I vowed to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. This is it for today, that was the talk. A nervous sip of tea, good morning, well today I wanted to, I decided that since it's a kid's day, beginning of the talk today, that I would perform for you and with you a very special rare ceremony.

[01:02]

This is a ceremony that's so rare that since we've been here at Green Gorge in 1971, this ceremony has only been performed once before here at Green Gorge, and I don't think it's ever been performed here in the Zen Do. So today though, we're going to do it. And the important thing about ceremonies, you know, on one hand there's the outer form of the ceremony, right, and on the other hand, to make a ceremony really work, it requires your willing participation. So I hope you all agree to make your best effort. Do you agree to make your best effort to do this ceremony? Oh good, okay. This is the ceremony of eating just one potato chip. Very few people have ever eaten one potato chip, you have, so you've done this ceremony

[02:14]

on your own already. Very good. Just one? And then you don't eat any more? Huh? One at a time, yeah, today it's just one, but we're not going to share one chip with everybody, but each of us gets one, however there's probably not enough chips for everybody, so some of you will have the advanced ceremony. Even though you may not have had the beginning ceremony of eating the one potato chip, you will have the ceremony of not eating the one potato chip, while others around you eat the one potato chip. I haven't yet determined, you know, I have a 14 ounce bag of potato chips, and I haven't ever counted the number of chips in a 14 ounce bag. But these are Lay's potato chips, and they've dared us to eat just one.

[03:19]

So today we're going to eat just one. And then, just one. Just one. So, because it's just one, you know, you really want to pay attention to it, and get the most you can out of it, because, you know, there's not another one. So if you don't get anything out of the first one, then that's it. You have to get as much as you can out of it, so savor the chip. You completely devote yourself to this chip. Now in a ceremony, you know, there's two parts. One is the outer form of the ceremony. So the outer form of this ceremony is that we're going to pass out chips, and you take just one, and you pass them on, and then when we all have one, we will have silence. And we'll have silence all along, actually, except for my talking and the sound that the chips make. Because part of this ceremony is that we eat the one potato chip in silence, you know,

[04:31]

we're not talking while we eat it. And we don't have, you know, a drink in the other hand, and we're not watching television or the movies, we're eating just one chip, and that is the most important thing in the whole universe while we do it. You don't believe that? This is why it's a ceremony. This is why it's a ceremony. Our young friend here said, come on. So this is why it's a ceremony, because we're suspending ordinary reality for the duration of the ceremony. So for the sake of the ceremony, it's the most important thing, eating this one potato chip. The most important thing in the whole universe is that you know what one potato chip tastes like. So let's pass out the chips now. Thank you. Well, we're going to put the chips in a few bowls and we'll pass them around.

[05:32]

Start with two or three bowls with the kids here. Normally for, you know, if you want to help the ceremony, you know, we can make a little bow, you know, beforehand, you know. Now we're about to open this bag of potato chips and receive the Dharma from these chips. The teaching of potato chips. Now in order to receive the teaching of the chips, you know, I don't know about you, but who do you, you know, if somebody's really interested in what you think or feel, we're already into like devotion to chips here. All eyes in the front here are on the chips. See if you can find a big one. It's okay to, you know, find a big one. Yeah, you have to hold it just for a little while now and not eat it right away.

[06:39]

That's part of the ceremony. This by the way was originally a raisin eating ceremony, but this is raising a raisin eating ceremony to a different level of reality, you know, to eat one potato chip. You can pass the bag. Now if you think about it, how much will this chip reveal to you, you know, for something to reveal itself to you, you have to be interested in it and you have to ask it, will you please tell me all your secrets? Because if you don't listen carefully and taste carefully and you're not interested,

[07:42]

it won't tell you any secrets. So we want to know the secret of the potato chip, what it has not told anybody else before. If you're, if you're devoted enough to this ceremony, it will reveal itself to you. Oh, thank you, I'd like one. So there are three things that I would like you to concentrate on for the sake of the ceremony. One is concentration that you devote your entire attention to the potato chip and you have to give your attention. If you don't give your attention, then you won't notice what a potato chip is. And when you don't notice what a potato chip is, pretty soon you don't notice who you are. Now you might think, I really love potato chips or potato chips make me happy, but we'll find out now just how good this potato chip is. And then one way, another thing you might think about is to practice mindfulness.

[08:46]

Mindfulness means, is like making a note that what you experience actually registers with you. You actually notice it. So what, and then, so if you can, you make little notes to yourself about what this chip is like, you know, greasy or salty or crunchy. See how much you can notice about it. Yes, I am crazy. Can we have a bell please? We're about to begin eating our potato chips. Some of you may not have gotten yours, but we're going to hit the bell now and we'll have a few moments of silence while we eat our potato chip. And you can look at it first and smell it and feel it and you know, before you eat it, go ahead, hit the bell at your own pace now. Was it good?

[10:40]

Salty, greasy and crunchy? And did you like it? Was it good? What's that? Oh, and fattening. Is that something you actually noticed? Did you notice your weight increasing while you ate it? Do you want to try it again? Those of you in the front row here? No, you don't want a second one? No. Some of you want a second one and then some of you don't. All right, well, we can give our young friends here a second one. See if it's as good as the first one or better.

[11:46]

So, Buddhism is about owning your own body and mind that you actually can have your experience and experience something really carefully and know it, know it for yourself. Know what something is in your own experience. So you don't have to believe the advertisements that say you can't eat just one. You actually can, but we're letting you have two, yeah, for now. There are different styles of eating these, I can see. Some people are licking the salt off first. Anyway, you can try this ceremony for yourself with any food. When you put something in your mouth, you can really taste it and you can, depending

[13:02]

on what it is, you will taste, you know, the heart of things. You'll taste your own heart in a potato chip or in an apple or in the food you eat. Well, that's not so edible, is it? Banana peels didn't qualify. Before, when I did this ceremony, would you like to hear what some other people said about their potato chip? Some people said when they ate a potato chip that carefully, there was nothing to it. There wasn't anything really worth tasting.

[14:03]

There wasn't, they said, an instant of salt and grease and then a tasteless pulp in my mouth. And I could see where if I was distracted and watching television or a movie, I would think there was something there and I'd keep eating it, eating more chips to try to have it. But when I give my full attention to the potato chip, I find it's not so satisfying. So sometime you might try, you know, something like an orange or an apple or maybe a banana peel. See how satisfying a banana peel is. I did learn something recently about banana peels, by the way. A friend of mine had had his hands severely burned many years ago, so he had trouble opening up a banana. And if you open a banana, everybody opens a banana from the stem end, you know, the big end. And when you open it that way, there's little strips of the peel that stay on the banana

[15:06]

and then he couldn't get those off. But he found out that if you open a banana from the bottom, they all just come off with the peel. Well, what do you think? Any other ideas about this ceremony? Anyway, I encourage you, and this is in some ways what we call in Buddhism of an empowerment ceremony. It's to empower you in your own life so that you believe your own experience is what's really important. You can own your own experience and you know for yourself, if you taste a potato chip carefully, you know for yourself what it is and whether you like it or don't like it, or you want

[16:07]

to eat them or don't eat them. And this way, you come into your own life and you know your own life. And it's interesting, but even little, even potato chips, you might think it's not so important to taste a potato chip or to taste your food or to notice much of anything until something catches your eye. But to receive things in this life is a practice. If you practice opening your heart to things and actually tasting things, being interested in things, then they will give you a great deal. Okay? Thank you. Okay. [...]

[17:15]

Okay. Okay. Thanks for coming. Now the older crowd moves in, I see. The last time I did this ceremony here at Gringotts, we had a piece of orange next and people really liked the orange. They found that an orange was amazingly delicious when you ate it and people found it much more satisfying than a potato chip eaten this way. Now somebody the other night when I tried this, somebody said, oh well, it's obvious potato chips are made to be eaten at a different speed and with a different kind of awareness.

[18:20]

So if you're going to eat potato chips, you just shift into that other speed and that other awareness and then they're really good. And after the oranges, we ate Oreo, not Oreo, but Hydrox cookies because you know Hydrox cookies are the kosher Oreos. Oreos up until recently still had pig fat and other stuff in them, you know, beef lard or something. So Hydrox were, for a while, they're the vegetarian Oreo. And most people at my last ceremony refused to finish their Hydrox cookie. It was that bad. With their taste buds, you know, attuned and their awareness actually present with what was in their mouth and just like put it down. So this is interesting.

[19:30]

I certainly believe that, you know, the important point in eating is to enjoy your food. People think, you know, we try to eat by, we have also so much confusion about eating because it gets mixed up with science, you know, and our culture and, you know, chips are fattening or something is nourishing or not nourishing and this has protein and this doesn't. And nowadays you should eat protein or you should have less protein or more protein or less fat or more fat. And if you try to eat according to the rules that somebody else says, then what does it say about you? It says, I don't have the capacity to find out what to eat. I better just do what I'm told because other people know better than I do what to eat. So I guess I better follow what they say.

[20:32]

And I'm really too stupid to figure this out for myself and to know in my own experience whether I like something or I don't like something or it's enjoyable or not enjoyable or how I feel after I eat it. And I don't have the capacity to notice that. So Buddhism says you have the capacity, we all have the capacity to give this much attention to our own experience and to know for ourself in our own experience, but we have to practice it. You know, our own experience won't reveal it to itself to us. So I was saying to the kids, you know, if your parents, if your parents aren't interested in you and they don't say, how was your day and what happened and how are you feeling and oh, you look a little sad today. And then do you go and reveal something to them? You don't tell them something unless somebody is really interested. I'd like to hear about your experience.

[21:36]

So if you say to your own experience, I'd like to hear about what your experience is. I am really interested. Pretty soon your experience, this is called, you know, being awake, being aware. You invite your experience to awaken you and you invite your experience to reveal itself to you. And then, you know, your experience can actually be something invaluable and a great help in knowing what to eat or not to eat or what you enjoy, what you don't enjoy, what makes you feel good, what doesn't make you feel good. And you know, in some ways this is very subversive. Don't you think? That you could eat just one potato chip, this is subversive. That you could have your own experience and know your own experience in your own heart

[22:43]

and clarify for yourself what's what, what's really true for you. This is to come into your own, Suzuki Roshi said, to own your own body and mind. You know, Nyogin Senzaki used to say, and before he died, he said, don't put another head over your head. You should eat potato chips. You shouldn't eat potato chips, they're fattening. Where did that head come from? That's a head over your head. Don't put another head over your head. And your head is already perfectly good, especially if it's willing to listen to your body. And especially if you invite your experience to reveal itself to you and to really tell you what's going on. And there's another aspect of this, which I think is important.

[24:08]

Because, you know, sometimes we get lost in the details of things, or the superficial or the surface level of our experience. With the potato chip, you know, it's quite different to eat a potato chip. You know, when you do that, usually you don't have the sense of, the same sense of this is something sacred, this is something holy. Usually, if you eat an apple the same way, with your intention to be open to and to receive the blessing and teaching of the apple, and to really taste it carefully and to know it in your own being, you'll sense something sacred. When we give something that much of our attention, and we're willing to receive something at our own core or in our heart, then the heart of what we're experiencing, you know, touches

[25:11]

our heart, and this is called sacred. This is what makes things sacred, so it's our practice or our activity, the way we live our life that makes something sacred or not. And when we don't pay attention to something then, and we don't give, we don't give something our attention, we're not interested, we don't care, we're not focused, we're not concentrated, we don't pay attention, we're not mindful, then we know right away, well, nothing's sacred, this is all stupid. Well, that's right. But when we practice or live like that, there's nothing sacred, nothing holy. So you know, this is why in Zen over and over again we say practice is realization, realization

[26:20]

is practice. When you practice receiving, being interested and attentive, you know, then you have a realization, you have awakening, you have what is sacred is right there, and you know it. So none of us can stay, you know, at this sacred place, and we also have to, you know, we won't always be able to stay right there, but we can come back there. When we taste something carefully or we listen to someone, we listen to our own body or to our own being, if you know your own thoughts and feelings, you know, and you allow things to touch you, you know, then we have some realization. So Suzuki Roshi at times would talk about soft mind, he said to practice Zen is to have

[27:26]

a soft mind, and you know, soft mind is associated with you're not in a particular hurry to get anywhere or to have a particular experience that you think would be much better than the one you're presently having. If you're in a, you know, trying to get somewhere else that's better, this is, you'll notice your mind is hard at that time, your body tends to be hard, and then that hardness also translates into fragile. You could break, that hardness could shatter, you could come apart. So in Buddhism we practice doing those things, you know, coming apart, and so sometimes, you know, people say, it just kills me to sit there on that Zafu. That's called, you know, getting softened up. And after a while you decide, oh, I guess I don't need to maintain this aggressive self

[28:35]

that's grasping for things and for a better experience, and I could just allow my experience as it is to touch me, and I could just be with who I am right here in the present. And that's such a relief, you know, that something, someone finally is willing to touch what's there in you. And so when you do that with yourself or somebody else, another indication of what is sacred is that there's a tremendous gratitude. A part of you that finally is heard or listened to or received by you yourself, your mind or your heart, you know, feels so grateful to be heard, to be acknowledged. And it just, sometimes it just pours out. So, if you notice, sometimes if you notice that your mind is hard, you know, there are

[29:41]

two strategies for this. One is, you know, if you decided, right, if you decided, I'm not going to have a hard mind anymore. Now, how hard or soft is that, right? So this kind of strategy, this is the kind of strategy that is only going to promote hard-mindedness. So, if, you know, so usually if you make an effort to cut off hard-mindedness, I'm not going to be hard-minded. This will just be perpetuating hard-minded. So to be soft-minded, you know, one way to do it will be to, you know, make your hard mind even harder. You know, when you're, in other words, you know, because cutting it off doesn't work,

[30:45]

then you can sort of indulge it a little bit with your soft-mindedness. Oh, you're angry, are you? Are you really angry? How angry are you? And then you ask something to show you, and it intensifies it. And then it's a way you finally acknowledge it and notice it and receive it. And then it washes through you and you let go of it. So, the practice of Buddhism is soft-minded rather than hard-minded, and usually we set up a mind that I'm going to protect and have and keep because it's the right one and it's the good one and it's the holy one and it's the spiritual one. It's calm, it's compassionate, it's kind, it's attentive, and I'm going to keep it. And then you will automatically, of course, lose it because you've set it up. You've set yourself up to lose it by, you know, holding on to it. And that holding on to it is making it hard, your mind and body hard.

[31:47]

So Buddhism is to be soft-minded, to practice is to be soft-minded and to receive. And then in soft-mindedness, instead of, you know, the soft-minded things can wash through. Your experience washes through rather than, it comes up against your hard mind. With the soft-mindedness, it goes through. So you're not keeping any particular mind. Your heart isn't set on any particular mind. We have all those expressions. If your heart is set on a particular mind or body or experience, you'll be hard. And then, of course, later your heart will be broken because we set it up that way. And when you allow your heart to be soft and your body and mind to be soft, then you can receive things and things will touch you and you'll feel nourished, you know, by your experience.

[32:50]

Nourished and sustained by your experience. And you will have, you know, resources to draw on in your life. You won't feel, sometimes if you're hard-minded, you won't feel like, oh, I have no resources to draw on. Well, they're all right there. Where would they have gone? So when we're soft-minded, the resources, it turns out, are right at hand. And Dogen says, your treasure house will open up itself and you will spend freely. So you know your treasure house because if you listen to your experience carefully, you invite your experience to reveal itself to you. You taste what's in your mouth, you experience what's in your eyes. And when something, when you allow something to touch your core, you'll notice something sacred. The sacred is there, gratitude is there, appreciation is there, and your resources are there.

[33:59]

Your resources include creativity, you know, inventiveness, your emotions, your strength, your perseverance, your endurance, and there's joy and playfulness there too. And also, in this kind of mind or in this kind of way, you know, we keep thinking that we need to know the direction and we need to give ourself the direction because we don't, you know, and if you think I have to have the direction, I have to have the right instruction and then I'll just impose it on myself. How well is that going to work, right? It's a kind of coercion we do and we think, well, I just need a better teach and I need a better instruction to impose on myself and then things will work out. So this doesn't work, does it? So you know, Buddhism is suggesting rather than thinking you have some instruction, you

[35:07]

know, that you impose, you could, you know, this again, I'm just saying the same thing but slightly different metaphor here. You could invite your body, invite your mind to reveal to you and to find out, you know, find its own way. So your hands, for instance, you don't need to tell them what to do and what not to do. You ask your hands to be hands and to do what hands really love to do and to find out for themselves what is their path, what is their way. And not just your hands but your feet, you know, your stomach, your elbows, your knees, your whole being can find its own way and you don't have to tell it, eat this, don't eat that, that's fattening. Because the more you tell yourself, you know, what to do and you aren't willing to find

[36:09]

out how to trust your own being, then you're disempowered. This is how we disempower ourselves. So to come into your own power and the power of your life and the vitality and well-being of a human being and to realize you're yourself, you know, this is to be interested and attentive in your own being and to invite it to reveal itself to you. So there's two aspects to this and one is presence, you know, that you're willing to be present with your experience and the second is vulnerability, you have to be vulnerable. Vulnerable is another way of saying, you know, soft-minded. And this is the opposite of, or you know, different than trying to control things. It's very tempting to control things and, you know, it comes up again and again in Zen

[37:14]

just like it does in our own lives. The story I think of now is just the simple one of the monk asking the master, you know, when the great wave washes over, the wave of 10,000 things, you know, the world, the everyday world overwhelms me and washes over like a big wave, what should I do? And the Zen master said, don't try to control them, you know, don't try to master them. If you try, you're trying to control them, then you'll have a hard mind and you won't be able to listen, you won't be vulnerable enough to receive, you won't be receptive and open and actually sensing, you'll only be trying to make it be the way you want it to be. And then you will be holding on for dear life, hoping that that's the way it is. And then how settled are you, you know, then it's hard to be settled and at home in your life and in your being. So you can settle into your own being and learn how to trust your being and ask your

[38:17]

own being to find its way. Ask your heart to find its way and your body to find its way and learn how to trust your hands and learn how to trust your experience. And you do this by receiving and being present with it, okay? I'll tell you, to end my talk, I'll give you my favorite Rilke sonnet about eating an apple. You can tell in this poem somebody ate an apple really carefully. A round apple, smooth banana, melon, gooseberry, peach. How all this affluence speaks death and life in the mouth. I sense, observe it in a child's transparent features while she tastes. This comes from far away. What miracle is happening in your mouth while you eat?

[39:20]

Instead of words, discoveries flow out, astonished to be free. Dare to say what apple truly is. The sweetness that feels thick, dark, dense at first, then exquisitely lifted in your taste grows clarified, awake, luminous, double-meaninged, sunny, earthy, real, oh, knowledge, pleasure, joy, inexhaustible. Thank you very much, and I appreciate your being here and your effort to settle in to your life and to trust your own being. May I sit in front of all you people? What do you want to know? What? Hi. You have a question, okay.

[40:21]

It's kind of long. I was asked if I'd repeat the question so it gets on the tape recorder. So, you're concerned about animals and karma and ... Well, I guess I don't have a simple answer either, but when you ask the question anyway, I feel my immediate kind of feeling is, boy, we really are all right in the middle of this, aren't we? It's kind of like the sonnet, even if you eat an apple, right away you taste death and

[41:23]

life in the mouth. How all this affluence, all this affluence is death and life, and we're already, we're all in the middle of death and life, and I don't think there's any escaping it, and being pure in that sense, and free from all karma or consequence. So, I feel more like, you know, I think it helps to own that then, to have it be yours and to know, and then, you know, at some point, there's also some care about what we do, but all the time, we just keep trying to decide, you know, our behavior, and what's appropriate

[42:24]

and what's not, and to know that for ourselves, because each of us has, we do have limits and we do have wishes, but anyway, I don't have the feeling like it's possible to exempt ourselves from life on this plane. It's pretty amazing. There's a lot going on in the world, and we're all part of it. Somebody the other day said, you know, it's been 2,000 years since Jesus, so yeah, you've got, you know, whatever it is, three million cells, atoms, you know, that were in Jesus, and, you know, that also means you've got some million atoms that were in Hitler. I mean, they go all over, and it's all, so we're all part of this mess, or this blessing,

[43:28]

or, you know, we give it different names at different times. So I don't have the, you know, a simple answer of what to do or not to do. Yes? Hi. Well, usually there's something, you know, you might ask, and I don't know, maybe you've done this too. Did you hear the question? He's having trouble digesting, and he's asking his body what it likes, and he's doing this, what I was talking about in the lecture, and still not as comfortable as he might be, might wish to be. So, usually it helps to ask yourself or to say, you know, why is this happening? You know, what's your best guess as to what's going on, what this is about? Something like that. And even though you don't know, to let yourself guess, yeah, good. And then, sometimes it, anyway, the other, you know, sort of area is your, you know,

[44:56]

Well, there's a couple other things. One is, sometimes you may need to, you may find it useful to, if you can, you find some activity you can do with other people which is supportive for you, and helps, and may give you some access to what's going on. And so, for some people that might be meditation, and for other people it might be, you know, some other kind of activity. So that's something maybe you find or not. I have, if you talk to me afterwards, I have a suggestion for you as far as that goes. Another area is just generally that when things are going on in our life, probably one of the key areas is what I mentioned earlier, vulnerability. And vulnerability also has to do with kind of your open-heartedness or your heart. So, if you feel, you know, both in front of your chest, and you feel the back of your chest, you put your awareness in the back of your chest, and sometimes if somebody has their

[46:00]

hand there, you can notice whether the back of your chest, the back of your heart is open or closed, and see if you can soften the back of your heart, because the back of your heart is what connects you with people, and connects you with the world, the back of your heart and then the sides of your body. Because it's awfully hard if you feel like I can't get away from the sides of the body. No, I can't. It's experience. I went through a whole session or half a session one time, I couldn't get my elbows away from the sides of my body. These are your flanks. You know, and so we experience the sides of the body as the flanks, so, you know, you don't want to, it's a part, you know, we tend not to want to expose our flanks. So you tend to keep the arms closed. So when people, it's one of the reasons why people have trouble bowing.

[47:02]

You know, the form for a bow is to have your hands atop of your fingers by your nose. And if you put your hands there, your arms will come away from the sides of your body. Then you will feel kind of exposed, like who's watching? Is this okay to be doing this? This seems kind of weird. And it's hard to do it like this. So actually the forms in Zen practice have these little, you know, clues. So if you can do this like this, then you will expose this and you end up, because when you expose this, I mean, one side of it is being exposed, but the other side of it is being connected. And I don't know why it's there, but that's where it is. And the back of the heart is also way like that. The back of the heart, when I come around the Zen Do, you know, I don't know if you can see it, but this is the front of the body and this is the back of the body.

[48:04]

There's a lot of people who have, that's the part of the body where on the back, people bend forward a little bit, right at the back of the heart. So that's closing the front of the heart and closing the back of the heart. So you can work on that. It's hard to work on that just by, you know, it's not usually helpful to work on it just by going like, I'm going to sit up straight. You have to have some more subtle way to work on that back. So if you allow the breath, if you allow this area to soften, do you know that poem by Mary Oliver? She says, the one, it's pretty well known among meditation groups, Vipassana groups like this one. You don't have to walk on your knees a hundred miles across the desert repenting. You don't have to be good. You don't have to walk on your knees a hundred miles across the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

[49:08]

So you can also let this part of your body love what it loves, which is to, which is to soften and to expand and open like a blossom, at least now and again, like a flower or something. And so if you let the breath come into the back of that area, into that area, you know, and if you let the breath up into this area, the breath, and if you allow the breath to move you and you give your body over to the breath and let your body receive the breath, then pretty soon, you know, that moves you. And then pretty soon also you might start crying because that's why you did that. It's why you shut off the heart, because something's there. Why do we have human bodies? I don't know. Each piece of food in the mouth, leap off the precipice into shunyata, emptiness. Boy, you'd never know what's going to happen, do you?

[50:12]

And if you don't decide ahead of time what's going to happen, you know, there you are. If you decide ahead of time, then you can pretty much limit the experience to that. Don't be anything else but this. Yes? Hi, Linda. There's another hand behind you, too. Oh, were you raising your hand? Hi. Linda. Soft. The soft animal of your body, love what it loves. The soft. Yeah, she got that, too, didn't she? Soft animal of your body, love what it loves. Like, soft mind. Yeah, wow. What a connection. Hi. So, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what's going on in your

[51:15]

Yes, but there's a price. And you're noticing that there's a price. And it actually then takes some time to reorient, you know, the decisions that you're making and everything else, for everything else to reorient to that as a priority. That would, in fact, take some time and would not be something, you know, that you could do immediately and overnight and instantly. But letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves and letting that vibration be more central, then other things have to orient around that. And so there would be a cost over time, you know, perhaps. But the cost actually may be a relief, too. So, anyway, this is not something you would be able to figure out ahead of time and know

[52:20]

what all those fees and prices would be. So this is, again, something where you, there's an aspect of trust that things could work out. So anyway, it's sort of, it's one of those things, I think, when we allow, whether we say, you know, the soft animal of our body love what it loves, or we allow ourselves to acknowledge our inmost wish. In Zen and Suzuki Rishi used to say, the important, you should know your inmost wish, your inmost desire. And if you acknowledge it, then it has a power to realize itself, which is different than, you know, not acknowledging it because the price would be too high.

[53:22]

And so you don't try to line everything up with it and make it all happen, but you just keep acknowledging it and let the work unfold over time. And most of us would rather not acknowledge it because we're afraid of all the consequences and the changes it would mean in our life. And we're not so willing to have those changes unfold. So this is to have some, to acknowledge your inmost wish, or letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves, is to allow this to have some power in your life, your wish to have this power, because you give it some power to create or induce change in your life. Is it not? I think so anyway. Yes. I will give you a suggestion. This is a question about grief and how fragmented it can be.

[54:27]

Over time, well, when you have something like grief, and this has to do partly with language, but it's also partly with the way you understand and you look at things. And what you, so the activity is what you call grief, see if you can find a whole wide range of language to describe that. So with grief, there's often elements of sadness, sorrow, anger, rage, resentment, you know, all kinds of a whole range. So for yourself anyway, you don't have to, you know, tell me, but for yourself as you're feeling grief, see if you can enumerate or list, you know, all the factors that might be present there, because grief is a complex of things and it's not just grief. And that will help it, that will help you to over time release it. And the second simple thing is, do you see the way your thumbs are? Your thumb bends way back.

[55:30]

Practice bending it this way, and that will help you with your grief. And your thumb bends, if your thumb, her thumb goes way, way back. So if you're having trouble with grief, you bend your thumb, practice bending your thumb forward. But also look into it and see if you can identify other aspects, or what all the elements are of grief. So you don't just, the problem with once we have a label like grief, and the same, you know, depression is the same thing, oh I'm so depressed. Well depression and grief are both like a lid. So then it's like a cover, then once we have that label on there, we don't look anymore to see what that is, oh that's just grief, oh I'm just so depressed. If you start picking up the lid, saying well what, what, what else can I call this? You know, then maybe there's anxiety, and there's fear, and you know, there's passion. With depression there's any number of things, with grief there's any number of things.

[56:37]

So you want to have some capacity to touch those other things, and not just call it one thing and just end, and then be stuck with this immense thing which is actually a whole lot of little things. Yes? Not this, this. Yes? That was a question about, she's noticing not only having cut off feelings in her life, but also cut off sensation. The taste of things, or what things look like, and so on. And then, you know, where do you go from there? You know, I think a lot of it is just this kind of basic decision, or what your decision is, or your intention, your wish. And you know, sometimes people say in meditation, people are sleeping in meditation, they say

[57:42]

how do I wake up? Well, first of all, do you want to wake up? Because I can give you all kinds of suggestions about waking up, and if you don't want to wake up, you're going to just use my suggestions to put yourself to sleep. I was with someone the other day who's very good at this, and so whatever I say, she could use it to support herself in continuing to do what she does. So, this is what therapists do too, and what we mostly do with our friends and everything, you know. So, it's only when we're up against the wall, or somebody's a little difficult with us, that you know, something can change. Interesting isn't it? Anyway, it sounds like you must be doing a lot of thinking and intuition, that's what's opposite those in the Jungian model. But if your intention or your wish, you know, if it's in your heart, you know, you look

[58:46]

in your heart and you have a choice to turn towards something or turn away from something, you know, to turn towards your sensation or to turn away from it. And over and over again, we have this choice, and so then you choose, you know. Buddhism emphasizes the point is that these decisions that we made, you know, sometimes long ago, I'm not going to pay any attention to that, I'm out of here, I don't want to have anything to do with that, that we're still making those choices, and that actually we have the same choices in the present. So the point is to notice the place of choice in your life, and then you know, when that choice is there, and that you're actually making that choice. And the more you catch yourself making that choice, you can make the choice that you choose to make. And the more you ... part of the problem is, you know, as soon as you're ... and part of the reason why we're not aware that we could make the choice is once you're aware you could make the choice, now you're responsible and you have ... uh-oh, oh my God, this wasn't

[59:46]

just all happening to me, I've been doing this, oh my gosh. Then there's a certain amount of forgiveness there too, you have to forgive yourself for having stuck to your old choice for so long. So see what's in your heart to do, and then, you know, and notice where you make the choice to turn towards something in a way, and choose to turn towards things. Turn towards the sensation and the feeling. Another way to say that is to turn towards what's scary. And that's why we call it, you know, we say sometimes, you know, the fluid of the heart is courage. To turn towards something, to open your heart, to know what's in your heart, this is courage. It's also, uh, what in, you know, in my experience in Zen, what I've learned is that, you know, Zen and Buddhism is fierceness.

[60:47]

You know, you don't just, when you turn towards something that's scary, you don't just go sort of like, you know, you have to have some presence to do that. Okay, I'm here, who are you? So you, you know, this is not so easy, but it's something you can do. You decide to do it, you'll do it. Yes? First one really fast so you can get the second one. Yeah, yeah, to grapple with greed is the thing to do is come into your senses.

[61:50]

Literally, the way we were just talking about it, to experience what's in your mouth or, you know, what's in your eyes and to, you know, not to be rushing on to the next thing. So the way to do that is to be present with what is. And it turns out, you know, and it turns out that it's pretty nice. You don't have to rush on to something else. And the other element of that is that don't lose your presence when you have greed. You know, sometimes once we're into greed, then okay, this is the signal to be absent. You know, because that's part of why we do it, so we don't have to be here. That's why, that's part of the function of greed is a way not to be here. A way out of here, because being here is as painful as it is. And, you know, I have all these, you know, conflicting emotions and desires and wishes

[62:59]

and things don't seem to work out the way I want them to and I'm not good enough and I'm not perfect enough and I'm not pleasing these other people and I'm getting abandoned and I'm abandoning people and it's painful here, so let's go somewhere else. And greed is one way to go somewhere else, you know, to go away. So coming to your senses helps, but also the part of, again, you know, you don't try to just attack greed directly, you can fatten it. You fatten greed by making it into a ceremony, you know, like that's a potato chip ceremony. And even if you, so when you're being greedy, you know, you want to, like in some way, really go for it and say, this is greed, this is it. Oh boy, I mean, like you want to, because if you're trying, like sort of like, well, I don't really want to have greed, I don't really want to acknowledge that I have any greed in me,

[64:01]

then, so if you're kind of secret about it, that I have greed. No, you want to be honest about it. This is another way to say it, you know. Be honest that when the greed is there, be honest about it and don't hide it and then you don't have the shame and then you don't have all the more reason to go away. Because I've been keeping this stuff hidden and it's so shameful and so now I have all the more reason to, you know, have greed, etc. So to get out of that, you acknowledge, in some sense, this is greed. Wow, this is what greed feels like. And you own it. So another way we say, you know, in Zen, own your own body and mind. You own it, it's yours. Once it's yours, you take responsibility for it. It's not just something like, oh, I was overcome with greed. That's not me. I can't help myself. I'm helpless. I'm a victim of greed. It's bigger than I am. So you take the opposite approach, you see.

[65:06]

Oh, this is greed. This is mine. So in Buddhism, you know, we have both approaches, actually. Traditionally, it said, you know, greed is not me. I am not this. This is not me. I am not this. I am not greed. Greed is not me. This is not mine, etc. But you can also take the approach. So that's sometimes helpful. But for most of us, it seems the more helpful strategy is own it. It's yours. Wow, this is greed. I've got it. And it's actually, at some point, a lot of fun. You know, it's very enjoyable to own your own being that way. And so you make yourself larger instead of making yourself smaller. Just a moment. You had your hand up. You took responsibility for your food and what you're eating, and it helped you come to your senses. And it helped you to own your own experience and empower yourself to pay attention to all of that.

[66:10]

So that all sounds good. I think right now I feel pretty comfortable. But I was sort of thinking about that time when I kind of wanted someone to tell me what to eat. And, you know, just tell me and then I'll just eat it and I'll be fine. And it took me a while to relax. Yeah, sometimes in difficult situations, she was diagnosed with cancer. We wish there was somebody who could just tell us exactly what to do. And we could just do that and everything would be OK. This is why I wrote a cookbook one time with no recipes. And recently I have more compassion for people who are using cookbooks. And so I took out the recipes that didn't work in the Tassara Bread book.

[67:12]

Originally I thought people shouldn't just blindly trust cookbooks like that. And so there were some recipes that didn't work. That reminds me, you know, I guess... I have here a quote, you know, speaking of cookbooks. Somebody sent me this quote from Thailand. I mean, the person who lives in Thailand, the quote is from Joseph Conrad. So, you know, it's about cookbooks. My cookbook wouldn't exactly qualify, you know, since I had the recipes in it that didn't work. But it says, a cookbook is the only product of the human mind altogether above suspicion. Every piece of prose may be dismissed and even suspected. But the purpose of a cookery book is unmistakable. Its object can conceivably be no other than to increase the happiness of humankind.

[68:20]

We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages. But a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen. There you have it. So my book, my new book, is only half dependable because, you know, it's half prose and half cookery. So be suspicious. Somebody over here? Yeah. You know, she was the... been at Zen Center since the early 70s. And she does a kind of hands-on massage healing work. She was chairman of the board a couple of years ago. Anyway, Darlene said that was one of her most important teachings in all of her years at Zen Center. Because she used to be so careful about taking the small tea treat and, you know, doing things that everybody asked her. And finally, Bhikkhu Rishi said, gave her this practice. You have to get to the front of the line and take the biggest tea treat.

[69:23]

And if anybody asks you to do anything, tell them no. Well, she was doing it. She was doing it. She was doing the other thing, thinking that that made her better and, you know, and it was an improvement. And now she was spiritual. But she was actually disowning all of, you know, all of that, the whole aspect of being greed and selfish. But, you know, greedy isn't just greedy. I mean, and selfish isn't just selfish. You know, there's... So, when we own it, we can extract essence from it and let go of waste. You know, we digest it, actually. And so digestion sometimes takes some time to digest something and to extract what is the essence there. But in order to digest it, we have to actually own it or, you know, have it in our life, allow it in our life. Yes, I'm saying... You mean you're saying no? Yes, I'm saying no. Oh, but that's so selfish of you.

[70:29]

Oh, yes. Well, that's selfish of me. But maybe it's not just selfish of me. That's just something somebody else says. You know, it's also I'm taking care of and acknowledging my limitations as a human being at this time in my life. So, in order... You know, we have to do... We try things on... We do things from, you know, various places and we have to take both sides that way to find out what's what over time. And taking care of and acknowledging your own limitations isn't just being selfish. It's also taking care of the other person. Because if you don't... If you don't... If you don't say no to somebody, then you're not honoring them. You know, you're dishonoring them. You're not honoring them with who you are and your presence. And what it is to be a human being and be alive in this world. So, oftentimes, you know, in a certain sense, to say no and have the capacity to say no is a tremendous gift to somebody.

[71:32]

And they don't always experience it as a gift, but... You know, over time... You know, over time, then it can be experienced as a gift. And you can see that being selfish isn't just being selfish, you know. What somebody else calls selfish or what you call selfish. And being greedy... You know, being greedy isn't just being greedy. It's also that the real, you know, passion of your life is there. And it's looking for... The passion of our life, you know, longs for something to do. Some activity. And when it doesn't find... You know, when our life is such that it feels like there's no place in our life for the passion of our activity... You know, the passion to express itself. It will find something. Then we call it greed. So if you just cut off the greed, you're also cutting off the passion and love in your life.

[72:39]

And in some ways, when you honor it, then in some point you find... You know, the love and the passion that's there that's so important. You know, which is the real root and vitality of our life. Is available to us. And we sort it out. That's the essence that then is available to us and doesn't just go into greed. It's there in other ways. So, you know, there's various metaphors. In Zen, the metaphor sometimes, often is... One metaphor is the... Our life is like the lotus. So your roots are down in the mud and then there's a lotus blossom up above the water. And if you think you can have a lotus blossom without the mud... You know, this doesn't work like that. And if you cut off the passion, then pretty soon you have a dead lotus. Yes? First of all, thank you for your talk. It was great.

[73:42]

I'm a little afraid to ask this question, but... Go for it. Thanks. Well, I don't have a clear or strong feeling what this is about for you. Go for it. Is there anything you think it's about? Well, the first thing that comes up is like, I wasn't good enough. I didn't do well enough. You didn't do well enough to get the thesis. And to get the PhD. Like, to get the University of California to hand me the thesis paper is not what I did well enough for. To actually do what seems to be the honor of academia and science. To do what really means it's good enough. I can sort of tell when I was wasting time avoiding the work. And it doesn't matter what they do now, there is time that I wasted.

[74:45]

There is a story about Thomas Edison where his assistants came to him and said, we've tried a thousand things with this light bulb, none of them work, we're wasting our time. And he said, nonsense, we've found a thousand things that don't work. Laughter. So, is this part of not continuing with this is that you don't want to waste any more time? Because that's good. At some point, if it's clearly a waste of time, then cut your losses. But you're not sure it's a waste of time, I guess. Or you'd cut your losses. You want to throw bad money after good, or good money after bad? It's more like what? I hope somebody else gave them the idea so they didn't want to do TV. Like, you know, I think it could be any project, but like I had this project, I said I was going to do this, and then I didn't really do it full out on doing it.

[75:53]

So I know that when I was doing it. And now it's like, in order to really do it, I've got to go back and spend another couple more years. It's like, how old am I going to be when I'm done? Very good. If you don't do it. Well, either way, it's true. But it's like this fear of going and sitting for hours and hours and doing it by myself. It scares me. Yeah, well, right. So here you are. Yeah, so you could, again, it's not up to me to figure this out for you, I'm afraid. But as somebody was saying, it would be nice if somebody could tell me. Anyway, I'm not your man in that case. Well, one thing I want to mention to you is, up until recently, I haven't been successful or finished anything in my life. So I didn't graduate from college, I was a college dropout.

[76:57]

I never went to cooking school. I never graduated from that. And then I became a Zen priest and it took me more than 30 years to finish that. I mean, so-called finish it where I had Dharma transmission. That was last September. And so I don't know what happened. And then I studied Chinese medicine for a year or so. I was apprenticed in an acupuncture clinic. And so I didn't finish that. I dropped that. I was a Zen center administrator for a number of years. I dropped that. I moved out of Zen center. You know, I keep dropping all kinds of stuff. I'm not sure I want to be a Zen priest anymore as far as that goes. I mean, who cares? So, personally, I'm not someone who's enamored with whether somebody has a PhD or not.

[78:07]

So I don't know how important that is in worldly terms. So I can't, I'm not in a very good position to say, you know, go for it as far as that goes. But, and I just bought a house. Patty and I bought a house in this last year. And that was pretty good. You know, we're both around 50, either side of 50. And, you know, that's pretty good for two kids who were, you know, never going to have a mortgage. And, you know, two hippie kids, you know. And I went off to Zen center and didn't pay income tax, you know, for 20 years. Because I lived at the Zen center, because, you know, who'd want to pay income taxes? And, and so for somebody who didn't pay income taxes for 20 years, it's, you know, it's pretty good that I could buy a house now. So maybe that's good. And then having a house is, I was, somebody today said, well, how is it having a house? And I said, you know, it's, well, first of all, it's really nice. But on the other hand, it's kind of a pain. You know, there's all this stuff to take care of.

[79:07]

And he said, yeah, I've noticed that in my life. The more material things I have, the harder it is to have a soft mind. Because there's more stuff that is me and that I identify as me and that I better take care of. Or people are going to say, gee, your house is like a big style. What, what's your problem? Where if it's just a house you're renting, you know, then it doesn't have the same reflection on you. So, anyway, I, I have a feeling about, I have, you know, I feel, feel with you. Basically, you know, because on one hand, it does seem important to finish things. And to, and to have a kind of, to acknowledgement from others that you completed something, that you finished in some way.

[80:08]

And on the other hand, it, what for me has been more important, probably a little more important for me. But that doesn't mean it's more important for you. You know, this is what we're doing. We're trying to find out for you what's important. You know, for me, it's been more important to follow my own views and to, and to kind of find my own way, which, which may or may not intersect with, you know, it's following the soft animal, letting the soft animal of the body love what it loves. And so I've been wandering around, you know, for years now. And so that's been more important for me, generally speaking. But we're not all the same that way. So at some point you, you know, it may be a while. And, and this is a, the nice kind of thing is that, you know, if you, basically, you know, advice in Zen is we'll sit with it for a while. You know, let it sit and see what happens. You know, see what happens. It simmers. Put it on the back burner, you know, do something else for a while.

[81:11]

I ran out of money for that. Huh? I ran out of money for that. Yeah. Yeah. So put it on the back burner and go on for a while and see whether it keeps coming up and keeps calling you or not. Yeah. Maybe one more question. It's about time to stop, I think. Yes. There's a central role that way. You know, because the digestion is in the middle of the body, so all the energy runs through the middle of the body, has to run through the middle body. And you, if you have good digestion, you know, digestion is not just digesting food, it's digesting experience. And it looks like we're moving, you know, through the world and it looks like we're moving through the world, but actually we're moving, passing the world through us. You know, we're taking in all those sights and we're taking in all those sounds. And we never go anywhere. That's what Zen teaches. But, you know, we're going through the world by passing the world through us. So, in a certain sense, that all is eating.

[82:15]

We take the world in and we extract. We see if we can extract nutritive essence and we discard waste. So, of course, it helps to see if you can, at times, at least have some, you know, not be passing through, just soap operas and, you know, People magazine. This is, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh mentions this at times. That you can also pass through, you know, periods of meditation and, you know, walks in the garden at Green Gulch and so on. I think we each have... So, for me, certainly, food has been a lot about passion. But, you know, this isn't by my choice. You know, each of us is drawn to... we're drawn to things.

[83:19]

And we have particular interests and wishes and we're not all the same that way. So, I'm encouraging each of you to honor your own, you know, passion in that sense. Whether it's connected to food or not. But if you do have some passion for food or for cooking, you know, then I encourage that too. But it's... I use it metaphorically in that sense too. You know, if your passion is somewhere else, then it's the same thing. And following your passion, of course, is not always so pleasant. But, what else is there to do? You know, there's a Dilbert cartoon. You know Dilbert? And he says, The promise of capitalism. If you work hard, you too could make your boss rich.

[84:24]

So, there is something else you could be doing besides your own passion. I don't know. Well, I guess I'm going to stop. I'll share with you one last thing which comes to mind now, so I'm trusting it since it popped up. I'll share it with you. You know, Suzuki Roshi at times used to say, To practice Zen is to feel your way along in the dark. It would be nice if you knew where you were going, what to do, if you could see your way. But Zen, you're feeling your way along in the dark. And if you practice this feeling your way along in the dark, not knowing what to do, not knowing already to do the thesis, not to do it, and you're feeling your way along in the dark,

[85:35]

over time you can learn that you can trust this kind of activity. You can trust this way of going about things. Even though you don't know where you're going or where you'll end up, or what the results will be, the results will take care of themselves because of your careful, sensitive effort. Thank you very much.

[85:57]

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