There are some more seats still, chairs, especially there's, you know, some in the front row. Well, I think we usually do, I usually do, you know, we usually do some kind of movement thing now. Is that sort of usual? Huh? Talk now? I like to get up and move, yeah, I'm going to move. I like to get up and move, yeah, I'm going to move, yeah, I'm going to move, yeah, I'm

[01:03]

going to move, yeah, I'm [...] going to move. Good evening, we're gonna, I'm going to talk next. So, first of all, you know, I do want to let you know that my movie is premiering February the 11th at the Berlin Film Festival. Okay, so if any of you want to fly over for the premiere, well, in English it's going

[02:07]

to be called How to Cook Your Life. I don't know what it's called in German, but there's a German filmmaker, Doris Dory, decided, asked if I would be willing to make a movie on Zen Master Dogen's instructions to the cook, and I said, sure, why not, and so we started in Austria and then we filmed in Austria, and I said, as a matter of fact, I'm going to be in Austria and doing lectures on Dogen's instructions to the cook and cooking classes. And she said, oh, well, I live in Munich, it's a two-hour drive, that's easy, we can come down for that and film you there. And then they also came over here and filmed at Tassajara and at Greenbelch, and filmed one of my neighbors in Fairfax who hasn't shopped for any groceries for more than two years because she visits the, what does she call it, the convenience kitchen or something,

[03:16]

anyway, it's otherwise known as dumpsters, but she has a better word for it, and their house that's kind of run down a little bit, it's called Taj Mahal. But it's hard to know who all is going to finally end up in the movie, and I haven't seen any of it, but they took about 60 hours of film and turned it into a 95-minute movie. I haven't seen any of it, so, I haven't seen, but Doris kept saying, you're really good on camera, and she was telling me that so much, I finally said, did you just tell this to all the guys, Doris? So that they relax, but anyway, so, well, the Tassajara bread book was the first, but the more recent one was Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings, and which is out of print now, and I've got the rights back, so now I'm going to rewrite it as Dogen's Instructions

[04:18]

to the Cook, and sell it again, that'll teach those publishers to give up on my book, show them, and all those people who didn't want to reprint it, you know, all those other publishers who didn't want to reprint it, now they'll pay, now they'll pay. It's strange, I just was going on living my life, and suddenly I'm in a movie, it's just very strange, you know, I didn't do anything. Will it come here? Well, we'll see, you know, it depends on, it needs to get a distributor in order to come here, but it might come, you know, like to Marin here, maybe, you know, even if it didn't have a distributor, maybe it could come to the Mill Valley Film Festival or something, we'll see. So, I thought I'd talk with you a little bit tonight about Dogen's Instructions to

[05:31]

the Cook, since it's on my mind, and one of the things, one of the first things that Zen Master Dogen says, and you know, Zen Master Dogen lived in the 13th century, and he was Japanese, and then he, in his early 20s, went to China to study Zen, and was in China for four years, and then came back to Japan, and he's considered to be the founder of what's known as the Soto Zen School of Japanese Zen. And the Soto School is the one that we don't do, that doesn't do Koan study, you know, particularly, you know, what is the sound of one hand clapping, you know, all that other stuff that, I reread recently, Jan Willem van de Veterans book, you know, he was Dutch, and years ago he did a book called The Empty Mirror, and then another one, Glimpse of Nothingness, and they were quite popular back in the 60s or 70s, and more recently he wrote a little

[06:35]

book called After Zen, and it's a charming and yet strange little book, but it starts out, Koans are overrated, but then the next sentence is, a clerk at the store where he was shopping used to say, don't get these, he said, no, and so he was intent on saving, you know, all the vegetables he could, so my practice isn't that good, but, you know, for the fruit from my trees, I do that, you know, I have three apple trees and two pear trees, and the three apple trees, especially this year, almost every apple has whatever it is,

[07:39]

codling moth or something that's in it, I tried putting out these, you know, traps for the codling moths, but last spring, you know, there's just rain, and, you know, and so, I would have had to put the traps out at different times, so the traps are still good, but the codling, you know, and you have to, if you're studied about these things, you know, just when the codling moths are coming, you put the traps out at the right time, but, so all of my apples have, you know, crud in them, but I'm using them all, and I'm juicing them, and I've been cutting out the codling moth part, and I just talked to a friend, and she said, oh, when I was growing up, we just put the whole apple into the juicer, you get a little more protein, and, you know, whatever that way, and it's very flavorful, so I'm endeavoring to use all the fruit from my trees, which is, you know, that's coming to my life, so, even though I can't save all the produce in the supermarkets, but it's interesting, you know, some supermarkets, I think,

[08:47]

for instance, you know, Good Earth, if I'm not mistaken, you know, from time to time, or maybe on a daily basis, you know, they send food to whoever it is. This is not, you know, this is about business, so let's toss it, and let's not let anybody have it, and let's lock up the dumpsters so that nobody can get at them, and etc., and let's not take the

[09:50]

food any place that they could use it, and they'd be willing to take it, let's not do that, let's not do any of that, it's got to go to waste, because that's business, bottom line. So, it's interesting, yeah. I have been trying for years, unsuccessfully, to change my relationship with paper towels. So, this is a perfect example of, did you hear what she said? She said, I use a lot of paper towels, way too many paper towels, and I've been trying for years to use fewer paper towels, and it seems like if I'm using this many paper towels, it can't be like I consider them that precious, you know, I'm just using them and tossing them. But this is a good example of, well, yeah, this is something you can study,

[10:53]

what would be, you know, study the way to use fewer paper towels, so it's a study, you know, it's you arouse your capacity to find the way to do this, to use fewer paper towels. And so, you can try various things, you know, I don't know, I use, you know, sponges, and there's various things about sponges, you know, I've studied these things, because I have some sponges that are only for the dishes, and I have some sponges for the floor, and they're in different places. And then when I use the sponges in the sink, or the other sponges, when I'm done, I wring them out. And when you come to my house, I explain this to you. Sorry to say. Because, you know, no wonder that people don't use sponges, when you get to their house, and then there's a sponge,

[12:00]

it's sopping wet in the sink, and you have to pick up a sopping wet sponge, and it's cold, and then it's all wet, and then if it's cold and all wet like that, it probably smells too. And then, no, I don't want to use that sponge either. So my sponges, I've dried them out, and then sometimes I set them in the window in the sun. And, you know, so I study these things, you know. And similarly, you know, I studied, like, plastic bags. You know, probably by the time I die, I will have saved, you know, 30,000 plastic bags. 20,000, 30,000 plastic bags. Because, I don't know, I think, figure, estimate, you know, minimum, you know, 10 plastic bags a week. That's 500 plastic bags a year. That's 5,000 every 10 years. I don't know, you know, whatever. I don't know the mathematics. But anyway, you know, I didn't want to die, so I didn't have to do it. So I used to be a plastic guy, and it was cold, and I didn't have to do it.

[13:10]

So I had to do it. And now, I think I just have to do it, and that's basically what I do. Take to the store, like, this huge grocery bag of, you know, where you've taken the plastic bags, and you sort of just stuff them in there. You can't walk around, like, with some huge trash bag of plastic bags around the grocery store, you know. So I have a little plastic bag, and it's full of plastic. And so, I don't know, maybe it's stupid, you know. But I figure, you know, maybe economically it doesn't even make sense. I'm using, you know, water, and, you know, I'm washing the things, so that's energy, you know. But I'm not, it's not like oil exactly, the way that, you know, manufacture plastic bags. But, you know, mostly, you know, people, you just toss them, because it's a plastic bag. Why would you, you know, you just toss it. And that's, but that's again, you know, because, you know, this is about money.

[14:14]

And value becomes about money, rather than, you know, how do you treat something, you know, as though it's worth something, as though it's of any value. So, you know, I take the sponge, and when I'm done with the sponge, I wring it out. You know, because I studied this, you know. And to me, it's sort of like a no-brainer. You know, wring out the sponge when you're done. But I don't know, otherwise, how do you clean up, you know. Well, you take paper towels, or you do something else, you know. And I've been in people's houses, you know, where, I mean, and again, even years ago. Go to somebody's house, and, you know, they say, well, let's, and I say, well, you know, why don't I cook a little something for you. They don't have a knife. They don't have a cutting board. It's no wonder they're eating wood, if you, you know, how are you going to prepare anything if you don't even have a cutting board, if you don't have a knife. So you, you have to study, well, what do I need, you know.

[15:20]

How do I, you know, and then you start with something, and you work with things, and then you get something else, and you work with that, and you figure things out as you go along. And, you know, part of this, too, is just then, well, it's partly, you know, certainly our tendency, and this is true, like, just organisms. You know, Gregory Bateson, for instance, in Ecology of the Mind, or whatever it's called, one of his books, sort of, you know, organisms very simply are designed to maintain and perpetuate themselves. Some of the main features of organisms. And, you know, and so there's nothing wrong with, you know, perpetuating yourself in a sort of, you know, as a being. It's perpetuating the self that we talk about in Buddhism that's a problem, right? And that's because, you know, the sense of self is the thoughts that we have, and the thoughts that we don't have, and the feelings that we have, and which ones are you?

[16:28]

And which ones do you identify with as you? And then how do you keep the ones that you identify as you, and get rid of the ones that you identify, and that you're not going to identify with? And how do you get rid of those? And so one of the things you hear, so organisms are designed to perpetuate themselves, but then in order to perpetuate themselves, you also have to take in stuff from the world. So you're taking in, you know, food, and also taking in experience, and then you're turning that into you. How do you go through the world taking in the world and turning it into you, and continuing to be you? And it turns out, you know, that on the whole, you know, we're a little bit lazy about this. And so we tend to stay in the area of our expertise, and what we already know how to do, and we're not going to move into the area where we don't know what to do. And find out how to do something we don't know how to do. And then we wonder, like, you know, the old quote that says, everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die, right?

[17:37]

But how are you going to learn to do something that you don't know how to do, but you want to stick to doing things the way you've always done them? So you're not going to learn anything, how to do something, if you stick to doing things the way you've always done them. You're going to have to try out some things that might work and might not work, and, you know, find the way to do something that you didn't know how to do. And so you give yourself that opportunity, it's important to give yourself that opportunity to find out how to do something that you don't know how to do. And be willing to have that kind of a problem or difficulty in your life. And, you know, you all do that by showing up here and, you know, meditating, because nobody knows how to do this, and, you know, I don't know how to do this. So this already is doing something, and then you can sort of think you know what you're doing. And it works for a while, and then at some point it doesn't. So, all right, it's about 8 o'clock, so we're going to call an end to the evening.

[18:48]

And thank you so much for being here, and as many of you know, I like to end with a chanting. So I'm going to end with a simple poem, which is definitely not a chant, but a prayer, just to release you all.

[19:01]

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