1993.08.01-serial.00272

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a good morning
i'm nobody sitting over here right friends are you comfortable there and i think it will have to talk this way
ave in
it feels could be here and happy to be i'm back i just arrived from mendocino and i'd like to bring you greetings from the pacific central district spirit camp there are seventy five unitarian universalist up they're having quite a nice time they've been meditating in the morning and chanting in the evening and eating good food or weekend
doing spiral dances and making dolls and necklaces so it's something you might wanna think about for next year and they all send their love in their greetings and wish you well so if an opening greeting
i wonder if there any people here visiting do we have visitors
and you are
and you're from
welcome i fear to fence and they are
hi matt hi fan
ah welcome glad you're here have a good vacation i'd take it you're vacationing are welcome
we usually take time out at this point in the worship service to share milestones does anyone have something they'd particularly to say or share and if you do bob will bring the microphone over to you

andrea carlton is here somewhere but i think she's still drink a cup of coffee she has recently come back or from mid a in colombia and is moving to sevastopol today aren't maybe this way that gem
i think that when she comes in you are there she is andrea was just introducing you as a returning book
come back andrea
any other milestones
yeah
my name's al pissed
our younger son day but will be leaving tomorrow with his girlfriend were going back to baltimore is entering johns hopkins medical school which is a great joy for us but we will miss him and that is not some nice curtis
thank you
linda

i first by just wanted they are at clovis really introduced herself are already i'm really happy she appeared with the children and i'm also a monica have you a maguire
i'd been reported several times to play for is that had been quite a while and she plays with santa rosa symphony and were real fortunate that she can be heard of thing
ah
am i hope you aren't disappointed that we didn't follow the order series
and so i'm gonna lie the challenged at this time
well

and i like to go ahead with our beginning congregational song singer of life it should be in your order service and i don't know the sun so i'm going to be following along with everyone else is linda plays it
she can play at once during the weekend join her

the
the
the
the

the
the
the

who breathes and enjoyable breath while hard at work knows riches that money does not bring yet we not our breath and work under stress what hunger is this that we feed
if we were to eat half as much meat drink half as much liquor than everyone could eat well worldwide
yet we feed the stress we build and overlooked the price we pay animals we pen and cage know fields for these four legates no earth to pick no dawn of day no dawdling in midday heat no rest of darkness
what kind of life is this
they to grow stress impulse to move and grays is caged all this pent up and meat we eat
yet we do the same to ourselves battling to succeed
may we let up
step in open space
free from our own imprisoning
making wise and proper use of structure
filling heart's desire

have another song that's listed for us to sing at this point all creatures of earth and sky

the
the
the
huh

the

the
huh

huh

the
huh

hello
the

well there are fewer people here since we started a few minutes ago and i heard someone mentioned that they might like to share milestone is with you joe
are you just
okay
ah if anyone wants to meet joe and during the coffee hour you can fill him in on the milestones he lived in if there's anyone here that feels the need of sharing at this time of and by did he that anyone else
hey i'd like to introduce our morning speaker ah i was thrilled to have the opportunity to preside over this morning service because i've been using this gentleman's cookbook for a number of years and i'd like to say that when i first opened it up i found it rather vague and difficult to use only because it was a different kind
cookbook and what it offered was a way of being with food and that was not comfortable for me at the time i wanted specific directions and this cookbook offered me and others the opportunity to really come into relationship with food so it to me with the revo
lucian just being in that kind of situation with my cooking and over the period of years i've begun to really respect with those first cookbooks for all about ed brown grew up in a unitarian household in san san francisco and marin county and i like it that he was exposed to some world religions and in religious educator
asian than having been my work for the past nine years he began studying zen buddhism and nineteen sixty five and was ordained as as an priest and nineteen seventy one an abiding interest in cooking and writing has led him to auto three cookbooks the tassajara bread book taught the her cooking and tassajara recipe book
he's also the co-author of the greens cookbook he was this the hedge cook at tassajara zen mountain center for two and a half years and worked at the greens restaurant for four and a half years and has been teaching san meditation since nineteen seventy five
this is quite a wonderful experience for me to ah standard next to a good teacher and so i might you this morning to open your heart to what we can share together and learn from a fellow traveler welcome at brown

the morning said some good chirping
i don't have microphones stuck in my face very often says
kind of a new experience i i guess i don't get to look over here while i tug
look straight ahead keep your head straight ahead than i can see therapy
i noticed on the i'm on these notes that i sent a bob admin originate there's a little note down the barman says i need directions at some point
i didn't realize that this was not you know just i thought at the time it was just like about like i knew i needed to know how to get to the church but now i see it as a much more profound spiritual meaning
and that it applies much more frequently in my life than just how to get to the church
i do need directions down again i and then that reminds me of a little note i got someone was letting me into another place and they left a key for me to get into this little center down in santa cruz rose during the cooking benefit and it says deer head here is a key for you it will unlock all
that you need that was another
as another deep spiritual inside here have enough
come along and unexpectedly
i'm going to em rash they know a friend of mine just turned fifty this year
i don't know what that seems like tear you know young or old
but i never you know and then i realized like i'm going to be turning fifty pretty soon do it look like then ah
anyway i'm in a year or so and and i never thought it would happen i never thought you that i'll be here this long
oh i mean you know there is all that stuff for the nuclear wars and no bombs and missiles and then they you know about nineteen sixty five i read that the oceans are only going to last ten years
somehow we're all still here on it notes pretty amazing isn't it
just that
am
anyway i'm you know fifty years and then i thought you know when i was younger
i built this talk by the way why it's rambling like this is because i explained in this talk is a personal odyssey be getting the personal part
and also the odyssey part right and the or instead of going here and there right okay excuse me you know it'll go somewhere eventually don't worry
but anyway just to fill you in a little bit i did grow up in the unitarian church and in and am i ran around the an internship and senses go for a while with the minister son harry reserves and we were the misfits you know he didn't actually attend the class and that sure
is big and vast and there's lots of places to run around and hide and two different things and then in marine county when i was ten and in a church church shimmer and reset the the women's the women's club or something you know and canfield
and if you remember that and but when i was ten alan watts came and talked there
and i got to go and i don't remember anything about it said except that he was just a very impressive speaker and then i used to watch him on tv once noel
anyway one thing led to another and instead of posting then
you know sitting meditation
i thought i was going to in a go someplace with my life right mean don't we all right and then i just ended up being kind of ordinary person
that's where goes on
i need some directions
the
and but anyway along the way you know i've i feel like i've learned a few things so i'll just share a few stories with you and you know see what you get out of it
ah
speaking of which you know there's a one of the stories i like and then there's number of them but one day there was a
someone was sitting meditation and his teacher came up to him and said what are you doing
and he said i'm sitting meditation vintages said but what are you doing he said well i'm not doing anything
i'm meditating and his teacher said what you're not doing anything you're wasting your time
and it didn't said if i was doing something i'd be wasting my time
and then the teacher said well what is it you're not doing
and then as didn't answer got himself off the hook baron he said them even a thousand and sages couldn't say
anyway most of us are up too much of anything and and hopefully we're not you know have too much you may think as most of the people who are up to step you know i get them in of themselves in the world kind of in trouble
you know with exploitation in various things but anyway i'm
what i wanted to talk about today
i thought them i noticed in my notes to bob i i quoted them as then one of the most famous things in the soldiers and school his mind itself as buddha
mind you know what mind is this is a famous go on and then what his mind
because you can't really grasp it what mind is
you know it's not something you can point out and say while the that's mind and that isn't because in some ways everything is mind
you know and then there's no way to describe mind you know apart from mind anyway but in this case with their mind itself is buddha
and this means you yourself are buddha and you know maybe boot not such a good term so we need to use like who cares where the or booed or none none of them makes a difference to you might be a little bit like saying
you yourself are are jesus or in oh god or something
which you can get to do in christianity and know because
ah you would be nuts not humble enough
but anyway the ideas that of mind itself as buddha's just that you know each of us
ah has a deep in a deep invaluable preciousness or each precious
oh mind is precious things of the world are precious itself and activity is precious
life itself is precious
and we tend to forget this and we also forget that x the you know it's not just it's it's the kind of truth that it's not true unless we actually do something to that indicates it
because if we're doing things in her life that
the don't acknowledge the press business and basic fundamental goodness of life
then it gets lost in life is good
this is something like for instance i forget this when i get on the freeway
i don't remember that life is good all i think about is you know how i want to get someplace
and then i don't i don't remember that i'm valuable process or and then but certainly the people in those other cars have no value or preciousness
and you know so we forget and anyway so what i'm gonna want to talk about today a few stories that kind of bring us back a little bit to sense of life is precious or there's some basic goodness
and in this certainly from a buddhist point of view and it's a little less obvious in christianity you know when buddhists point of view of fundamentally
ah in our life is goodness
you know sometimes we worried like if people get to know as they weren't like us because they'll find out our secrets that we've been trying to hide from herself in from other people and mostly you know when we try to hide things from other people we always do as end up hiding them from our
and other people know but they're not going to say anything like that they don't want to blow your cover for your when be applied
anyway
but anyway that said the sense of this is just that really when you get you know to a fundamental level of human nature if things are good it's basic goodness the nature of mind fundamental in that sense is compassionate and warm hearted so we don't have to worry about going deeper and her life because
we have this fundamental reassurance it's good
to understand it is nice
from my point of your otherwise you'd have to worry at all your life about whether you're doing the right thing or not and doing what you're told by somebody who's in a like god or somebody outside authority
right he worry about what they outside authority wants you to do than all your life is they're looking outside or the directions instead of like or why do you want to do with your life what do you feel like doing what is your deep in most wish in your life what is that
because and analyse would we spend our time except trying to realize that are deep fundamental wish
wouldn't it make sense is something to do with your life so i've tried to do this i haven't gotten anywhere but then where was there to get to
and i just keep doing this in know trying to find a realize some fundamental wish
and hence the stories and
i also one other sort of
oh you know thing to frame these stories with
ah would be
now a one time my zen teacher suzuki roshi
he wrote that book you know as and my beginner's mind some of you may be familiar with it
and but one time we're having a ceremony where we were reached come up in public and asking the question than he answers
one time somebody as to what you feel when i serve you food and he said i feel like you're giving me your most perfect glove
and it was true in and because when people served him they offered him food in that way and it's interesting that when you serve food in silence like quit during the meditation how becomes about the most intimate thing you can do with another human being there's something about it that is so deep
ah in when instead in silence like we do and you come up in silence and are preferred to somebody what we do is we bow to the person in the person best dressed woman they hold out there ball and you serve the food
it's very simple but hell of a sudden you notice a lot about somebody how they offer something and now freely it's given and how somebody take something in of their grabby about taking it or if they just that you give them whatever you're going to give them are they want more are they want something rather than something else and you notice very much about a person who
changing food
but anyway
the story the
i also want to mention is one time i asked him a question that i don't remember what i asked him and then he answered that question i got up to leave
we would walk up in front of him and then we would bow and ask a question and and after we had answered we walk away so i started to walk away
and then he said the most important thing
i got my attention
and i stopped walking away and waited to hear what he would say and he said the most important thing is to find out about what
he said what is the most important thing
and i was little disappointed you know
at that i was gonna get find out what is the most important thing but
he didn't really say anything except that it was important to find out the most important thing
but this is very similar to this you know what is our inmost desire or deep wish
how to live our like what to do
while we're alive
i so in that time i was the cook at tassajara this is in the late nineteen sixties you know at that time a lot of us we followed that i didn't even know i was part of the mass culture but you know turn on tune in drop out or something like that right and i was just doing it anyway
and then it turned out i was a part of a whole generation victor got lost their for a while
and you know some people without being lost and other people got found in whatever
but anyway i was cooking and when i first went to test her to cook for the monastery you know i got there in a lot of people have been living there a winter and the first thing they said me was you know we don't use any salt and are cooking i got me worried
oh no so when i said well why not and they said was bad for you
me no nobody can explain these things in all this stuff comes and goes on the hit list right may one that's a good now right now you get to wallets again and they reduce cholesterol and now you can have an extra glass of wine because it helps your heart only maybe if you have the extra glass of wine it you know they also say that that alcohol ruins the effect to the cancer the cancer preventing you know
qualities of the vegetables so it's always like you know like what what do we going at which who are we going to listen to him but in am so i got worried i went to suzuki roshi and i said you know what hm i can't you he said you're the cook
i think it's pretty normal to use salt
take it from a spiritual authority right i mean this
it's helps this makes a big difference you know if you get to do it on his know for spiritual reasons
anyway there is also a lot of people tend to her i don't know if you remember but and it's still kind of around in a zen acrobatics and you eat brown rice and the know while they have this scales of diets and of the number one number two i think they have a zero minus one two three to but then you go up to number seven die
at the number seven died is like one hundred percent brown rice and that's the goal the life goal is to attain the number seven diet
and and then you will be perfected being and you'll have peace in your heart and whatever
and so there was a large contingent in those days this was very popular and big and lot of people thought it was then just like they said but it's not really then it's it's very typical of
diet plans they like to give themselves some credibility so like why would you further dialogue dates here they say what's god's way or it's nature's way or it's more natural and so the macrobiotic say they started this and japan rights so then they said well it's in
that's good right you sell more diet plans that way anyway we were supposed to beat and according to these people lots of brown rice so we had to so i serve brown rice every day as the cook because one time for instance i served oatmeal with raisins and then three or four them come into the kitchen after breakfast they say your poison in us raisins you know
it's like oh my god
and your poison as how can you be serving dessert for breakfast is sort of thing okay well this is all and entered the introduction to my story here because i had done a lot of cooking of brown rice this is to explain his tier one should understand this and then we were having a meditation retreat for a week where we said twelve fourteen hours of meditation
cross they could sit and we sit for meals we sit for lectures get to walk ten minutes in between things and then after the males is a little break
am anyways it's pretty challenging i don't know if you've even tried to sit in a chair all day it's pretty hard you know let alone if you cross your legs
and so the ended his retreat at that while give people that retreat on sir potatoes
i hadn't cooked potatoes in years
in all this time we were cooking brown rice and then on the up on the off day we'd have like white rice
and potatoes were another thing that was on the acrobatic kit list nightshade family
i think potatoes are really great you know but anyway they didn't think much of potatoes side avoided serving them
cause i didn't know how to stand up to these people
i wonder surrendering their practice meditation and because i thought if you practice meditation and all this sort of interpersonal conflict goes away
he just practice meditation you don't have to talk to anybody
and then at some point you know the power of your personal spiritual aura surges goes out there and solves everything for you and everybody agrees with you
we'd started thought this sort of thing in the old days i think sometimes today people still think this about spirits or practice anyway i was i started make well let's have baked potatoes right so i made the big potatoes and i bake ovens fall baked potatoes i had like fifty eighty potatoes in the oven and i started them like an hour and a half for two hours ahead of the meal
time and as the time get closer and closer to the mealtime i realized the potatoes were not nearly ready
what i didn't understand is that you put a lot of potatoes and eleven it takes even more heat and more time than you might think because those you know like if you put one potato in the oven takes us the little heat to heat it up and bake it pretty soon if you start putting fifty potatoes in the oven it takes a lot more heat so yeah you really ought to turn it up also somebody recently said pro
pain when you cook with propane like that we do it as her it's not as hot as gas so you should turn the oven empire i didn't know
well in our tradition when the bell rings the food is served
there are other spiritual traditions this is era you might think like oh yeah that's really spiritual but there's other spirit traditions when the food is ready the bells rung i went to one retreat center and the meals would be like half hour late one hour late two hours late and when as well when we you know when it's rare
a the bell ring what you gotta problem about that
in on like can't you put up with this step what's it like are you some kind of a fanatic about you know about the time and what what's your problem so they believe in a sort of auspicious coincidence and i'm crazy wisdom that's their lineage arlene inches when
bell rings the food is served and this way you see that all the all the sort of worry and everything is this the cook cook gets that other people just get their food on come in the other tradition is that everybody shares that sort of anxiety oh gosh there's no food now
so many many people get to share and instead of feeling of where's the food and how come it's not ready at and in the zen tradition one person carries it for everybody so this is a a lot of kind of stress
and i got kind of worried when the potatoes weren't ready to serve yet but when the bell rang we had the potatoes and those serving things and we took them into the meditation hall and we serve the potatoes
people were delighted at the sight of potatoes and the smell of potatoes and then we serve little dishes of sour cream to pass down the row and and maybe some onions or something i don't remember maybe there's a mushroom soup in the second ball
so there was a lot of delight in the room momentarily than me and then everybody bowed and i was kind of watching my teacher suzuki roshi like what would he do
and you also have to understand that to eat we had the utensils we got were a spoon and chopsticks
his is traditionally eighteen implements for the japanese set of balls were using in the spoon and chopsticks so it took his spin and went to cut the potato and it kind of bounced up
and he had a slightly bemused look on his face
and then
but he wasn't he was in his own way rather perseverance and somewhat you know indomitable and zoo visitor or so and he had done a lot of work over the years with rocks
so he knew that a bit about like working with rocks and like if iraq that give you want a smaller i kind of a bigger rug you he took his chapstick any middle of hole in the potato and then pulled it out mid another hole and he made a whole series of holes across the potato and then took the spin inches that it off the
piece of potato
this is life in the monastery
this is spiritual
these things only happen in spiritual places i mean at home you just cook the potatoes longer and delayed dinner
i don't know but we all have our fiascos right where you really try hard and i was i'd made a really sincere effort to make something that will delight people in this case it would be pretty simple
through all that brown rice
i needed have been this fiasco and then by the end of the meal but people seem to take a pretty good naturedly after week of meditation like that
people laughed pretty easily
so they started snickering
and i was kind of disappointed i felt kind of badly that they hadn't been a success and done something really great it was really pleasing to people so what does this say about you know me basically though fundamentally
you know is it all right to like somebody who just made a fiasco or in new can you still appreciate someone who messes up like that
do you have to be perfect and everything you do to have some kind regard for yourself or for others and i was working at this time you on well what is the most important point
to make the perfect the world's best potatoes
i don't think so and in this case the most important point seem to be the fact that to me seem to be the fact that i had made us in effort i had fundamentally good intention
i'd done the best i could i didn't know better how to cook potatoes
and i had to let it go at that
and you know it can still rest easy and not worry about people not liking me anymore because i've messed up the potatoes
we worry about these things you know
it's pretty hard
it's pretty hard trying to go around being perfect i mean look at bill clinton right why people are so hard on him don't you think why
i mean obviously is not perfect
so the next meditation i got a next time we had a this week of meditation and that the end of it let's have potatoes and i thought well couldn't do that they baked potatoes it's have mashed potatoes
anyway i discovered something about mass because they didn't i cooked up all these potatoes and i allowed like one or no one and a half baked potatoes like per person which if it was baked potatoes
there had been been been great but it turned out when you mashed on the potatoes down it didn't look like very much
and sure enough like we get the serving the potatoes it you'd go down the road and then about half the people get it and then and there are like they want more
they're sitting here like fill the bowl up higher and the poor servers are trying to save some of the potatoes they know like down the road there's more people to serve
who the people getting the potatoes are not aware and are not wanting to notice that there's more people down there are other
but the servers notice and so the servers are trying to like just like just one little scoop and and the people eating like know more more
so some people really happy and and other peoples who a kind of didn't get much noise potatoes that night
am
anyway it turns out say so it was another fiasco and it turns out the big of the mashed potatoes is like scrambled eggs i mean most of us like we won't eat more than like if it was hard boiled egg or what do you eat may be one hard boiled egg or southpaw takes one or two right scrambled eggs people who eat three four six eggs it's amazing it doesn't look like much
ach
so suddenly people will eat three four eggs people people who would never eat three or four hard boiled eggs are soft boiled eggs when you could just see that it was that's an egg it gets all scrambled up and then doesn't look like much that's why restaurants have to serve like three eggs scrambled eggs three egg omelets and they get to just give you two eggs over easy
or soft boiled egg
so this is the same with potatoes i didn't know that
so people were pretty forgiving i guess
i'm still alive
these are my potato fiasco stories and it's interesting because of over the years i've cooked a lot of things that people say oh that was really great oh you've outdone yourself and all these various things and i always think that really the food your mouth is better than the food you can remember
don't you think
for the most part
m
but anyway it's a little bit like a friend of mine resent as to her and with a friend of theirs and and he said it was a really nice person that goes some basis because his friend his friend would say am
oh this dessert is the best it's the best tart i've ever had didn't have a sip of coffee this coffee is the best coffee i've ever had
that's everything was the best he'd ever had
that's isn't that wonderful and then someone knows that this dinner party and he said jim on my grandfather was just the opposite everything he had was the worst over
does this tell you something
you know how much of what we like and dislike is
it's his kind of arbitrary and what's good and what isn't good and what is pleasing and what isn't pleasing and what might make us happy and what might make us sad and a lot of it is kind of like where would you can hold out for
i mean what are you waiting for
today to is pretty nice day fact we have a sane and then every day's a good day well if every day's a good day what are you comparing it to
hey every day's a good day so then it's pretty nice day today the sun is shining in the trees there's a nice port portable toilet outside what market you want
ah but usually were sort of waiting like maybe it's gonna get better or like it's not good enough yet
so you know these under i didn't get enough mashed potatoes of people that want to get together to talk about building a common agenda coalition in sonoma county and trying to put this kind of a referendum on the ballot in sonoma county and adrian if you forget that information hatred eight
no no can give it to you
say so you know this i'm not i didn't get enough mashed potatoes but as other potatoes were too hard
so when were little more sort of open-hearted are forgiving
are noticing our basic wish fundamental intention what's really important we realized that it's pretty nice we have a lot to be thankful for
we tried pretty hard in our life to make things work to take care of herself and people who are close to us friends
pretty amazing
we go through a lot to do it
so wanted to tell you i'm anyway why so interesting the
those to be able to feel like that was probably know more important to me than all those successes
and if you wanna do anything we want whenever we want to do anything in our life we have to be willing to fail otherwise you can't do it why you don't even go in the kitchen you don't even start cooking you don't pick up a vegetable you don't pick up a pot because maybe it won't be good them somebody's not gonna like it it's not gonna be up to standard
so if you can fail than you can go out and do you can go out and cook you can garden garden you can go talk to somebody
you can do any number of things so as very important is very important to have some failures those were two that were important to me
and speaking of something like failures i want to tell your story my my teacher told us when he was a little boy and his father was a zen teacher might suzuki his father he grew up in japan of course
and his father sent him when he was about ten to study with another zen teacher the father's disciple so the father wasn't going to train his own sunday sense it the father sent his son to do disciple to study with so as a fairly young man he lived in a kind of minute
monastery or temple setting and they would do a little meditation and they would work and various things
in one of the things they used to do in the spring they would make pickles from white radish and daikon know the daikon big long white radish and the way this has done and we used to do this it doesn't her you'd take 'em salt and then rice bran which is japanese nuka but it's the brand from the rice and you mix the brand and the salt together and then you
the pit the radish in and then another layer of salt and nuka
and you layer up assholes or barrel or crock and overtime the salt goes into the radish and it was they should i'm not familiar exactly with the chemistry but you understand this the soccer's into the radish the water comes out of the radish
it's osmosis has do with osmotic pressure in the acquisition of the water and salt and and so then you have radish sitting in wet it's now a wet this pasty rice bran and salt and the radishes are salty and have a little flavor from the rice bran
but one year when they did as they hadn't been enough salt and a particular batch and they came out somewhat rotten
so what would you do well most of us like we throw them out right then i good i said i did it tells her well secures his teacher was more in this sort of strict and tradition of not to waste something
there is an you know them i guess the most famous story to me of that i remember about this is that there's a couple people who are walking to a monastery that's way up in the hills and they've they've heard this is a really great place in there walking up this creek bed by the side of this creek and they see a cabbage they floating down the creek and they go like
oh this is not some place to visit look at this there's a cabbage they flooding down the creek
and then a couple minutes later this there's this monk running down the creek where the stick trying to catch the cabbage the they say oh guess what go here and you after all it's it is the kind of place we heard about
so i'm suzuki roshi teacher serve these pickles anyway
well ten and eleven year old boys they don't they don't care about religious or spiritual significance teaching they just like they know those pickles aren't good so they didn't need him and the teacher would serve them
our each meal and they wouldn't
eat them
they would eat the other things the meal and and there is kind of this pressure on the on them to know eat pickles
and so finally as secure as she had little bit of a brainstorm like what you do if you if there's something that is distasteful new life he took the pickles out to the far end of the garden dug a hole and buried them nuts what you do write something distasteful you dig a hole you put dirt over it you put what you don't want to taste which is distasteful and you put it in there and you put dirt
over it and you hope the dirt was stay there and that was distasteful will stay there
right mrs very good unfortunately no things that were buried years ago ten even tend to come up later
if you're lucky if that's the idea that well it all work turn to compost and and nourish your life but some of these things seem to stay and little time capsules in a sort of they don't decompose they just sort of stay there any anyway these particular pickers we're back on the table the next meal

when that be embarrassing
and then
so there there the pickles back in his teacher didn't say anything about like i i saw you bury them are where did you do that poor or
there was nothing about that just they excused him but this because we're going to eat these pickles and we're not having anything else to eat until you read these pickles
this is the severe tradition
i'm so they ate the pickles
and civic theatre as she said he had a very profound experience
said it was the first time in his life he had what in zen is called experienced wouldn't send is called no thought
ah he said it was just chew and swallow chew and swallow
because if you had the slightest thought this is good this is bad this tastes apple this is yucky i hate this was this happened to me this is unfair i can't stand this if you thought any of those things you'd have to split the pickles out in a huge shout you would choke
you know they were
so was just chew and swallow and had to concentrate on that
the most of our most of a lot of our life we we always have some comment about what's happening it's good it's bad and we need to be able to do that we need to be able to decide which mushrooms deed which one's not too and we make discriminations but most that way over discriminate and then we tell herself how awful thing
these are and how they could be better than we make up all kinds of plans for how to make it better in the future
a better than it is now and not have to get any rotten pickles how will you do it and then we think carefully but had to not never have deal with any rotten because and isolate ourselves after a while
and pretty soon we won't take in anything of life really deeply because it might turn out it's rotten
it's a bad pick up and then because that's what happens in that doesn't happen in a marriage to i mean what if you get close to somebody might turn out there some rotten pickle in there someplace and then you discover your own rotten pickles do
at some point life is about chewing and swallowing
it's you know whether it's you yourself or or the person you live with are your children your parents it's just chew and swallow
and here we are folks
and we're not can be able to just meet people who are nice and always nice and we're not always were not always gonna be the perfect person sometimes we also will be a rotten pickle and will have to chew that will have to digest that fact
we'll have to digest know one another and our our r self the life we've been living
so it's pretty good work pretty good effort to make to meet these things
and taste things carefully and
and be able to digest that too
anyway i'm i am not like that when i'm cook cook but understand how in life we can avoid all the rotten pickles
it's inevitable that we have to chew and swallow chew and swallow life is painful and difficult that way and there are many ah
in our in the world we see it all around us in the world it's hard to go on isn't it bosnia and somalian everywhere
even here people who are homeless or hungry
and then in our own been in our own hearts there's
there's something in a rotten at times that we have to chew and swallow chew and swallow and it's how we grow
this is interesting isn't it
that's the diet it's nourishing is to be able to chew and swallow by
and it takes so a kind of concentration or a kind of fierceness to be able to do that
and our own life
but again to come back to like whoa what the important point
the important point is to grow to develop as a person to be able to meet things to be with things to be intimate with our own life to be intimate with one another
it's not so easy
and there's no way to do it without
meeting some rotten pickles along the way
so i'd like to tell you one more story this is about another radish story
hey i was at am i do cooking class sometimes at a friend's house in berkeley and she's a lawyer and he's an orthodontist but then on the side to have a cooking class at their house
this california after all right
we don't have to be typecast and our usual jobs i've a friend also a woman has a dentist and then on the side she reads tarot cards for people
hmm this is the way you we get to do here in never neverland
so i had been doing cooking classes there for some time and then they said well we want you to meet our friend robert robert reynolds is a another chef and i thought sure am
people are is wanted you to meet somebody like they think you're gonna like them or something
but i can go along with it to people like okay
ice time it turned out pretty nice robert at the time as during the restaurant in san francisco called le true become it's a little restaurant in still being run by some friends of his
pets and guerrero i think it's grow into the girl who are valencia
a fairly small restaurant and my daughter who lived in france for about nine years she's twenty now she was here visiting a she moved back here actually and so we went there for my birthday for dinner when time and she she lived in france or this tendency that the true and in french apparently means the whole
and she thought the truth the whole like why would you call a restaurant the whole and roberts said what's the whole in the wall restaurant
so anyway robert turned out to be rather enjoyable person this is an example of his humor and it it turned out we were going to go to his wrestling for dinner and then it turned out his wrist was closed that night it was a sunday so he invited us to his house for dinner my girlfriend patty and i and my friends from birth
the we're all going to meet and go over to roberts house
so i thought i would be polite and and try to be gracious i i kind of went through my limited wine cellar and i found two ten year old california wines to take to dinner
oh and i was a little reluctant to do this because when you take wine to dinner like this it doesn't mean you're gonna get to drink it
in they might have some other wine plan so i knew like well this is goodbye to these wines well we got over to his house and and we'd finally found it it was little part define that wasn't very good lighting on the street and there are very tiny numbers and the houses and it was cold and dark and then we got in
his house and then we went up the stairs and his houses you know like warm and there's light and as wonderful things on the wall pictures of places is visited venice and the different things california hillsides
very cheery kind of place and then i gave him the wines
and he kind of adjusted to the fact there was to wine sitting on the mantlepiece there were two twenty year old bordeaux's
so the oh well i've come to the right place for dinner

and i happily parted with my two ten year old california my
ah so that put me in pretty good spirits
looking forward to those wines and then we went and sat down in this little room off the kitchen where there was some low couches and then a a table in the middle there and on the table were radishes
clatters of radishes
and there were the ones that are red and round and they stared their little rootlet son and the little green top not at the other end
it looked very happy to be radishes
i don't know if you ever noticed it but a whole bunch of radishes sometimes like that can be they can really look happy
it's really something bountiful about radishes more so like then a bunch of carrots
carrots don't look quite as happy as radishes
he predicted a bunch of carrots they're just not as like happy they're they're in good spirits but they're not like kit radishes are like that they've been like those kids that have been out playing in the dirt and think they're really happy to have been pain in the dirt and then and then when you scrub the narrow read but yet they still feel like well he's been in the dirt is
are these are from the ground and there's something there round maybe it's the roundness and their read they're very like jewel like seventeen jewels are things that have you get out of the ground and then you polish them
get the dirt off and new polish them in their shiny and the kind of glow and glisten
and then there were some radishes that were red and and they had that they're more rectangular and then they have white tips white rule it and and so they were all washed
and they really looked nice and
and i was something about this whole platters the radishes i was just thrilled
and i'm not usually one to get thrilled so easily like it's more like me to think oh radishes sure

expect me to eat this rabbit food
the little bit like a president reagan reagan i never know where this a reagan reagan is it reagan
is there
reagan
but he said you've seen one redwood tree of cinema i mean abajo we will have radishes and mean new cares right i mean shouldn't you have something like new dramatic magnificent never before and here is a serving radishes
but i was so thrilled these radishes looks so wonderful and and with the radishes there was little dishes with sweet butter and militias of salt we also had sparkling french cider you know that sparkling print center and it's a little bit alcoholic and then it's it's not as sweet as just sparkling cider because a lot of this the sweetest turned into alcohol
so just a little sweet little alcoholic little bitter and the radishes are crunchy
and a little spicy mustard a your hot little bit were very refreshing with the sparkling cider and after little sparkling cider the radishes looked even more sparkling
and i had radishes with salt radishes with butter radishes with butter and salt and just plain radishes
and it was it turned out to be really delightful
and the more i thought about it the mart profound i found this because a lot of times and the more i respected right away i when i remember about that whole evening as the radishes i mean i know this twenty year old or does were good but they weren't as good as those radishes
and we had roast lamb and robert sort forgets when we come over to says the pettiness vegetarians primarily except for when we go to his house
that is it in red meat twice in the last eighteen years both times at robert says
if you're going to remind him next time invited to dinner and the last time we went there the second time we went we had five meat lasagna and followed by roast rabbit
this is hard for vegetarians but when we try to be polite
but when i remember most about that whole evening as as radishes and because and mostly as cooks we think as a cook or as a person and i like how are we going to impress somebody
and what do you have to do to impress somebody or delight somebody or please somebody what does it take
and a radish is good enough to do it or do you have to reno really do something with the radishes to show how skillful you are
and what a great cook your so to me here's somebody who's really developed as a cook enough to know that radishes if they're good radishes he went to the farmers' market to get these registers most radishes that those supermarket they are going and delight you like this it's one of the things know about shopping and although the time it's
supermarkets and big stores by that time the radishes have been jammed into boxes and the leaves are kind of bruised and welty and the radishes they don't have the kind of to light they're not capable of delighting us the way that they are if you get them out of your own yard or from the super the farmers market or something you know
it said and but here's a cook who could appreciate a radish
and this is very powerful to be able to appreciate the importance of a radish being a radish because it's also the same as you been you
if a radish is good enough had been a radish than year good enough to be you
and if a radish isn't good enough and you have to fix it up
to make it edible to make it enjoyable to make it worth inviting somebody over for dinner well you'd better do the same thing for you to write better get fixed up better make a better dish out of yourself better make a better presentation of yourself
so to me this is extremely vital to be able to appreciate anything and this case i'd take radishes can appreciate a radish and the wonderful virtues of a radish and how sincerely and joyfully a radishes a radish
and what you know wonderful pure intention of radish as
and how it offers itself to the world
without apology
gee i'm sorry i'm not an eggplant and know they don't do that
sorry i'm not a tomato they don't get involved in that kind of thing they're just purely joyfully deeply sincerely radish and each of us ah
we make this same kind of effort to be who we are
and when we see it and radishes we can see it on herself and we can see it in in one another
the same kind of virtue
even though
you know we can't be all things to everybody radishes vary distinctively crunchy and read and mustard he had juicy
ah and it's not it's not like an orange it's not like an apple radish has its own virtue
i so we say in sin
about the ocean he got in the ocean look around said the line and horizon it looks circular but the ocean isn't circular or square you just see it that way at one time the ocean has infinite characteristics and boundless virtue so this is also true of a radish
even though at any particular time you see some problem with yourself or with somebody else
we should also understand that each of us in each thing has boundless characteristics infinite virtue
our this way we can touch the heart of things and be touched by things and of allow life to nourish us and we can be someone who nourishes our self and other people

don't you think so
i think so
and so i appreciate your
efforts in this direction
her to nourish your own deep in most wish and request in your life and to find out what is the most important point
also and then we say when you are you said as then mostly we think when i get myself together i get better
i'm prove then i'll be i'll have arrived
but we say when you are use and is in so it's the same as when a radish radish
okay
so i'm gonna stop now again thank you very much

i invite you now to make a gift to this community

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thank you so much

food is not matter but the heart of matter the flesh and blood of rock and water earth and sin
food is not a commodity which price can capture but exacting effort carefully sustained the life work of countless beans
with this cooking i enter the heart of matter i enter the intimate activity which makes dreams materialize
thank you so much for being here this morning all of you and the wonderful music and at brown and i wish you good day
sep
i would like to upper class and word also i'd like you to participate in the closing word here to it works i hit the bell and then you take three breaths
and while you're taking the three riffs
oh you enjoy them
thank you can manage that

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really enjoyed it

pneumonia

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