the most well-edited, well-worked-on book I've ever been involved with. You know, I just found out, I wrote the Tessera Bread book in 1970. In 1985, Shambhala asked me to revise it. And I discovered, 15 years after the book was written, it was all written in Suzuki Roshi English. It said, put bread on board and knead with hands. And I left out all the articles and the pronouns. I didn't know that. So I went and rewrote the book and I put back in, I put in all the articles and the pronouns. Put the bread on a board and knead with your hands. You know, I mean, let's make this, you know, get this clear, right? And, but the Green's Cookbook we actually worked on. I worked on Deborah's recipes. She worked on my recipes. Then we worked with a food editor for a month, going over every word in the book. We sent it in. We felt great. We thought, this will take care of it. We get the manuscript back from our editor at Bantam. And they put all these little press-applied labels that are sticking out the side,

[38:18]

either pink or yellow or something. I think they were all pink. So these little pink, you know, tabs. And so every place that said, cook the onions until they're translucent, the little note would say, how long? And then it would say, season to taste with vinegar. And it would say, how much? So we would be going through the book, cook the onions until they're translucent, about two to four minutes. Season to taste with vinegar, beginning with a quarter of a teaspoon or a half a teaspoon. Then in the pasta section, it says, cook the vegetables until they're as tender as you like. It says, how long? How do we know? It's sort of like, wait a minute. I mean, like, if you don't know what you like, I don't know who's going to tell you. I mean, and then what do you say to somebody? Like, you better develop a standardized, you know, sort of pressure of your chew

[39:21]

so you can determine, I mean, what do you tell people? But this is interesting because it's what the difference is between, you know, and a cook is any of us, you know. But just for the sake of our talk, you know, like, what makes a cook is you have to be able to notice the differences. And you make decisions. And you make decisions based on what you see, what you smell, what you taste. You make decisions that come out of your experience, okay? You take responsibility. You make decisions. And this is different than this whole school of cooking, which is, do what I tell you, and everything will be okay. And you won't have to taste anything. You won't have to smell anything. You won't have to look at anything. You won't have to think about anything. You won't have to decide anything. Just do what we tell you, and you too can make masterpieces. And that's, isn't that, that's tempting. That's what all these cookbooks are doing out there. Thousands of people are reading them. Because you won't have to actually look at anything, smell anything, taste anything.

[40:26]

You can do what we tell you. It'll be a masterpiece. And you won't have to worry or have any anxiety. No problem, right? Everything's going to come out perfect. Just do what we tell you. This is all through our life, right? And then you go to meditation and meditate. What, everything's going to come out good if you just practice? I don't think so. My teacher got cancer. Two of my teachers got cancer, Suzuki Roshi and Kagura Roshi, and they're dead. And then some people say, well, I guess they didn't really understand the Dharma, did they? They got cancer. Anyway, stuff isn't, it's not going to come out all right. You know, and that's, and then that's all right at some point, and that's all right. Yeah. I mean, what else is there? Better be. Oh. So anyway, I started trying to say, figure out how do you make cooks? And, you know, you actually have to then give people these, you know, put people in the

[41:31]

position of being the cook. So I started having each person on the crew had to be cooked for a day. Then you learn pretty fast. And then you suddenly get a lot more sympathetic with the person who's in charge. And you start trying to cooperate and help them, because what's going to happen on the day you have to do it, you know, if you don't, if you're not helpful on the day that somebody else is doing it. And it's very interesting, that whole process. And I've been, you know, I have noticed it over the years, various things. One day I was at Greens and somebody, you know, there's, we had a person who was the expediter in the afternoon, was also in charge of prep for the next day. And the head lunch cook says to him, John, you've got to do the potatoes now. So who's responsible now? It's completely in the language that the head lunch cook just took the responsibility back.

[42:34]

And the head lunch cook could have said, John, how's the prep going? You know, you still, you ask somebody to be accountable, you know, to account. For how they're doing, account, make an account. How's it going? Oh, fine. Have you gotten to the potatoes yet? Oh. I mean, if you ask him, how's it going, he might think, well, let's see, we've done this and this and this. Oh, we need to do the potatoes. And, you know, and we could have asked, and then, you know, if he hasn't gotten to the potatoes, you can still say, well, if he hasn't figured it out when you say, how's it going, then you can say, well, you know, is there anything else that still needs to be done? You know, you give somebody a chance to account and figure it out. Otherwise, you're taking, completely taking back the responsibility, and then they never figure it out. And sometimes you have to let them blow it, but you can't let them make the mistakes too big, especially if you're in business, you know. But that sort of thing is interesting. It's all in the dialogue. Do you understand? I want to tell you, let's see how much, how long I've been talking here.

[43:49]

I'll tell you a little, some things, you know, I'm going to go off the subject about cooking and stuff, but it's interesting. I want to tell you about this. You know, speaking of how we, you know, how we treat ourselves and how we treat other people and, you know, sort of what we think is important. Recently, I came across a story in one of Alice Miller's books. Do you know Alice Miller? She's a therapist. She writes a lot about kids and how childhood affects us as adults and how, you know, we tend to create the same things over again. And this was a story that she uses. It's about a three-year-old, and this is a three-year-old who hasn't been through the usual kind of training. She has one of her books, For Your Own Good, I think it was. She has this whole section on the German school of child rearing in the 19th century. Stamp out exuberance as early as possible. This kind of thing.

[44:52]

And then you can teach the kids about sex by showing them sex organs on corpses, so they don't get, so it's not like too interesting for them, you know, so that they don't get too interested in it. But anyway, so she has this story that's an example of a three-year-old who hasn't been too, you know, cowed. She decided that the woman wanted to take her three-year-old, leave her with her mother for the weekend while she went to do something, and she was a little apprehensive about it because she knew her mother was really big on manners and wanted kids to behave properly. Right? But she also knew her mother liked the grandson very much and would read him stories at night and so on. So she just said, okay, I'll try this out. When she came to pick up the kid after the weekend, the little boy says to her, I don't want to stay with grandma anymore. She hurt me.

[45:52]

So mother's a little concerned, and she finally gets the story from her son, from her mother, and what had happened was, at dinner, the grandmother had made a cottage cheese souffle, which was the son's favorite dessert. And when he finished his portion, he reached out to help himself to seconds from the serving bowl, which is what he was used to doing at home and was very proud of himself for being able to do this. And the grandmother put her hand on his and she said, you have to ask the others if it's okay. And he looked around the room and said, where are the others? And he was very upset. He didn't understand. And he was very upset by this, and he threw a fit. He had a tantrum. And the mother tried to calm down and said, well, you can have some dessert. It's okay. Don't worry about it. But he really felt this, manners like this is by basically, you better do this or I'm

[47:00]

not going to love you. There's this threat of if you don't behave properly, you won't be loved. I won't love you. And then she said to him, you know, and then he said, after a while, he calmed down and he said, you hurt me. Why did you do that? And she says, if you don't learn good manners, others won't like you. And then I forget, he says something and then she said, but you have to have good manners. And he said, what for? When I'm at my mother's, when I'm hungry, I eat. If you're familiar with Zen, you know, this is straight out of Zen. When you say, what is Zen? Say, when I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm tired, I sleep. So here's a little boy who's figured that out. Anyway, I found this story really interesting. And to me, I completely identified with the three-year-old, I must say. Well, I told this story at a retreat I was doing.

[48:03]

There's about 40 people there and everybody who said anything about it was like, that grandmother was just right. I couldn't believe it. And people are saying, well, yeah, you have to teach these kids manners. And then they told, and they had various examples of kids who were so misbehaved and they never learned manners and how awful it was. So I changed my tune a little bit and I said, not just identify with the three-year-old, but at least let's have the three-year-old and the grandmother, a little harmonious relationship. Can they learn to love each other and appreciate one another at least and respect and value one another? And not be too quick to judge, too quick to correct. Well, then I got a letter from someone. It was really interesting because in this letter, she had obviously related very much

[49:06]

to the story because she said, when you read that story, I started crying because I related to the three-year-old, she said. And I felt the pain. And then she said, you know, I was sitting there in the meditation retreat and I was so mad at those people, you know, who have those nylon jackets and they fidget. And there's all that, that noise. And then there are all these people there who weren't following the regular Zendo etiquette. You know, like they weren't being quiet. And then when they get on the tan, they don't get on it the right way and they don't do the right bows. And I mean, isn't that about teaching people manners? And then she said, and she didn't say, you know, like, but she's just saying like, and then she said, and I felt really oppressed. Feeling, you know, to be, you know, to be criticizing other people like this, I felt really oppressed. There's a, you know, there's a koan in Zen, they say, the student says, how can I attain

[50:07]

liberation? And the teacher said, who is it who's imprisoning you? Who is it? Well, she found out, right? It's grandmother. Grandmother, when grandmother comes out, she feels oppressed. She feels claustrophobic and oppressed. So she's sitting there feeling claustrophobic and oppressed and she says, only I hit on a new way to handle this. I felt like I was in a foreign country riding on a train being pleasantly anonymous. You know, when you're in a foreign country riding on the train being pleasantly anonymous, you don't think about correcting everybody. You just think, isn't this interesting, the kind of customs these people have. This is kind of the, you know, basically the quality of meditation. That you start to have this kind of quality of being pleasantly anonymous and not worrying too much about fixing that grandmother, fixing, you know, the three-year-old and watch them both. Well, I thought about this a lot and I realized, you know, how much we do this.

[51:10]

So I'll tell you a couple of stories. One is, last Christmas, my daughter came to visit me. It was right before Christmas and she was going to be flying back to France on Christmas Eve to visit her mom. My daughter's now 20. Last Christmas, she was 19. And so, that last day she was in San Francisco, we were going to go to the circus and afterwards we were going to my mom's who lives nearby for dinner. And because my mom said, you know, I don't want to cook, let's have Chinese. I said, oh mom, we'll cook. So that morning before we went to the circus, we cooked dinner. We went to the circus, we got back from the circus and we were all sitting in the car and there was, my daughter had a friend with her and I said, let's plan to leave in 15 minutes, okay? You know, solicit a little agreement, right? Everybody says, yes, okay. One person says, well, let's make it 20 minutes.

[52:12]

I said, okay, 20 minutes, 10 to 5. We're going to leave at 10 to 5, right? Right. We get in the house, my daughter and her friend disappear. They're gone. They've gone out somewhere. I know they're not going to be back in 20 minutes. I get irate. Like, this is bad manners. Is it not? When are these people going to learn? Right? I mean, how old do they have to be? So about 5 o'clock, you know, she's already timid, I think, okay, I'm going to try to relax. I think I'll just have a little cup of coffee, decaf, heat the half and half and relax for 15 minutes. 10 after 5, she comes in. I think I better explain this to her. I better explain to her what's good manners, what isn't. Didn't you make an agreement to leave? So I go in and talk to her, and it's right in front of her friend. So I'm trying to be polite, excuse me, but I just want to, you know, while it's on my

[53:17]

mind, I want to talk about this. We made an agreement. You didn't have to agree to that. You can always say, like, I'd like more time. You know, of course, what she was doing was out getting my Christmas present. Right? She disobeyed me, and it was all bad manners in order to get my Christmas present. She was, you know, in art class, and so she had this picture, which was a self-portrait of her, and she'd gone all the way up the street one direction to the bank to close out her account, and then all the way down the street, you know, about 10 blocks in the other direction to the framing shop. And she'd run the whole way. And either she or her friend had lost a scarf along the way, and she'd gotten my Christmas present and been bad-mannered enough to get my Christmas present out of love for me, and then I tried to teach her good manners. This is how stupid it is, you know, at some point, right? I'll tell you another story about this.

[54:18]

See, after I went to the IMS retreat, fall of 87, and the day we were coming out of silence, I got a call from my mom. She said, your dad's in the hospital. Doctors think he might die tonight. So the next day, I flew to California. I left the retreat. There's usually a week of talking at the end, so I left. And I got out there, and my dad had survived, and he survived, actually, you know, modern medicine. He actually had to do kind of a little meditating. He got to, you know, live in bed for a couple months, and I used to joke with him, you know, like, well, I guess you get to meditate now. I don't think he was ever especially interested in meditation. And, you know, I'd go over to my parents' house, and my mom would say, your dad is just so difficult. He just isn't himself. And I really, you know, I really have a hard time with this, and I really don't like it,

[55:24]

you know? And he doesn't even think he's in his own house. I don't know what's wrong with him. And the guy's dying. What's wrong with him? You know? And sort of like, you know what bad manners is in that case? Bad manners is to think you're not even in your own house. That is bad manners. And then to say it, too. Why can't I be in my own house? What do you mean? You are in your own house. Don't talk to me like that. This is like how you teach people manners. One day I said, well, where are you? He said, Carson City. It was like, it was obvious. Like, well, of course, Carson City. Aren't we all? Don't you know that? But, you know, I was sort of like that, too. OK, well, let's look around and see if you can see where you are. Get in the wheelchair here. Let's go around the house. See if you recognize anything. So, you know, I was trying to teach him good manners, too. But, you know, how stupid. I mean, wouldn't it have been interesting to say, like, where are you? Carson City. Well, what's happening there?

[56:25]

This is, you know, people are giving workshops on this now. Arnie and Amy Mandel, they go around, you know, talking to people and saying, like, you know, let people be where they are. And he has a wonderful story about, you know, a fellow in Switzerland who's been this, you know, really tight person all of his life and always behaving just right and always doing the right things, you know, and being so good. And he comes out of a coma and he says to Arnie, he says, this, the, the spirit is too big for the body, that the spirit is too big. Actually, he says, the spirit is too big for the bottle. It's like something straight out of, you know, the Arabian Nights, right? And then you say, you know, like, what are you talking about, man? We're here in the hospital in, you know, Geneva. And he said to the man, well, why don't you take out the cork? And the guy said, I can't find it.

[57:30]

Where is it? Where's the cork? What do you say to somebody, you know, when they want to know, like, where is the cork? And Arnie said to him, well, it's right there, isn't it? Isn't it just right there? And then, boom, the cork came out. And this person had had a kind of kidney failure and he was having trouble with urination and then all that cleared up when the cork came out. And then he got real friendly with all the nurses and he kind of resolved things with his wife and he'd be, you know, and he was really happy and his, you know, and the spirit came out. The one story my father told me before he died, and you see, he hadn't told my mother this story because, you know, it wouldn't have been good manners. And he said, you know, I was driving through South Dakota. I had this dream, I was driving through South Dakota.

[58:31]

And the reason this is bad manners is because, actually, I have two mothers and my first mother died when I was a little boy, okay, when I was three. I think that's partly why I relate to that story, right, about a three-year-old in good manners. And then, so this is actually, my present mother is actually my stepmother, okay. But, so in my family, we never talked about South Dakota because that's where my first mother's from, right? So, we don't talk about South Dakota. And Carson City is where they lived after they were first married. So, you know, you don't want to, you don't say like, you don't bring this up. This is bad manners, okay. So, he told me the story. I was driving through South Dakota and I had to stop and pull into a gas station. And, but you know, this wasn't like a regular gas station. And in this gas station, you drove your car and there was this big parking lot. And what you did is you went in, you parked in a parking place there, and then you'd go

[59:33]

to sleep. And when you woke up, you'd have this like new car. And it would be all gassed up and all ready to go. This is bad manners, see. Interesting, isn't it? So, you know, for us to, you know, find out about things, you know, sometimes we have to be temperamental cooks and sometimes little bad manners. And bad manners isn't just bad manners, you know. And it's, you know, you know, where something's really going on in our life. And we should be able to, you know, touch it and know it and bring it into our life. And it can be, it's very powerful. It's what really gives us our deep, you know, energy, enthusiasm, joy, vitality. When we can bring that into our life and into our activity and into our being, into our consciousness, you know.

[60:33]

A few years ago, just to, you know, kind of complete this, it's interesting. My brother went to a family reunion in South Dakota, and he saw my aunt there. And my aunt gave him a whole box of letters that my mother had written to her, 1947, 1948, for two or three years there. And these are single-spaced typed letters. Nowadays, these things, nobody's doing this anymore. We all call on the phone. And we say, hi, how are you, and blah, [...] blah. But this is like a whole different time when you wrote, there's these single-spaced typed letters, pages and pages. And it's different, you know, to write something than it is to just talk somebody on the phone. And an example of this is the last letter my mother wrote to her sister, my aunt, there's a little poem in it. And it's a poem that was in the New Yorker magazine in 1948.

[61:57]

And she quotes a part of the poem in the letter. So I want to tell you the poem, okay? The poem is called, The Little Duck. And interestingly enough, it's by someone named Donald. Donald C. Babcock. And so this is how it goes. I'll see if I can remember it. My mother was dying of cancer. She'd had cancer for many years. Earlier in the letter, she describes a tumor in her neck, which would bleed. And then the wrapping would get caught in it. And she says, I found out that if I put Vaseline on the gauze, it would come off all right, without tearing it open.

[62:58]

And she also said about how difficult and yet how easy it is to live with pain. Too. And that the simple little things that brought relief like the Vaseline on the gauze, you know, were so important. So the poem is like this. Now we're ready to look at something pretty special. It is a duck riding on the waves 100 feet beyond the surf. And he cuddles in the swells. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves because he rests in the Atlantic. Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is. And neither do you. But what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. He rests in the immediate as though it were infinity, which it is.

[64:04]

That's religion. And the little duck has it. I like the little duck. He doesn't know much, but he has religion. And then the next paragraph says, well, that's it, Hattie. Let's rest in the immediate as though we're infinity. Well, thank you very much for coming tonight.

[65:27]

And appreciate being in your company. I'd like to stop talking now. But if you have anything you'd like to bring up, I would be willing to answer some questions. Or if you have any comments or anything, I could take a few minutes for that. And if you want to move, I don't mind. And as far as I'm concerned, it wouldn't be bad manners. This is what happens when you start to, I mean, I started out, I had this sort of thing planned, a little bit of a talk, you know, and then it went sort of somewhere else. I hope that was all right. What the heck? Any comments or questions or interests? Yes. Is too many condiments on a bowl of oatmeal, would you consider that bad manners?

[66:29]

Yeah, it's sort of like that. It's interesting. And because, you know, we thought of this too when, this Zen tradition, of course, we're following a schedule, right? You follow the schedule and when the bell rings, you get up. And then when the Han hits, you go to meditation. And so a couple of years ago, when I was living in Tassara for a few months, I, the person who was the head student for that practice period, he gave a talk and he said that, in his talk, he said he used to be the head of a drug treatment program. So he was experimenting with, in his drug treatment program, they experimented with letting the patients regulate the amount of methadone that they would have. You know, and there'd be up to some maximum. And he mentioned that they've done these studies and they have like two kinds of

[67:38]

treatment programs. One program is like Zen Center, where the people come into the program and they're told, this is what you do at six, this is what you do at seven. We're having group therapy at eight, you exercise at nine. And then there's this other program where the people come in and they say, here's some activities that you might want to do. And why don't you get together now with other people here and make up a schedule when you'd like to do these things. And maybe you'd like to see some movies. Here's some of them. Instead of having like 8 p.m., here's such and such movie, here's some movies that are available. So figure out if you want to see movies and what time you want to see them. And then you can pick among these movies what you might want to see. Well, they found that those people did much better than the people in treatment program B did much better than the people in treatment program A. So then the question was, why are we all in treatment program A? And interestingly enough, this year, I mean,

[68:42]

Tathagatagarbha has been going now for 26 or 27 years now. We had our 25th anniversary a few years ago, a year or so ago, I don't know. Because it was 67 was the first summer. And this spring, we have, because see, it's different than Vipassana, because in our tradition, like, and especially in the monastic tradition, if somebody doesn't show up for meditation, and it's all assigned seats, right? There's one person who looks around the room and figures out who's not there, and then they go to see where they are. So this, you can either see as the police. There's various experiences of this. Or, you know, I've been at Vipassana retreats and then nobody comes. And then you wonder, like, did anybody even notice I'm not there? Do they know I'm alive? Does anybody care about me? Did anybody notice? Is my important? You know, I mean, so, you know, when nobody comes, you can feel kind of bad.

[69:43]

You feel kind of abandoned and like nobody cares. So it's actually kind of nice if somebody comes and says, but then, you know, it's nice if they, instead of saying, like, well, how come you're not at meditation? What's wrong with you? If they say, like, you know, well, how are you today? And, you know, are you all right? You're doing okay? And what's happening? How are you doing? So it's all in the spirit of the thing, you know? And it's actually kind of nice if somebody comes around in a way. It can be quite nice, you know? So it's a lot of it is in the attitude or the spirit of it. But this spring at Tassajara, there was kind of this little rebellion, you know, and people said, why are we doing this? And, you know, let's get in treatment program B. And so they stopped doing that, at least for that practice period. And they said, all right, well, do what you want. You know, we're still going to have the schedule here and you can come or not.

[70:45]

So we're having a little bit of experimenting with bad manners. In the context of meditation, of course, I mean, the idea of having a you know, simple sort of thing like that is that, you know, at least for a little while, you don't have to think about it. If you have a schedule and a plan and a way that you do meditation, and then you don't have to think about and go through the whole strategic thinking about what would be to my best advantage. And so you can look instead of spending a lot of energy and what's to my best advantage, you can start to look at other things like seeing virtue, just in whatever it is. Or applying yourself or being energetic with doing what you're doing. So it's the idea of it is, that's the idea of it is to, you know, give you the energy and capacity to focus more in a different way

[71:50]

on how you do things rather than what you're doing. And rather than thinking about what to do next. And rather than having to think like, what am I going to put on my cereal? And what would I like the best? And what would make me feel the best? Or what would make me happy? And that you can simplify in that sense, you try to put in fewer elements so that you don't have to get quite so involved in that kind of thinking. Yes. When you're talking about your friend who keeps forgetting that you're a vegetarian. I love to feed people. And I'll set up a dinner party, obviously. So you think, well, these people have these things in common. I would like to meet somebody else or whatever. So you put together a group of people. And then I often find that, especially nowadays, well, somebody has an allergy to something. And somebody doesn't eat any dairy. And oh, it's always a couple of vegetarians. But these vegetarians also don't eat seafood. And I've often found myself, especially in the last couple of years,

[72:54]

suddenly in a very stressful point. I'm trying to make a menu. And it's sort of like the only dish I can make that meets all these requirements takes me an entire afternoon or something. And I think, wait a minute, I started out trying to do the right thing, which was bring people together who would really enjoy each other and fix them a meal they would all like. And here I'm in a very bad, I mean, I'm ready for treatment program A and B. And can you comment on that situation? I mean, it sounds a little bit like when you read it all, typically with the cooks, with people who wouldn't eat salt. Yeah, I know. Don't invite them to the same dinner party, no. I don't know. It's hard, isn't it? I don't know what to say. Because it is like, you know, a lot of our life is like that. There's no way to make it all work. You know, there's no way to make everybody happy and do the right thing for everybody. You know, and not be... We tried to do that for years at Zen Center. We tried to... And I tried to do this.

[73:57]

You know, I tried to live and practice in such a way that I could never be criticized by anybody for anything. And it's a burden, you know, and it doesn't work. And finally, I decided to, you know, make a sincere effort, make a sincere, wholehearted offering, and let it go at that. You know, and offer what I had to offer. And then people, you know, some people are going to like it. Some people aren't. But that's all I can do, you know. So I don't see... You know, otherwise, you know, we get into, you know, trying to live up to some kind of standard that's not possible. Anyway, so that's my kind of effort. Because I don't think you can, you know, make it all come out. What did you do when confronted by the fight you saw at the end of our time?

[74:59]

We ate it. Yeah, me and my girlfriend ate it too. She's had red meat twice in 18 years now, both times at Robert's house. Because that also relates to the manners question. Because I remember my mother saying, you eat what somebody cooked before you. You can't visit her at somebody else's house. And many people turned down all kinds of things at my house. Well, yeah, people... You know, because of some really big... Yeah, people... And I was scurrying around, working around them. Yeah. So I think it's polite, you know, it is polite for guests to eat. But, you know, I'll say just, you know, I don't know, it's... Everybody's doing... We all just do what we do. You know, and at some point, it really doesn't... You know, people are really trying, like... It's like saying, you know, like, well, how can I be a good Buddhist? So, like, being a good Buddhist is going to make everything okay? You know, at least... And then these people said, like, why did you do that? Well, it's the Buddhist thing to do. You know, and I just think, like, well, why, you know, like, instead of, like...

[76:06]

I mean, there's nothing... You know, like, should we do this? Should we do that? Is it good manners? Is it bad manners? At some point, well, you know, I don't mind... Personally, I don't mind eating meat that much. And apparently, when we go over to Robert's house... I mean, I know my girlfriend wouldn't eat red meat. And, you know, if we go out to a restaurant, she wouldn't eat at anybody else's house. But she eats at Robert's house. No, so I don't know, you know, she seems to, you know, go along with that. And even bunny rabbit. But so anyway, I, you know, and that's... I don't know if I've made it clear, but I'm going to start repeating myself if I try to say more. We each, you know, I make... I try as a cook to make a sincere effort. And I try to do something, you know, carefully, wholeheartedly, which, you know, appreciating the virtue of the ingredients. And I offer that. And then if somebody doesn't, that's not what somebody wants, I may, you know, try to get them something else. Or I may not, you know.

[77:08]

And then they may accept it, they may not. As somebody eating... Since I've done a lot of cooking, as somebody eating... It's not exactly for me just good manners to eat what is served. It's also because I can appreciate the kind of effort that went into it. I know something about that. And especially I know, you know, something like... I know the kind of person that Robert is. I know his kind of love for food and cuisine. And he was working with a couple... He had a couple of students. So he's teaching them something. And it just slipped his mind, you know. And I don't mind, you know. Some people say, oh, well, that was so rude and inconsiderate. That was really awful, you know. I don't see how you could go along with that. But to me, it's just... Because, you know, it's somebody I like, somebody I love. And so when they serve me food and then I eat it. And it's not coming from, oh gosh, this would be bad manners

[78:12]

if I said, you know, I'm not going to eat this. It's, you know, I'm not worried about manners in the thing. You know, it's coming from some other kind of reason that I would go along and eat it. Robert's the kind of person, you know... I heard this wonderful story. Speaking of, you know, manners and stuff, whatever. But the story is that there was this dairy farmer. And he has this whole little herd of cows. And each morning, he would go out and round them up and bring them into the barn to milk. So there was one particular cow that would tend to stop right in the doorway of the barn. The other cows couldn't get in. They were coming up behind him and the cow would just stay in the doorway. And the farmer would get really upset. And sometimes he'd either go over and start yanking on the cow, you know, try to get it in to the barn. Come on, you know, get in here, right? And of course, the cow would be very stubborn and just, you know, even more so, they'd stay right in the doorway. One day, his little son, who was about seven, was watching.

[79:18]

Saw this happening, went running up to the cow and yanked on the tail of the cow. And of course, it went right into the barn. Anyway, Robert is the kind of person who would, you know, tend to yank on the tail of the cow instead of struggling with it. And, you know, sometimes when you have a cow in the doorway, you go out the side door and you come around and yank on the tail. And it's kind of impulsive. So we don't know what we're going to do, you know? And I figure, like, instead of trying to worry about whether it's good manners or bad manners or something, but it's something that sincerely comes out of our being. You know, I had this wonderful conversation with Kadagiri Roshi once. This is an example of this. I was living down at Tassajara and I said to Kadagiri Roshi, you know, Kadagiri Roshi, I'm living down at Tassajara

[80:21]

and, you know, it's the summertime and I know you say, you know, we should practice like the ancients practiced. He said, that's right. And I said, well, you know, Tassajara in the summertime, we have a lot of visitors, a lot of guests, and there's a swimming pool and there's a lot of women who wear really small bathing suits, bikinis. And a lot of them are very attractive. Did the ancients practice like this? Did they practice where there were these, where this kind of flesh was around? He said, no, they didn't. He said, well, you know, if I'm going to be in some place where there's all these beautiful women around, how can I practice then as the ancients practiced? And he said, well, at least you should keep their example in mind. This is sort of, you know, begging the question,

[81:23]

but okay, I'll try to keep their example in mind. I'm still sort of wondering, like, practically speaking, what do I do? Okay, and then I said, so I said, well, you know, I have a girlfriend living here in San Francisco, but when I'm down at Tassajara, I'm attracted to the women who are, women who are actually there at Tassajara, especially often when they're wearing very small bathing suits. He said, that's just greed. It didn't seem like greed to me. It just seemed really kind of pure, just pure, a kind of pure, sincere kind of attraction. It didn't seem, I didn't have this feeling of, you know, sometimes like you get greedy. I mean, you're like, you know, like, oh, you know, some of this, some of that. I didn't have this sort of sense of, you know, this same volume, but to him, you know, oh, that's just greed. It was just immediate, like clear cut, obvious. And then so I said to him,

[82:23]

you know, I've heard it said that, that every moment is a moment to enter the heart of compassion. Or every moment, you know, every moment is a moment, avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion. Every moment, the Bodhisattva of compassion enters the truth. He said, well, if that's the case, you better get in there right away. Oh, okay. And then I said, well, I still don't, you know, understand, you know, what should I do? He said, you know, you can do whatever you want. But take responsibility for it. That was pretty good. It's not about being a Buddhist, but, you know, however, whatever you do, I mean, you live with it. You know, the stuff you do comes back to you. And, you know, you're, we're all acting

[83:28]

and doing what we do. And then we, and then other people say, that's greedy, that's bad manners, that's this, that's that. And we have to sort through all that. You know, what does it actually mean? In my spiritual life, what does it actually mean? And, you know, for me and where I'm at and where am I going and what do I want in my life? And, you know, can I use, make, you know, some use of what they're telling me about the way I'm acting, what I'm doing. And we give out various messages and the things we do, the things we say, whether we eat what we're served or we don't eat what we're served or what kind of effort we make to accommodate people. And, you know, we're all just, we're all just doing the best we can. And in our better moments, then we can appreciate that everybody, everybody's doing the best they can. And when we forgive people and, you know, and we have a large heartedness about it all. At our other moments, we feel, you know, very small, you know, we have a small and tight heartedness about it.

[84:29]

And we find a lot of fault going on. And, you know, our heart seems to have its own sort of rhythm that way. So we have to be, hopefully we can be a little patient and kind hearted with ourselves when we're not so patient and kind hearted. You know, Thich Nhat Hanh says that too. You know, Thich Nhat Hanh says like, you can practice smiling. And then of course people say, well, suppose I don't feel like smiling. He says, can't you smile at somebody who doesn't feel like smiling? And that's, you know, that's all we can do at some point. So that's about it. I'm going to stop talking. Let's, I mean, can we get, let's go. I mean, let's do something else. Okay, thanks. Do we get tea now or something? Oh, okay.

[85:27]

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