So, since I'm the speaker, you know, we do it the way I do it, I guess. Well, we're starting our workshop this week on meditation and cooking, so I try in my talks to use some cooking metaphors, it doesn't always happen. I'm afraid, you know, some of you have been here other summers, and so I tend to keep using the same stories over and over again, so that's the way it goes. But I console myself with the metaphor or image of the cook who does not keep creating new foods to serve, and when we eat, we still sort of, you know, we have potatoes and carrots and we have them over and over again, and we still need to keep eating and serving meals, even though we're not inventing new foods all the time. So, this is what I console myself in giving talks, that I don't really need to keep coming up with something new.

[01:04]

But this is also the subject of my talk tonight, you know, what is it that we think we're doing when we give talks or when we serve food, or what do we set out to do, or when we create something. Because our art culture seems to be particularly sort of like, if you want to be known, you have to do something grandiose, never before, has never been done before, you know, then you get known. So for instance, there was a notice up at Green Gulch, it said, photography exhibit for those influenced, photographers influenced by Buddhist practice. It's going to be in November, and then you can send in slides. So I sent some photos, I don't have any slides. And then I went to see the person who's organizing the show, and he took a look at one of my pictures, which I liked a lot, which is from the cliffs up above Drake's Beach, and it's looking down on the surf, and so you see the surf coming in there, and then there's some little people down there walking, and he said, oh, Minor White's already done that, can't

[02:09]

use that in the show. I mean, I didn't know, I didn't, you know, so you have to sort of know, has it been done before or not, you know, and then if it's been done, we'll skip it. We don't care, we're not interested. So you can see what kind of a challenge that is for if you're a cook or photographer, whatever, right? To keep coming up with something new, never before experienced, never before tasted. It's got to be a new menu, or else who cares? It's like the woman who came to Greens when we were working on the Greens cookbook, and we were thinking about who to publish it with, and everything that was served, she said, oh, that's 1976, oh, that's 82. She could date everything. You know, poppy seed cake, oh yeah, 76, and so, you know, is it something new, and is it the cutting edge? So we finally picked a publisher who didn't want a cutting edge book, that we could do

[03:11]

a book that was kind of like a classic, so like we tried to put it in this, reframe it into like, this is classic sort of things, or, you know, this is something that's been done before, but we're going to do it anyway, that sort of thing. I mean, life, it's already been done before, right, so why would any of us need to do it over again? So this is, you know, or if you want to be heard, the way to be heard is you have to talk louder, and if you want to be respected, well, you command respect. If you want to be appreciated, no, I don't know, you do something else, you know. You have to, you know, you have to produce an even better accomplishment, then maybe people will appreciate you. So this is the kind of mode that we, you know, we're susceptible to, as human beings, and our culture seems to have been on this kind of, in this kind of mode for a long time now.

[04:13]

And it's good for business, right, because then you can redesign the cars each year, and you know, sell somebody new clothes every year or two, and so forth. You know, it's really good for business, among other things. But it's not very good for people, you know, and it's not good for, you know, us as individuals, particularly the way we can get caught up in all that. And so certainly, you know, if you're a cook and you're getting caught up in that, then you think, I have to make something even more special now. And then, you know, who is it that's actually demanding this? Because pretty soon, it's not just, it's not really somebody out there, it's me. You know, I've put this kind of demand on myself. There's a story I like in Zen, which kind of illustrates this kind of thinking of, you know, the disciple comes to the teacher and says, please liberate me. And the teacher said, well, who, wait a minute, who put you in prison?

[05:17]

And there's some enlightenment happens here in the story. So if, you know, if we can only be known, if we do something stupendous, that's, you know, somebody in us who says, excuse me, but that's not good enough. You've got to do better than that. You weren't sitting still enough, or you didn't create a good enough meal, or you didn't say the right thing. You know, so we can be quite critical of ourself for not having performed in some way well enough or done something good enough. We haven't been kind enough or whatever it is, you know, that our particular sort of obsession is. And you hear this a lot, you know, in various ways. For me, since I sort of am somewhat of an avid, you know, sports fan, you know, you come across this a lot in sports. It's the Vince Lombardi syndrome, where the coach will never approve. There's never any approval.

[06:23]

You're never good enough. Even if you've won the championship, there's only at the best begrudging praise. So you always have to work harder, strive harder. You've never gotten there. You're still not there. Sorry. So do you understand how somebody, how you might feel as a person if this is your mind, you know, the way that you think, you know, that you think to yourself and you tell yourself these things? And then we tell that, you know, to our sensations and the things we see. Oh, this isn't very interesting. Seeing one tree, you've seen them all. Remember that one? And we tell that to our thoughts, you know, oh, shut up, go away. You're bugging me. And we tell that to our feelings, you know, we don't honor or particularly respect our feelings. That's just being a baby or, you know, wimping out in some way, you know, why are you getting

[07:24]

so obsessed with these feelings? You know, you need to get back to work or whatever it is, you know. So we, we, and then if we indulge our feelings, oh, well, you're just indulging your feelings now. If you actually feel, oh, you're just indulging yourself. So we start, we have all these things that we tell ourselves. Then if we're telling ourselves all that, how are we going to feel good or what? No, we don't feel very good a lot of the time, you see. And then to feel good, you have to, you have to, you have to make a great, you do a great creation. You have to make a really great meal. You have to, you have to really impress somebody and then you can feel great for about two seconds before you have to start worrying about the next meal. So oftentimes our self-esteem then is related to, you know, our self-esteem in that sense is very volatile, you know, under this kind of, in this kind of mind state, you know, our self-esteem is very volatile. You know, do we do, do we say the right thing, the wrong thing?

[08:24]

Are people impressed? Are they not, you know? And so we have no stability, you know, as far as our self-esteem or our basic well-being. This is a bad fix to be in. It's called samsara, the world of suffering, to go about these things, things in this way. So Dogen's advice, bringing a little spiritual teaching here, what the heck. So Dogen Zenji's advice, Dogen is the founder of the Soto Zen School in Japan, lived in the 13th century. And Dogen says, don't think with ordinary mind, don't see with ordinary eyes. And then he says, pick up a, use a blade of grass to create a treasure king's land, the Dharma king's land. So pick up a speck of dust and turn the Dharma wheel. So it's the, it's ordinary, it's our so-called, you know, in this context, our so-called ordinary

[09:33]

mind or ordinary eyes that are looking to, for some gain and looking for something that will demonstrate or prove our worth or our validity in life, or that, you know, can make an impression on this mind that does not, is not, you know, is saying not good enough. You know, this mind that is not moved particularly, this mind that is judging. So there's this ordinary mind has a mind that judges and then a mind that tries to somehow, you know, come up with things that will, that will impress the judge. The judge sits there and says, sorry. And this is the way we go about our life, you know, largely. And we're caught in the kind of dynamic like this. And in that kind of state, then the judge will judge what is good, what is bad, what is right,

[10:36]

what is wrong, and how you can get ahead, what you need to work on, what sort of problems you need to overcome, you know, what you need to do. And then you work at it and you work at it and you work at it and then you succeed and then the judge will come up with some new ones, you know, that you need to work on. Have you ever noticed that the standards keep going up? First, you're, you know, you're tripping and you fall on your face and then you stub your toe. It's, you know, pretty soon it's the same thing, you know. So this is ordinary mind and we're in ordinary mind, you know, and then we think, you know, this is better than this and, you know, making a lot of money is better or, you know, whatever it is or sitting still is better than moving. And so we can, and then, you know, if we move in meditation then this is big defeat. Something's wrong with me.

[11:36]

I still can't sit still, you know, and if it's cooking and I forget something and the cookies are burnt, something's wrong with me. I'm still not able to, you know, even bake cookies and not have them burn. And it's a reflection on me, you know, and then we take this in the ordinary mind, reflects on me and the judge says, sorry, you lose. So this is, this is our ordinary kind of mind. So the, in this context, Dogen's alternative, he says to take a blade of grass, you know, take something simple, blade of grass. The blade of grass actually comes from a story that many of you know. One day it said that the, that the Buddha and his assembly were walking along and he said to the assembly, this is a good place to build a temple. And Indra, the king of the gods at that time, stooped over, picked up a blade of grass and

[12:40]

planted it in the ground and he said, there, the temple is built. And the Buddha smiled. That's the end of the story. So the question here is what do you need to do to make it a temple, to make it, to make it special, to make something in your life sacred or special or precious or valuable or you know, that you're worthwhile, that life is worthwhile, that we have some, you know, inherent well-being. So in this, in this story, it's just a blade of grass. With the blade of grass and, and respecting or honoring a blade of grass, putting it in the ground, this will do it. So this also means, you know, that inhaling and exhaling will do it. But for a moment, we have to sort of, we have to stop judging and not to see with ordinary

[13:48]

mind, not to see with ordinary eyes or not to think with ordinary mind. So we think, you know, we'll start to think as we inhale, oh, just inhaling and exhaling, that's stupid. That's not getting me anywhere. Where were we going to get? You know, what were we going to attain? If you cook a great meal and everybody says, thank you, and then what did you actually attain? I mean, it was nice and we all enjoyed it and people were thankful. And then what do you have? Do you actually have something then, you know, that you got and that you get to keep? Do you think so? And then how long does the satisfaction last? So we can, you know, actually, when we do live together, it's true, and in relationship

[14:51]

with others and we do offer things and people appreciate it and there is this kind of resonance that happens. It happens here at Tassajara like that. But then, you see, we don't actually have, you know, here, we don't have then, or if you're in your family, you don't end up with like famous cooks. It's something much simpler than that, that we appreciate some food and it doesn't have to be really great. I had this sort of recently because a couple of my friends were saying, said to me, who'd make videos, they said, well, let's make some cooking videos. So I said, okay, and this has been, this was months ago, nothing's happened. And so the first thing they did was write a letter to potential sponsors that said, Ed will show, even in veteran mediators, how to make masterpiece vegetarian dishes. They said, like, if it wasn't going to be a masterpiece, who'd be interested, right? I mean, if I wasn't going to show somebody how to make a masterpiece, who cares?

[15:52]

So this is what you're supposed to do. You see, this is how you sell things in our world. But all I'm interested in is like, well, folks, let's cook, let's live, you know, and let's, let's be kind of happy and, and enjoy some simple food, you know, how about that? Wouldn't that be pretty nice? I mean, you know, that it doesn't have to be a masterpiece in order to be passable, you know, acceptable, something that can be appreciated and enjoyed. So one of my favorite stories about this is the time I went to a friend's house who's a chef at a restaurant in San Francisco, or was, a little French restaurant. He has sort of turned the restaurant over to his partner since then, his restaurant is called Le Trou, which apparently in French means the hole.

[16:54]

And my daughter was kind of amused at the name, she's lived in France a number of years, but it's, you know, for the hole in the wall, restaurant. But anyway, one time I was going to go to his restaurant for dinner, but it wasn't open. So our mutual friends, anyway, he invited Patty and I to his house for dinner. Since the restaurant was closed that night, we all wanted to come. And so the first course was radishes. And the radishes had been washed, and they started on their little roots and then some of their little green leaves. And then there was little dishes of sweet butter and little dishes of salt. So you could have plain radish, radish with butter, radish with salt, or radish with butter and salt. That's four dishes in one. And you had to bite off the root, the little rootlet, and, you know, eat the radish and then discard the stems. But I thought that was pretty remarkable, you know, because there's an example of, like,

[17:59]

did you have to do something to make the radishes good enough, you know, to eat? What do you do to make radishes into a masterpiece? So this is a different way of looking at it. Radishes already are a masterpiece. See, we don't make masterpieces. We don't have to make masterpieces. Radishes already are a masterpiece. And all we have to do is, like, you know, we have to be able to see that. Somebody has to be able to see that in the radishes, or you don't serve the radishes. How could you possibly serve them? Unless you see already that radishes are precious, radishes are valuable. Radishes are worth, you know, are good enough to offer. And nowadays, it's actually, it's maybe a little unusual that you get radishes that are good enough to offer. I mean, you went to the farmer's market to get these radishes. Maybe even any old radishes are good enough, but, you know, these are actually sort of special radishes. Or were they?

[19:00]

Rilke calls the things from the ground, you know, these hybrid things of speechless strength and kisses. This is, you know, radishes, or carrots, or onions, potatoes. Hybrid thing of speechless strength and kisses. So, with ordinary mind, ordinary eyes, we see a potato, we see an onion, and it's just another potato, it's just another onion. And it's our, it's our larger being, and our mind that is no longer, you know, open, receiving and being moved by things, we see, we can see the hybrid strength and kisses that is otherwise something we call onion or potato. So, you know, we have various, on one hand, you know, we're sort of moved to try within

[20:23]

this framework of this dynamic, you know, with this dynamic of the judge and then somebody who's trying to measure up and finally get approval, right? We're sort of, we tend to get stuck in this dynamic and then, you know, we're working in our life to try to measure up and to be finally acceptable and lovable to ourself. This, a severe critic, you know, a severe critic or judge that, you know, we also are. And usually, so we usually, we set out in this dynamic to try to measure up, to try to produce, and then we work very hard, and at some point, you know, it will occur to you to, that actually the one who needs to work is the critic, not the one who needs to keep trying to measure up. Maybe the critic could let up a little bit, you know. So part of, you know, what we're working on is how to have the critic or the judge

[21:26]

in our life let up and ease up. And this is like, you know, isn't it actually possible to love something less than perfect or someone who's less than perfect? Why do we keep thinking, you know, I have to be perfect in order to be lovable or I have to be perfect in order to be liked? If I'm imperfect, you know, people won't like me. And then think about it, if you're a teacher, my goodness, well, the only way I do it is, you know, like, I don't try to be that kind of teacher, I tell you. You know, so there's various sayings like, you know, don't, you know, show people your faults, hide your virtues. Then you don't have to, you don't have this kind of, you know, worry anymore. Instead of trying to show people your virtues and hide your faults so you could be good enough to be liked, you know, and actually people will help you with these things.

[22:28]

And you find out that actually people like you anyway. It's really interesting. It's amazing. You know, really, when you get down to it. I mean, I find it amazing. You know, having tried this out now for a number of years, I find it amazing. People like you anyway, even though, you know, you're weird and strange and crazy and emotional. And in fact, you know, like the other day, a woman called me up and she was crying and we talked for half hour, 45 minutes. And she was going on and on and sobbing and then she's, and finally she said, I called you because I knew you were the only person I know who suffers as much as I do. You see, this is how much of a support, you know, any one of us can be. And it's not because, oh, you know, oh, you're so great. You never suffer. Oh, you've overcome all these things. And then it's sort of like, is that somebody you can relate to? No, the person you can relate to and, you know, I was trying to talk about this the

[23:34]

other morning at our Suzuki Roshi memorial service. The person you can relate to is somebody who's willing to be who they are, you know, somebody who can be themselves and they're really comfortable being themselves. And it means, you know, you also have permission to be yourself and you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be impeccable. You see. And this is also, you see, true of the food or the cooking or whatever it is we're doing. So on the other hand, you see, we have another mode, another potential kind of mode or way of being, not to see with ordinary eyes, not to think with ordinary mind and to, in some sense, to begin to know and express our heart. Something basic, you know, fundamental about our heart, the heart of our being, our essence.

[24:38]

And so literally we do things out of love or compassion or kindness and it's because it's what we want to do. There's a joy in working hard. There's a joy in offering things. So this is another side and it's not that we get some, you know, great accomplishment and we get some great praise or we're finally, you know, good enough. But we make our wholehearted effort and we offer it to the world, to our friends, to our family. So recently I was reading a piece about creativity in a sense and, you know, pointing out this kind of difference like Van Gogh, who in the last 70 days of his life did more than 40 paintings. It's a lot of paintings, right? I mean, we're talking about somebody who's really driven to try to produce something,

[25:45]

you know, that's good enough, you know, that somehow will, and all the time he's going more and more crazy. Why aren't any of those paintings good enough? You know, why does he, you know, there's something there, there's an urge to keep doing, you know, another one, another one. And this is contrasted with a 17th century Chinese painter named Kung Hsian who said that little by little is better than more and more. This is the advanced stage of a painter. When you're worried about making too many paintings, you'll make a good painting. Being clever is not as good as being dull. The uses of cleverness can be observed in a glance, but apparent dullness can embody

[26:49]

infinite limitless flavor. So, in this sense, the question, you know, is, you know, can we, you know, at least for a little while, turn off, in a sense, turn off our judging mind or soften our judging mind and actually experience something, you know, to experience a potato or a flavor or a taste or an inhalation, exhalation, to have a cup of tea, to feel our own body, to know our being, you know, in this kind of dullness and to know the infinite flavor that's in the dullness of sitting still or, you know, eating or anything that we do, which is so ordinary. But, when it's received in this way and honored or respected, then we have this infinite or limitless kind of flavor.

[27:50]

And the thing that is, you know, really dramatic and exciting and dynamic or, in this case, what he calls clever, it just lasts for a moment. It was, you know, it's sort of, it's a flash in the pan. It reminds me a little bit of those spanakopitas that I've had in restaurants that have so much nutmeg in them. It's very clever to put in all that nutmeg. But that's that. And then it all just tastes like nutmeg. And when you don't, when you just put in a little bit, you have many more subtle flavors, other things that you can taste, which are otherwise just covered up by the nutmeg. Or, if you're seasoning a dish and you, if you want to, if you're adding oregano and you put in the oregano until it tastes like oregano, what happened to all the other flavors? That was clever, wasn't it? So we try in our lives to get these sort of things that sort of like, oh, now it looks

[28:53]

like something. Now it amounts to something. And it's a kind of momentary thing. And, you know, and then we lose the subtlety and we lose this kind of wide, the depth and profundity of flavor and taste in our life. So I want to talk just a little bit more about, you know, knowing things. In some way, we'd all like to be known, to be heard, to be appreciated, to be respected. But again, to come back to the earlier story, who is it that's not doing that? Who is it that's not hearing, not knowing, not appreciating, not respecting? Is it really somebody outside? Or is it our own inner critic and judge? So you know, each of us is also the person who has to know things, to actually taste things, to taste a radish or to taste and know our breath.

[29:58]

And when we're willing to do that, then we feel good. We feel known because our breath is known, our arm is known, our thought is known. And we can even, in that sense, know our inner judge or inner critic, you know. And we listen to that voice and we don't have to say, you know, we don't have to get in a big fight and say, shut up. And we also don't have to say, oh yes, yes, you're absolutely right, of course, yes, I need to try harder. I'm such a mess now, I really need to work on this, yes, you're right. So we don't have to either, you know, fight or agree, you know. And we don't have to, so just because we hear this thought that judges us, we don't have to say shut up and we don't have to obey instantly, as though this was some, you know, emperor. As though we were in this sort of hierarchical, you know, police state of the mind. We can listen to that voice too and we can allow that voice to be known but not, it doesn't

[31:05]

mean we have to, you know, agree. We don't have to agree or disagree. Dogen says, if you're getting into an argument, don't try to defeat the other person. But not defeating the other person doesn't mean you have to abandon your point of view. Again, you try to express yourself sincerely but it doesn't mean proving the other person wrong. You also try to listen carefully to understand. See, and this is in our own inner dynamic too. So we're also the person who needs to, you know, listen so that we can be heard, so that we hear our feelings and hear our thoughts and know our being. And we hear, listen to what's going on. And, you know, to respect things or appreciate things means we have to in some, you know,

[32:21]

it's a practice. It's a practice to do this. Something you can actually, you know, practice doing. In that sense, Dogen says, you know, usually our mind in that sense is kind of stained. We have our likes and our dislikes and our mind is colored already. So we right away, if it's somebody we don't like, then we can't see virtue in that person because we don't like them. And if it's somebody we like, we tend not to find any fault with them. But Dogen then says, if you, when your mind is unstained, then you see somebody for the first time and you don't think about whether you like them or not. So in cooking, Dogen says, the essential point in cooking is to arouse or awaken a sincere and wholehearted mind. Sincere and wholehearted. Sincere and wholehearted means each thing that you're working with, you can touch and

[33:29]

know and be with. And it doesn't have to be better, you know, you're not, and he says then you don't need to get, you know, discouraged when the ingredients aren't that good. You don't need to be overjoyed when you have really great ingredients. Just each thing that comes along, you try to handle with some care, with some sincerity and wholeheartedness. This is each person too. You know, or our breath, or our thought, or our judge, or our critic. And to handle with wholeheartedness and sincerity doesn't mean we can't throw something out. But because you throw it out, it doesn't mean like, you scum, get out of here. You know, you put it in the trash. But you don't have to call it a name, you know, when you do that. I don't think so. This is our usual way of thinking that, you know, we decide, we decide someone is, we

[34:31]

like someone or don't like someone and then, then consequently, you know, or we decide somebody is a good person or somebody is a bad person. If they're a bad person, we get to treat them like shit. If they're a bad person, we can put them in prison, we can abuse them, we can do all kinds of stuff to them. We can treat them like animals. If they're a good person, then we can, you know, do all these other things to them. And, you know, life is not, you know, that simple. Because we're also a good person and a bad person. And the good person and the bad person equally need to be known and heard and respected and appreciated and received. You know, we also, so we have this, we have this capacity to know and receive our life. And to respond to things from our, you know, from the depth of our being, the profundity of our being, from our heart.

[35:32]

So, in a certain sense, you know, in our tradition of the Soto Zen School, we can do this because we're already enlightened. See, we already, you don't have to worry about it. We're already enlightened. We're already, we're already fully human. We're already on the path. We're already in the midst of the Buddha way, what we say, the Buddha way. You don't need to do anything to prove, you know, that you've gotten there. In other words, you know, we're already all worthy of being loved or respected or appreciated. Even though we have problems, we have faults. We're careless. We're reckless. We're stupid. We're insensitive. And, but that doesn't mean that we're not worthy of being loved, appreciated, you know, respected, listened to, known. In fact, that's what helps us, right? And we can be the person who listens and knows. We don't have to just sort of try to get that from somebody else.

[36:40]

Do you understand? Each of us can do that because we're all capable of that. If I'm quiet for a minute, then you can hear the crickets. And it, you know, resonates in your being without how you're having to do anything. And you might think, oh, it's just crickets. Or you might think how nice. But if you just listen to the sound, you know that life is good.

[37:42]

You know, you know something about the inherent goodness of life, of your life. You know, just listening to a sound of cricket. The sound of the crickets is pretty dull. Not very clever. You know, my words, I talk, and it's kind of clever, you know. But not as good as the sound of the crickets, you see. Or if you're over by the creek, you can sort of hear the creek back there. So I'll give you, leave you with one last poem, which I like, which expresses this kind of feeling, you know.

[38:45]

Actually, there's a couple of poems I can leave you with. One is a Spanish poet. And his poem goes like this. Sometimes I feel my ship has struck something deep beneath the surface. And nothing happens. Nothing, silence, waves, crickets. Nothing happens or has everything happened. And we sit here silently in the new life. So that is that feeling of like, we're trying to get somewhere. We're doing it wrong. You know, somebody in our Zen Yoga workshop a couple of weeks ago said, you know, I realized something.

[39:47]

I realized it's really very simple. All of my anger and greed and frustration and hatred and, you know, and fear and worry, it's all, it has just one source. The bad news is that this one source is that I'm not getting what I want. So that's, you know, our ship. We're going in a certain direction and not getting what we want. My ship has struck something deep beneath the surface and we're not going forward anymore. So is this now a big problem or, you know, nothing is happening or we sit in here calmly in the new life. Another, recently I was talking with some monks from England and their teacher has a saying he likes. He says, well, just don't make a problem of it.

[40:48]

That's sort of like this poem, isn't it? Just don't, well, don't make a problem of it. So you have these problems. Well, don't make a problem of it. And anyway, the other poem is by, Dogen quotes it in the instructions to the cook. He says, with one word, three words, five or seven, nothing in the universe can be completely described. Night advances, the full moon falls and sinks into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you've been searching for is everywhere. But you can see for, for the black dragon jewel to be everywhere, you, your own awareness has to receive and listen and touch and know your experience

[41:51]

as though it was a jewel. Even though with the ordinary mind, it's just a jewel. Sweeping or walking or eating or talking or bathing. So I hope you can know and appreciate this treasure. I'd like to make a brief announcement which I make at the end of these talks, which is to remind you that the area right outside the dining room is silent. After 845 at night. So when you're leaving, please try to keep quiet in this area and go to a little bit of a distance before you start talking. Also, when we move chairs around in this room and rearrange the furniture, try to be a little bit, just a little quiet, careful as picking them up, chairs up and putting them down and just noisily shoving them around. Okay.

[42:46]

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