Tonight's one of those nights when I don't feel like I have anything to offer, but it's on the schedule, so here I am. Which means that, it means that it's especially important that you listen carefully and enjoy your own being, since you know you won't get anything from me. So you're listening carefully, not because, not to hear something I'm saying, but because listening carefully improves your quality of life, so to speak. Tonight I have for you, I think it's the first ever ceremony of this kind at Tassajara. It's the ceremony of eating just one potato chip. Now, I tried this at Green Gulch recently, it was performed for the first time in the Zen Center at Green Gulch. I'm not sure there's one potato chip for everybody.

[01:04]

I had a fairly full bag when I got here on Thursday, it was not as full as it was when I got here. I had it in the refrigerator in the kitchen, and so it seems to be maybe about two-thirds of what was in there, and just to check, I had folded the lid very carefully, and when I came back today to pick it up, the lid was just kind of, whoever was into the bag, and You know, when stuff like this happens, I say, gee, the guest must have gotten in the kitchen. Anyway, I have here, the first part of the ceremony is, you know, of course, that you have to wait for everybody to be served before you eat your one potato chip. And I'm going to give you some brief kinds of instructions, since this is a ceremony.

[02:06]

Eating this potato chip will be different than the way you would normally eat a chip. So, while we're passing these out, and before we start eating, I'll give a few instructions, but I'm going to let the results speak for themselves. That will be your experience and your experience alone, because this is not a shared experience. This is a very unique experience for each person. So I have here a couple little baskets, and at Green Gulch, I was a little worried. I thought that, you know, some people might have to do the ceremony of not eating one potato chip. But it turned out, now this is only a nine-ounce bag, but it turned out that one 14-ounce bag served more than 300 people at Green Gulch. So apparently there's a lot of chips in one of these bags, so we probably still have enough for everybody to get one chip. You know, you can try to pick out as big a one as you can, without pawing through the

[03:21]

whole basket. No, we're not going to put those in here. We'll set these out to the side. So can you pass these around, start these around, and take your chip, and wait for further instructions? I did this at Green Gulch, as I mentioned, and one of the things I said at one point was, you know, this was the kids' day at Green Gulch. You know, once a month, the kids are at the first part of the lecture, and for the first 10 or 15 minutes of the lecture, it's supposed to be aimed to the kids, so I offered them this ceremony, and I asked them, before I told them what the ceremony was, I said, you know, for ceremonies to work, there's a form to the ceremony, and then there's the willing, energetic, devoted participation of the people doing the ceremony. And I asked them, are you ready to devote yourself to this ceremony, are you ready to make your best effort? They said, yes, we are.

[04:22]

And once they'd said that, I said, so this is the ceremony of eating one potato chip. You know, there was a few, you've got to be kidding me. And there was one little boy who was especially verbal, so when I said, eating this one chip is the most important thing in the whole world, he said, you're crazy. So I said, that's why this is a ceremony, because in everyday life, eating a potato chip is not the most important thing in the whole world, but for the sake of the ceremony, we suspend ordinary reality, and we ceremonially take on another kind of reality, enter another kind of reality. So that's what we're doing tonight, you know, we're entering another reality, and where it's actually possible, you know, you've heard, you can't, bet you can't eat just one, well,

[05:25]

we're going to do it tonight. So, as I said, you know, this is not about performance, right? And this is not about having an approved experience, you know, the experience that's certifiable, like did you get it or not, like was that enlightenment when you ate it, or did you have the experience you were supposed to have when you ate one potato chip? So, there's no such thing, you know, so you get to have whatever experience you have, it's free of, you know, any standard or performance standard or achievement goal, or anything like that, right? You can just have whatever experience you have, this is very important, right? And so I'm going to just tell you, did the basket get all the way around yet? No. Okay, so it's coming. So, I'm going to tell you about three factors that may help you, you know, in this ceremony.

[06:28]

The first is called concentration. Now, basically, tonight we have a lot, you know, going for us as far as concentration because we don't have the television going, you don't have a drink in the other hand, you're going to be silent, so you're not going to be talking and eating and talking, and you won't be drinking and watching television and talking, you'll just be eating the chip. So you'll get to give your full undivided, you know, attention to the chip, as opposed to the way we would normally eat a chip, where the attention, where concentration is scattered. So we're going to collect, you know, in concentration what you do is you collect it, collect your mind and awareness so that you can attend to the potato chip. Now, as far as attention goes, what is encouraged about attention is that you attune it, to attune attention because attention only tends to pay attention to what it feels like paying attention to. So for tonight, so normally that means like, a potato chip, why would you pay attention

[07:31]

to that? Who cares? Like, there's a lot more important things to pay attention to, like, you know, what somebody just said to you, or what you're going to just say to somebody in a minute, or, in other words, we tend to pay attention to the things that we enjoy, or might potentially enjoy, or that we could imagine enjoying, and the things that worry us, or threaten us, or that we think are threatening to us, and so forth, right? And then, who cares about a chip, because it's not especially enjoyable, and it's not especially, you know, it's not exactly in that category, except sometimes it is, right? And the chip becomes, you know, oh, those red chips, or it becomes, oh, those wonderful chips, and, you know, various things, so. But as far as this attention goes, we're going to try to attune our attention consciously, you know, consciously attune our attention to the chip, okay? And then it helps when you're attuning attention that you, what are you going to attend to? Well, in this case, you know, there's your eyes, your ears, when we eat this, there's

[08:35]

going to be some crunching in the room, and there's the feeling in your hands, you know? One kid at Gringotts, boy, he sat there, and while everybody else was eating, he licked the salt off of this. So, you know, there's not an established way to eat this. You don't have to eat it. You could just nibble, you could pop the whole thing in your mouth, you know, but attune your attention, you know, you attune it, because your attention has a wide wavelength, you know, and it goes all over the place, right? So attune it to the chip, that's why we say this is really important. And then the third factor we're going to consider tonight is mindfulness. Mindfulness means that your experience actually registers, it has an impact, you know, in other words, it's something that you can, it's like your experience, it's like you can catalog it. What will you tell your grandchild years from now about this one chip? So sometimes for mindfulness, you know, it helps to make little mental notes as to various

[09:39]

characteristics, you know, the feel or, you know, slightly, very slightly rough, you know, or, you know, maybe you can feel the little bit of greasiness or something, you know. So if you want, you can make little notes, you know, and then those of you who would like, you can share some of your little notes. And you don't have to have any, again, you don't have to have any particular experience, so if you happen to get enlightened while eating this chip, you know, we don't mind. I think that's about it. Oh, you know, this first came up for me, I first did a tasting, I was at a Vipassana retreat in Bering, Massachusetts, and we ate raisins. And we had the raisins there, and then they said, okay, now, but you can have them in your hand, don't put them in your mouth yet, you know, just look at them, and we went through

[10:40]

this whole thing, and then we got them, and then finally you can put them in your mouth, but don't chew them yet, you know, just feel it in your mouth before you start to chew it. And so you can, you know, again, you can do this however you want, if you want to do it like that, just feel it before you chew it, or you can just start chewing. But also, just to remind you, there is such a thing as swallowing. So see if you notice, if you can notice and be aware of your swallowing, that that's conscious. That's part of this, that's the one thing I want to encourage you that maybe you could be, yeah. What do you do if you don't feel like eating it at all? Well, then you could, you could, you could do the ceremony of not eating one potato chip. That would be quite, that would be quite all right, yeah. You're welcome. Yes? Would it be an effect on the group? If more and more people decided? Oh, I'm, I'm happy, however many of you don't want to eat a potato, one potato chip tonight.

[11:44]

You, you can do, as I say, I don't mind combining these two ceremonies. The ceremony of eating one potato chip and the ceremony of not eating one potato chip. In the end, these are kind of the same ceremony. So, you know, you're not eating one potato chip is also being in the room with others eating one potato chip. So you're doing the meditation on, you know, other people eating one potato chip while you're not eating one potato chip. That's quite all right. And you're welcome to concentrate and attend, you know, attune your attention to what's going on while you're, you know, while everybody else is eating their chip and so forth, you know, and to be mindful of what your experience is. Same, same study. Okay, anyway. Yeah, another question. We can pass around the balls, you know, I can get past the balls back if you don't want to eat.

[12:45]

Or you can pass it to you. Do you not want to eat it yet? Thank you. Okay, so anyway, you know, you may have to hold your chip until later if you're not eating it. Or did you not take one? I took one, but I was. Oh, okay. All right. Anyway, you're welcome to, you know, turn your chip in. Okay. Isn't this amazing? Yeah. Okay, so at your own leisure and pace, you know, you're welcome to experience a potato chip or experience others experiencing potato chip while you're not. Okay. Okay.

[14:09]

Okay. Sound of the stream is pretty nice after that chip. Okay. Does anybody have anything you'd like to say about your chip?

[15:43]

The eating of one potato chip? How much to swallow? Not much to swallow? You can chew it rapidly so you can always enjoy it. I think I swallowed as much as got stuck in my teeth. Wow. It's all made from carbon dioxide. Oh, that's quite nice. Yeah, aftertaste of salt. That's how the parts of the mouth work together. Oh, uh-huh. Yeah. Some of you who didn't eat one chip?

[16:57]

Any comments? Yeah, yeah. I'll give you that one potato chip. I don't want a second one. Yeah, somebody after one of these tastings said, well, really, chips are made to be eaten quickly and absentmindedly. Laughter. They're much better that way. Yeah. My body really didn't want a potato chip, but I actually experienced eating the potato chip without eating the potato chip.

[18:08]

I mean, I could taste it throughout the whole thing. It was really interesting. It's actually like I was just holding a potato chip. I'm very uncomfortable. Laughter. Did you want a carbon dioxide chip? Something in the oil. Laughter. Laughter. Laughter. Here. Laughter. Laughter. Yeah, we gave the leftover chips and gringos to the kids when they left. They only had to wait about 10 minutes to eat more chips. Well, so people have many experiences clearly eating a potato chip.

[19:30]

So I think it's a wonderful example of, you know, that there's not any one reality and that we all have our very unique individual experience. And, you know, one of the things we try to teach in Zen is to own your own experience, to own your own body and mind, and to own your own experience. And, you know, in the final analysis, there's nothing right or wrong about your experience or good or bad. It's your experience and you get information from it. The other night I talked about way-seeking mind, the mind that seeks the way. The way being, you know, the way to happiness or peace in one's life or the Tao, the eternal way, as opposed to the way to be successful, the way to high performance, the way to get in approval, the way to be accepted by others. But the way to enter your own being and to be, you know, to own your own body and mind, to own your experience.

[20:42]

So you can have whatever experience you have, and actually the more closely you pay attention to your experience, the more closely you notice what your experience is. So to have an experience in the present, we have to leave our so-called home, our nest or den, or we have to leave what we know. So if you already know what a potato chip tastes like, what will you find out when you eat one potato chip? Or if you know a whole bowl of potato chips, because you know what they're like. And mostly we spend a lot of our life taking in experiences that we're familiar with, because it's a lot safer to have an experience that we think we're familiar with and we think we know and we think will be okay to have. So, okay, I can tolerate that. I'll have that one. Thank you. And it's more difficult for us to leave the world that we know and leave experience that we know and actually taste something, let something in.

[22:01]

Whether, you know, and a chip is kind of an inane kind of example. So it's also, you know, actually to look at somebody, you know, and sometimes it's somebody you live with, and actually see them and let them see you. Or it's, you know, taking in food or it's having a cup of tea, anything can be like this. But it's also, of course, even our own body and mind is scary to take in something that we aren't used to experiencing. And mostly we tend to live in the realm of thinking, so much of Zen emphasizes moving out of the realm of thinking and just experiencing something, anything. The other night I mentioned some factors that are a help for this, which is some sense of investigation or interest. Having a sense of interest will give you, you know, if you are interested in something, like, what does this chip taste like? I wonder.

[23:05]

Then you get in more information and if you go, it's another potato chip, of course, I know what that's like. So when you take an interest or you're investigating, you learn something. And it's also understood that to go outside the realm of your thinking and taste something or be with something intimately takes trust or confidence. It's going to be okay to be out there beyond what you know about, what you're familiar with, and feel your feelings, have your thoughts. Experience your inhalation, your exhalation. Know what your hands feel like, know what your feet are like, your knees. We're all sitting on chairs, so you can know your buttocks and your weight, the solidity of your bottom. And there's kind of understood that there's kind of two aspects to this.

[24:10]

One aspect is the sensory aspect, hardness, softness, sweetness, sourness, or salty, greasy. And the other is that as soon as you experience something closely and intimately, you have some sense of the sacred. There's some sense of, in Buddhism we say Buddha nature, you have some sense of, you know, something that's timeless, faceless sort of thing. So you have both sides, and sometimes even in eating a potato chip, people get some sense of the holy. When you're attuned to eating, people can't believe. Somebody the other night I did a tasting, and somebody said, I can't believe how good this chip is. I had forgotten. And now eating one this carefully, it is so good. And do you think that's the chip? It's so good? That's not the chip that's so good. That's somebody tasting something really carefully. Probably if you tasted anything that carefully, it would be so good.

[25:10]

And so that's also, you know, another word we sometimes use is goodness. The Dalai Lama's new book is called A Good Heart. I guess it's about Christianity. But he uses that expression, good heartedness. You know, that people are basically, we're basically good hearted. We have a good heart. So bringing our awareness carefully to whatever the experience is, and going outside the realm of our thinking, or already knowing what the experience will be. And being that adventurous and daring to have some experience we haven't had before. We notice often goodness, and we often have some sense of gratitude. Some sense of welcome. And this is, of course, then, this is not dependent on the particular nature of the experience. Salty, greasy, sweet, sour, tart, bitter, you know. That's not dependent on whether it's chocolate or radish or potato chip.

[26:13]

It's the quality that we bring to it. So we could also say, in that sense, that to receive, to receive experience is an action. It's an activity that we do. And our tendency is to wait for something to touch us or get through to us. And we wish something really nice would get through and touch us. And in the meantime we're carefully maneuvering so that something scary doesn't touch us. And so we're trying to do this thing where the scary things don't touch us and maybe something really pleasurable would. And this is a very difficult dance, folks. So the activity of receiving, it's an activity. It's not just something that, I mean, on one hand, it can just happen.

[27:14]

Maybe it just happens once in a while. It just happens. It's one of the nice things about Tassajara. You can walk down the path and you can receive. You feel like, and people open here, and people are more easily receiving, you know, practice receiving here. Because it feels as safe as it does. And when you walk down the pathway and then there's the trees and the blue sky. Or, you know, you're down at the baths and you relax and then suddenly nature is very beautiful. And there's the sunlight through all those different kinds of green and the blue there. It's really amazing. So Tassajara is really wonderful that way for, you know, because it encourages us in a lot of ways to be receptive. And to be receptive you have to be, in a certain sense, vulnerable. This is another, you know, characteristic. So, vulnerable or receptive, this activity to take something in, to receive something, to be touched, that something can actually touch your heart.

[28:19]

This is, you know, not just, it sometimes will happen of itself, but it's also something we can practice. And in some ways it's the pivotal, you know, we can say in some ways this is the pivotal practice in Zen. Because the more carefully and deeply, intimately you receive your experience, then that's what our life is all about. What else would it be? To receive and know our experience. And to trust that this is fine. Know that this is acceptable. We don't have to worry about having the right experience when we do this. You know, the one that somebody says is good. I told my workshop people the other day the story about Ikkyu when he was a monk and his teacher was very severe. They had to wear the same clothes winter and summer and so on. You know, so most of the students would leave in pretty short order. There was only four or five of them.

[29:21]

And after six or seven years, Ikkyu was rowing in a little boat. He'd go out on Lake Biwa and after he was out in the middle of the lake, he'd go up to the ocean and sit and meditate. And one day he heard a crow cawing. And he had an awakening. The stories, you know, don't say what an awakening is. He had a realization. So he rowed back to shore. You know, you go to see your teacher. Tell your teacher what your experience is. Is it the acceptable one? Is it the real one? Did you really get it? And his teacher, being as severe as his teacher is in Japan, they have this special pole-carrying method. That's very good, Ikkyu, but it's still not the enlightenment of the Buddhist ancestors. And Ikkyu said, I don't care, it's good enough for me. And then the teacher said, that's the enlightenment.

[30:21]

So we keep wondering, you know, is our experience good enough? And part of this is, you know, can you find me? Can you find me? Appreciate yourself? Can you find me? Stop being hard on yourself? Can you finally stop coercing yourself to a better performance? You know, higher standards? Can you finally, you know, as Mary Oliver says, let the soft animal of your body love what it loves? Or are you going to go on forward? So also in Zen we say, take off the blinders, unpack the saddlebags. Blinders, you know what the horse has in the old days? The horse goes straight ahead, you don't look to the right or left. You have a goal, you have a direction, you have to get there. So if you take off the blinders, unpack the saddlebags, you must have arrived. And of course, usually, usually once you take off the blinders, of course, and you stop for a little bit, like you go and sit in a zendo, the saddlebags tend to spill out of their own accord.

[31:31]

You don't have to unpack the saddlebags. They're already... Spilling out, this is uncomfortable. Anyway. So I'm emphasizing tonight this point that to be receptive, to receive your experience, to receive the sensations of your body, of your being, the thoughts and feelings, this is, and to know them for what they are, without such, without strong, you know, without some judgment, good, bad. Sometimes I use, some of you have heard this story, but many years ago, a student asked a zhukyarishi, why haven't you enlightened me yet?

[32:33]

You can feel that way after a while, you know, like you're, you know, we did the same thing with ourselves. You know, we say to our own being, what's wrong with me? Why haven't I gotten enlightened yet? Or why haven't, you know, we say to our own body and mind, why haven't you given me better experiences lately? What's wrong with you? You keep giving me these ho-hum, you know, droopy kinds of experiences. You're just tired all the time. You're aching, and I want something better than that, you know, and I don't know what's wrong with you. Of course, if somebody's talking to you like that, I mean, what would you do? Anyway, zhukyarishi said, zhukyarishi said, I'm making my best effort. So I want you to know that if you listen carefully, you'll hear your own, you know, your own being is making,

[33:40]

all the time, you know, we're making our best effort. You know, consciously, we grade and assess ourselves as to how well we're doing, and we wonder, like, can't I get better experiences than the ones I'm having? Ones that are maybe more, you know, if we're in spiritual practice, we're looking for more spiritual ones. Where are they? And as soon as we have an experience, we say, well, was this particularly spiritual? Let's see now. And, no, not really. So we're pretty hard on ourselves this way, you know, and then pretty soon, you know, we're not so receptive, really, to what our experience is. So, and actually, in the long run, I want to also emphasize, in the long run, you know, we're going, we're making ourselves receptive and vulnerable and receiving our experience, because in the long run, this is how we trust, how to trust your own body and mind.

[34:41]

How to trust your experience, and act on your own experience. So, you know, this week, we've been, this comes up so much in cooking, you know, this week we've been just doing simple things like, we cut up onions, celery, carrots, and potatoes, and we baked them, sauteed them, and boiled them, and then tasted, what's the difference? Just in the way you cook them. And then we added a little salt, tasted that, a little pepper, tasted that, a little balsamic vinegar, tasted that, a little fresh parsley, tasted that, a little dried thyme, tasted that. What are each of those things doing? When you know, in your own experience, what those things do, what that is, now pretty soon, you know, your mind and being, you know, will start putting those things together of their own, because they know those things. And so to make something acceptable and approvable, you don't have to get a recipe, and do what the recipe tells you, because that's the only way you can get something

[35:43]

to come out the way it's supposed to. You can actually trust your experience. And this isn't just cooking, you know. I mean, cooking is just an example of this, and meditation is like that. Somebody told us the story the other day, you know, a great story about a woman who had been to all these spiritual gurus and teachers, and she finally went to India, to Nisargadatta or Poonjaji or somebody, and she goes to his house somewhere and knocks on the door, and he comes to the door, and she's telling him the whole story. You know, I've been to this teacher and that teacher, and I've tried this and I've done that, and finally after a while he says, Just give up all technique. And she says, Well, how do I do that? How do I do that? What's the first thing to do? So, in the long run anyway,

[36:43]

you know, what we're studying is how to trust our experience, and to be able to act on our experience, and not because, you know, somebody says, Yes, that's it, of course. Maybe somebody will, you know, because sometimes you do something and people say, That's great. Thank you. And other times you do something and people say, Not so great. How could you? But this is all part of our finding our way, unavoidably. You know, there's people liking it and not liking it. So, you know, I think

[37:52]

So, you know, to do these, a potato chip is kind of a, kind of a mundane example. You know, when I first did my, when I did my first potato chip, after the chips we had oranges. People could not believe how delicious an orange was after a potato chip. And then, I thought, you know, after the orange we could have Hydrox cookies. Because Hydrox are the vegetarian Oreos. You know, they don't have any pig lard and stuff in them, deep suet and stuff. I think Oreos finally come around to being vegetarian. Maybe, I'm not sure. And, you know, more than half the people refused to eat them, in that case. They took one little nib on it and said, This is so awful. You know, once they tasted how good an orange is. So, I tell people, you know, what's in, you know,

[38:58]

to trust your own body and mind. And this is a big study for us. You know, this is not always so simple. Because people think, you know, when I say, you know, you could actually practice enjoying your food. You could actually practice tasting what you put in your mouth. And if you really enjoy your food and taste what you put in your mouth, you won't have to worry about how much you eat or what you're eating. Because you practice receiving your experience and your body, you know, and when things impact on your awareness and on your consciousness and you start to catalog what your experience is, pretty soon you're cataloging, This doesn't taste so good. This is not so enjoyable. This is not very pleasurable. You know, as you're eating. And you start cataloging that. And then, you know, what do you need to decide? You don't need to say, Push back from the table now. Go on a diet. You know, because it's

[39:59]

just your experience. And it's just knowing your experience well enough that you naturally, you know, will stop eating. And you naturally then, because experience is registered on you, you eat what is supportive and nourishing for your life. And people think, Well, if I enjoyed my food, I'd be a blimp. But actually, if you're devoted to enjoyment, you know, you might lose weight. Because, you know, what happens to us is because we're so involved with the mind that is thinking about right and wrong and good and bad and what we should and shouldn't be doing, and it's so busy telling us that and asking us, Why haven't you enlightened me yet? And why aren't you coming up with better experiences and what's wrong with you anyway? And you could do this better and you could have done that better. Our mind is so busy telling us all these things and then it's called putting a head above your head. So, and then,

[40:59]

how do you get that mind to shut up? Well, one way is, you know, one way is to go and eat a bunch of food and not pay any attention to it and after a while you're kind of in oblivion. There's other ways to go into oblivion. And the problem is that, you know, that way of, there's one way of going into oblivion where then you wake up and then that voice has all the more reason to tell you, See what happens when you don't do what I tell you? You just pig out or you just drink too much. So now, you better listen to me because I'll set you straight. And of course, after a while you want to get away from that voice so then you could go and, you know, drink a lot of wine or whatever, you know, have a cigarette. I mean, there's lots of things to do to sort of space out and get away from that voice. But Zen says, you know, try, you know, just actually experiencing your experience and receiving your experience and knowing it for what it is and very naturally your life moves and changes without so much effort

[41:59]

and without any coercion on the part of this mind that likes to think it's in control. So, after my talk the other night somebody told me that in his study of the word control it comes from the Spanish when they were world, you know, conquerors and they had roles of listing, you know, what was supposed to be where and then you could compare you could control you could compare what was there with the list. With the role. And you can see does it match up with the list? You know, so this is the way we go about our life. Does our experience match up with the standard of what we think the life should match up with? And then when it does we think, oh, that's nice at last and then most of the time it doesn't and then, you know, and we think that that's what life is about.

[42:59]

Getting our experience to match the standard. Because then we'd be acceptable. We'd be approvable. You might even be able to like yourself. And we think at that point others would like us too but of course we're usually such you know, busybodies or whatever because of, you know, trying to get our experience to match up that people don't like us anyways. So, you may as well just you may as well go for you know, try out having your experience, you know, entering the way. Going outside what you know and and tasting something. And knowing the virtue of things and when you allow something to come home and touch you and you can practice receiving your experience and being intimate with it. So sometimes,

[44:04]

you know, I was at a, I went to someone's house one time for dinner. I tell this story in my book. I went to someone's house for dinner and it was someone who was a chef and he was friends of some good friends of mine and I hadn't met him before so I took a, I thought I would take some nice California wines. I took a ten-year-old Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and a ten-year-old Chardonnay and I got to his house and I gave him the wine and he said, oh, thank you and he said, I've opened these two twenty-year-old Bordeaux's for you. He had them on his mantelpiece. I thought, boy, this is some person. I mean, he doesn't know me, you know. Robert is very gracious. He had a restaurant in San Francisco called Le Trou, T-R-O-U. My daughter, who lived in France for, you know, nine or ten years, she said, what, this is weird because in French it actually means the hole

[45:05]

and he said, yes, it's short for hole-in-the-wall restaurant. That sounds good in English. And I wasn't really in such a good mood but then we sat down in this little room off the kitchen and there were all these radishes, there were these platters of radishes and some of them were round and, you know, deep, beautiful red and some of them were slender and, you know, half red and half white and some of them were all red and they had the little root that's still on and the leaves are there and they all look so kind of delightful and friendly. Do you know, radishes like that, they're not out to impress anybody by how sophisticated they are. It's very refreshing, you know. And then there were little dishes of sweet butter and little... And of course

[46:17]

I had to try each kind of radish each way. Plain radish, you know, radish with salt, radish with butter, radish with butter and salt and we had sparkling French wine, apple cider with it. It's a, you know, French, it's very slightly alcoholic, like about 3% and it's a little bubbly and it's a little bitter. It's very good with radishes. And I felt, you know, eating those radishes and when you look at the radishes they're also like, there's something, there's something jewel-like or gem-like about radishes because they've been in the ground and then they're all washed off and, and then they kind of loosen and shine and also the quality of having the root and the stem still on them because then you appreciate this actually grew. And I don't really

[47:24]

remember so much about the rest of the meal. Robert forgot we were vegetarian and served roast lamb. I mean, what would you serve with your 20-year-old Bordeaux's? Anyway, those radishes were awfully good and, you know, part of it is, is that, you know, we actually had gotten them from the farmer's market. It's hard to find radishes that delight you. Those radishes in the supermarket, you know, the stems are all falling over. Sometimes the radish, the radishes are still pretty lively. But the basic quality again is not the object itself, it's what you, you know, when you give yourself

[48:24]

to something, also then, you know, something will give itself to you. And in cooking, interestingly enough, you know, really to cook, it's helpful to be able to appreciate the virtue of something like a radish or a carrot. My friend Dennis, who used to cook at Essend, he said when he was at the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park, New York, he had, there was one of his teachers who used to come around, you know, everybody is chef, and he'd say, you know, Chef Dennis, what are you making? And then he'd say carrot soup. And he'd say, what should carrot soup taste like? And then you're supposed to say carrots. But you know what, what cooks like to do is like put in, carrot soup, put in oranges and ginger and jalapenos and maybe a little cinnamon, and let's really

[49:25]

perk this up, you know, or let's fix these carrots. Let's make these carrots really, you know, tasty. Let's give these people a taste experience that they'll remember. And pretty soon, you know, your carrot soup is, well, it's very creative and inventive, but it, you know, it doesn't taste like carrots anymore. And then people may go like, whoa, this is very good. This is interesting. I wonder what it is. It's orange. So probably the single, you know, again, the important thing in being a cook, you know, at least once in a while, remind yourself that the virtue of things is the thing itself, you know, and the cooks, none of us, you know, create tomatoes or carrots or radishes. You know, these are gifts. These are things

[50:27]

that come to us, you know. It's amazing. And we can't, we can't do what an onion does to make, you know, onion, onion, or to make radish, radish. We can't do what a radish does. We can't do what a lettuce does to make lettuce. And what we can't appreciate what lettuce does to become lettuce, to be lettuce, and what radish does to be radish, we can appreciate that and, you know, the virtue of that, of something being what it is. And when you can appreciate the virtue of something being what it is, of course, then you, this is also appreciating the virtue of being, you being who you are. Because nobody else is going to, nobody else can be who you are. Nobody else is, you know, can really improve you. You can't improve you. You know, our work is, is more like receiving yourself and finally appreciating the virtue of you being you. Just as you can

[51:29]

appreciate a radish being a radish and you, and when you have that, then, you know, and when a radish can delight you, the cook, then you can serve radishes and delight everybody else. Especially at a place like Casa Jungla. You know, because things can be pretty simple and people, because you honor the radish, other people can. And partly it's in how you serve it, you know, to honor something. You know, it's in, you know, if you just dump everything in a bowl, it's different than arranging it just a little bit, even. Not that we need to be fussy, but, you know, it's, it's, we say in the handling of something, to handle something with sincerity and care, you know, making sure things are clean. And a lot of cooking is separating what's gonna be eaten

[52:30]

and what's not. And then your body goes on and separates what's gonna be absorbed and what's not. That's a part of life, is separating, you know, what gets taken in and what doesn't. Whether it's outside the body or in. That's how we grow, to separate this from that. And how will you do that separation? Is there some outside standard? Well, if you're working in the kitchen, you're probably, somebody will tell you there's an outside standard and they'll try to tell you what it is. But finally, in your own life, you know, the standard is what you separate from what. You decide after a while for yourself, you know what to separate from what. And it comes from your experience. Somebody asked me an interesting question the other day, you know, we have two kinds of lettuce at Tassajara. We have guest lettuce and we have student lettuce. And which lettuce is good enough for the guests? And then, the supposed lettuce of lesser quality, you know, is the lettuce

[53:30]

that's good enough for the students. And then, there's some lettuce that is not good enough for either guests or students. And somebody who had been, I think, both a guest here and a guest student, because they'd worked in the lettuce area and found out about guest lettuce and student lettuce, they said to me, why do the students get the better lettuce? Because, usually we think, oh, well, the guests get the better lettuce. And he said, but the guests are getting, like, all those little beautiful leaves on the inside of the lettuce. But the lettuce that's actually with all the vitamins and minerals, you know, is the lettuce on the outer side. And the darker green lettuce and the coarser leaves, those are the ones that have better fiber and better nutrition. And the students get all that lettuce. Why don't you give that lettuce to the guests? How are you making these decisions? So I thought about it, but I think that's what,

[54:31]

you know, this is the way it goes. You know, sometimes you pay a lot of money for something that looks like something and it is not very good nourishment. And then other times you don't pay much money and you work hard and get something that doesn't look so great but provides a lot of nourishment. Anyway, I don't know about finally what this is about. Where are we anyway? Oh, it's time to end anyway. Good. So at this point I usually tell you my favorite Rilke poem. You know, since it's the end of the lecture and I like to give poems at the end of lectures, do something like that. This is a poem, this poem is one of the sonnets to Orpheus. It's basically

[55:33]

the translation by Stephen Mitchell and it's about food and eating something carefully the way we were just talking about, the way we've been talking about tonight. And really somebody knowing their experience so this is the way the poem goes. 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? Instead of words, discoveries flow out astonished to be free. Dare to say what apple truly is, this sweetness that feels thick,

[56:34]

dark, dense at first, then exquisitely lifted in your taste that's clarified, awake, luminous, double meaning, sunny, earthy, real. Own knowledge, pleasure, joy, inexhaustible. Thank you very much.

[56:55]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ