I thought about what to talk about for this talk because it was said to be, you know, the meeting of Buddhism and American culture, the arts. And I'm kind of, even though I haven't lived at Zen Center since, oh, 1986 or 7, something like that, and when I lived at Zen Center, I didn't go to the movies much and I didn't look at magazines much and it's still kind of like that. I read the morning paper. But I was reminded of this recently, so I don't know much about the impact of Buddhism on American culture because I feel like I don't know much about American culture. I was reminded of this recently because, for instance, there was a producer on Fresh Air talking to Jerry Gross on, you know, KQED FM and he said, well, all the movies now,

[01:08]

they all refer back to Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and, you know, like I have never seen Mean Streets. How would I, you know, and then let alone all the other movies and how would I know what they all refer back to? You know, but there's somebody who obviously knows something at least about movies. So clearly all I can talk about is, I do know, what I know something about is the impact of Buddhist practice on me and on me, specifically on me as a, so to speak, artist. And usually I don't think of myself as an artist, but you see, somehow I got invited to as part of this series. So here I am. To start with, I wanted to talk about cooking because that was the way I started being an artist. If you can call cooking, you know, nowadays you can, right, because there's all these

[02:11]

celebrity chefs. Even though people have been cooking for years and a lot of you must cook at home, you usually don't get in the newspapers and you have to charge people money for it to get in the newspapers, you know, and to have publicity. But anyway, I started cooking at Tassajara in 1966 and I think when I started cooking, I wanted to impress and astound people with food. I thought that would be a really nice, good thing to do. I mean, like, I thought it would do something for me if I could impress and astound them with food. So you make, you try to make things that are impressive and astounding. And after about two years of that, it began to occur to me that maybe the thing to do was to delight and please and satisfy people with food rather than astounding them.

[03:12]

Do you know the difference? You know, I've decided it would be nice to nourish people. And the thing about astounding and delighting people is it also has to do with proving your self-worth. So I think, you know, it's very tempting as an artist to try to prove your self-worth through your art. And then you're only as good, of course, as your last piece, your last work. And then this is, so you're inherently, you're not worth very much. And you have to do bigger and better things to prove your worth. And that lasts for a couple minutes and then you have to do something else. And of course, the classic example of this is Vincent van Gogh, who in the last six weeks or six months of his life made 72 paintings or something, you know, something just staggering. What was he doing? And people say he, people feel that van Gogh was a genius, but also he was somebody who,

[04:18]

depending on how you want to describe it, but he's somebody who, from his own point of view at least, wasn't worth very much. And then he had to, so he had to put himself down severely and then create these things from a very put-down kind of place. He had to create, you know, these things would burst out and overcome this self-loathing and everything and manifest in the world. And then there's tremendous pressure down again. And Morris Berman in a book I like called Coming to Our Senses, he describes this as the basic mode of Western creativity, where creativity comes out of this kind of, it's not exactly repression, but it's a fairly extreme sort of self-loathing or putting yourself down. And then you have to prove something by your art, by your creativity. And for me, it meant that if I could succeed at that, I thought that if people really loved

[05:24]

my food and cooking, then they would love me. And then if they loved me, it would be all right for me to love me. And then I could stop then hating myself and having to, do you understand, make a good work to prove that actually I was worth something. So there's a whole dynamic that goes on with that kind of creativity, in my experience. And you spend a lot of time being severely depressed and having to generate something out of that place. And that, in some ways, that's what Buddhism describes as samsara, the world of suffering. And it's the world of suffering because, not because some, you know, there are some great works of art that come out of that, right? You can look at Van Gogh and say how wonderful, and then lots of times people produce things

[06:25]

from this place that are pretty astounding. But it's samsara because, at least for the artist, you never can get out, it's very hard to get out of the dynamic, no matter how creative you are, you end up back in this place of self-loathing and depression and not liking yourself and feeling, I've done nothing, my life is meaningless. And you're back again at the start. And you can't ever like yourself in that sort of place, so you have to do something to prove you're likable and lovable and so on. But nothing is ever good enough, so you never measure up finally to where you could at last be kind and good to yourself and appreciate yourself and love yourself, do you understand? So Van Gogh is this sort of Western example of this, and then this also means you have to do things that are very powerful, okay? That will grab people's attention.

[07:28]

And there was a Chinese landscape painter who was commenting on this kind of art and he said that cleverness or creativity soon exhausts itself. And apparent plainness has endless, infinite possibilities. So this is the, and Morris Berman in this book describes how he was at the Van Gogh exhibit I think in Washington, D.C., and after about an hour he couldn't take it anymore. It's all so intense. And he had to get away from that kind of intensity, and he walked out into this room full of Chinese landscape paintings, and he felt so wonderful. And so, like he could breathe again, and like he could relax. And so he quoted this Chinese painter who said, the apparent plainness has tremendous possibilities, infinite characteristics.

[08:31]

So then in cooking, it's more what one begins to cook, I think. And what I found myself doing is more, instead of cooking to prove yourself worth, one begins to cook to express oneself, or express what we say in Zen, express one's true nature. So the activity is just an expression of oneself and one's being, and one's deep wishes. And one's wish in that sense becomes then to satisfy and bring delight and pleasure, but it doesn't have to do with astounding people anymore, or proving yourself. Not in the same way anyway. And this is interesting because it's also a characteristic of Asian cuisines that

[09:42]

traditionally there's the five flavors of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and peppery, or pungent. And Asian cuisine adds a sixth flavor called plain. So this means that the Western idea of a meal is to create this big event, we call it the entree, right? And then to get ready for the entree, you have to have these warm-up acts or hors d'oeuvres. And it's like going to the theater or a rock concert where these warm-up acts, and the warm-up acts have to be kind of mediocre. It's part of the deal that the warm-up things are mediocre, so that when you finally get to the main event, you go, oh God, at last, this was worth waiting for. And isn't this great? And it's the same way with our meals. When you go out to a restaurant, oftentimes the bread and the soup and the various appetizers aren't so good, and then you have the entree and it's pretty good. And this is quite different than the Asian idea of a meal, is you have white rice,

[10:46]

which is plain taste. And then you might have, especially like Indian cuisine, you can have two different curries and three different chutneys and some coconut and some roasted cashews. And you go from a plain taste, it's like home. And home should be something that is, home should be plain in this kind of idea. Home is safe and plain, and you don't have to worry about being entertained when you're at home. And you actually can be home because nothing is assailing you. Nothing is bombarding you. This is home. And then from home, you can go and have something salty and something sweet and sour and something hot and peppery and something spicy, and then you can come back home. And so a meal is more, and actually it ends up being quite interesting because not only does the plain taste give you a sort of home, or in a certain sense,

[11:48]

refreshing your palate, but it also means that the meal actually ends up being more interesting. So if you have two curries and three chutneys, you can taste one curry with each of the different chutneys, and then some with the roasted cashews and some without. And pretty soon, every bite of your meal potentially could be a different flavor and taste, as opposed to if you have an entree, bite after bite, it still tastes like steak. It all tastes the same. And we say, oh, isn't that good? And then we say at the end of the meal, oh gosh, I had that Chinese food and I had to eat again in two hours. But that's the point. Your digestive system hasn't been overwhelmed in disluckishness with this huge entree. Our idea then of a great meal is you get overwhelmed in disluckishness. And wasn't that something? And thank God I don't have any energy anymore.

[12:51]

And this Asian idea is like, well, let's eat some things and let's keep our digestive vitality and let's be hungry again in a little while. And let's not be bombarded into submission, into sluggishness. So anyway, this has to do with this. So I think there's some appreciation of plainness is part of what happened for me. And this also comes up in things like not so long ago, a couple of years ago, it's been a couple of years now. I went to a friend's house. I had been invited to another chef's house for dinner and I hadn't met this chef. So I took along two 10-year-old California wines, which I gave him at the beginning of the evening. And he kind of gestured to his mantelpiece where he had two 20-year-old Bordeaux's. And so I liked him right away. But the nicest part of that evening was our appetizers. And what

[13:58]

we had for appetizers was these platters of radishes. And they still had on their little rootlets and their little stems. And you could have a plain radish or you could have a radish with sweet butter or radish with salt or radish with sweet butter and salt. And he served it with the sparkling apple cider from France, which if you're familiar with it, you know, slightly alcoholic. So it's a little sweet, a little bitter, a little bubbly. And the radish is hot and spicy and the butter is sort of creamy and greasy and the salt is salty. And so you get all the flavors. And this also has to do with being able to appreciate something. So when somebody is not so experienced as an artist, I think, or as a cook, you know, you have to make the radishes into something worth eating. You have to improve on the radishes. And when somebody becomes an artist or, you know, has more confidence as a cook, then you can just serve radishes because, you know,

[15:01]

radishes are already good. Radishes are, you can already appreciate. So here was somebody who could already appreciate, appreciated radishes. They're really beautiful. They're red. And these were red and some of them are red and white. And some of them are round and some of them are sort of more longer, narrower shape. And when you can appreciate something so simple, then a lot of things, you can suddenly appreciate a lot of things. Instead of like, I'm not going to appreciate it unless it's really good, unless it's really great. And I'm going to withhold appreciation. And if you start doing that, then you'll be like, how do you ever appreciate yourself? Because you yourself are not always any better than the radish. You yourself are sometimes like a piece of leftover something. And do you appreciate leftovers or do you all have to, or do you, is it only when you're a, you know, a giant steak that you're worth appreciating, that you've

[16:05]

produced a masterpiece, now you can be appreciated. So, you know, I think, you know, for me, this shift also has to do with being able to appreciate smaller things, smaller and smaller things, more and more ordinary things, whether it's a radish or oneself under a variety of circumstances where you're not always at your best. And this also has to do with, for me, it had to do with shifting my focus from, I thought when I started to cook, it was about, the cooking was about learning the rules and following them. So I used to see these charts, marjoram goes with, you know, pasta, chicken. I don't even know what those charts say anymore. And basil goes with. And then I thought you had to memorize those things, right? And I thought you had to follow the directions. And I didn't realize you could just cook. So I remember, like, I looked up, like, how do you,

[17:11]

do you want to know how to cook spinach? Like it's, most of the cookbooks don't tell you how to cook spinach. I don't know, you're supposed to intuit it or something, right? And most of the cookbooks, because this is not very creative, right? It's not very creative to take spinach and wash it and put it in a pot and turn the heat on underneath. This is not called creativity. So you don't put it in a cookbook. So I didn't understand. You just take the spinach and put it in the pot and cook it. No, I had to find out by just putting it in a pot and cooking it. And the recipe said spinach and bananas, you know, a spinach and banana pie or something. And it's, you know, a spinach and cheese tart and a spinach souffle. And there's no recipe for just cook the spinach. And so little by little, I found out that cooking, that I could actually cook from my own experience instead of cooking by following the directions. And again, I think, you know, I think

[18:19]

this is true of anybody who, you know, cooks for a while. But it also has something to do with Buddhist practice about actually observing and knowing your own experience and following your own experience closely enough to be able to act on your experience rather than according to the rules and trusting your own experience deeply enough to act on it. And this came up when we wrote the Queen's Cookbook and I worked on, which I worked on with Deborah. And to give you an example, you know, a little background on this is when I did my first book, the Tathagatara Bread Book, Unknowns to Me, I left out all the articles and prepositions, all the articles and pronouns. Excuse me. You know, so it said things like, put bread on board and knead with hands. And this was the way we talked when, you know, when we were around Suzuki Roshi. We all ended up talking like this all the time. So we talked to, you know, a Japanese person who's

[19:24]

a neophyte in English. Put bread on board and knead with hands. And I noticed this 10 years, 15 years after the bread book came out in 1985, Shambhala asked me, would I revise the bread book for the 90s and beyond? And I said, sure. And he said, well, we'll pay you $300. I said, okay. And so I opened up the book and found out there was no articles or prepositions or pronouns. And I was aghast. But since then now, nobody had ever told me in 15 years. 15 years had gone by and nobody had said a thing. And when I turned the book into Shambhala, you know, he looked at it for five minutes and he said, oh, well, we'll print it. And, you know, it became this so-called underground bestseller or something. It was the Bible of bread making. It was one of the hundred books that was recommended to be in every

[20:25]

library in the country for, you know, 10 or 15 years. And it was written without the articles and pronouns. And I think, you know, some people read that and they thought there was some esoteric meaning. You know, this is a special direct language, you know, put bread on board and knead with hands. And I thought, yeah, okay. And that was probably part of its success. And all it was, was, you know, the fact that I was writing the way I was talking and I didn't even know it. Anyway, when we did the Greens cookbook, I edited the recipes that Deborah worked on. Deborah edited the recipes that I had worked on. Then we edited all the recipes together. Then we worked with a food editor for a month and whatever of the whole book word for word. And we made sure that Parmesan, every time Parmesan came up, it has a capital P because that's a place, Parmesan. And, you know, and then certain kinds of cheese, you have Monterey Jack and that's a capital M. And, you know, it's the Jack capital or not.

[21:26]

And you have to figure all these things out, you know. And then do you write one quarter with a one and a four or do you spell out one quarter and where do you do each? And then, you know, and so we decided in the directions it's one way and in the list of ingredients it's one way in the directions. So anyway, we worked on this for a month with the food editor. We send the book off to New York and it comes back a while later and has all these little press supply labels, little pink press supply labels that are sticking out the side of the manuscript. We couldn't believe it. Those are corrections, those little press supply labels. This was better worked on than any book I'd ever been involved in and it had more corrections. And the corrections were cook the onions until they're translucent and the little label would say, how long? And we'd given the person a clue, you know, you cook them until they're translucent. This is something you can see with your eyes. And so we put in, so we'd add in, you know, we were really annoyed,

[22:32]

but we put in cooked onions until they're translucent, about two to four minutes. It's sort of like, do you want to cook looking at your watch or looking at the onions? You know, and then we had seasoned to taste with vinegar and it would say, how much? So we put down, starting with a quarter of a teaspoon. So maybe that helped, you know, for people who are real like, whoa, I don't know anything. I don't know what to do. And then finally in the pasta section, and that was only, that's only like a quarter or third of the way through the book, but it said, cook the vegetables until they're as tender as you like. And it said, how long? How do we know? And, you know, we wanted to write back and say, lady, if you don't know what you like, I don't think we can explain it to you. Maybe you need to establish a standardized, you know, chew

[23:35]

that you can test vegetables with. But this led me to writing a kind of little prelude or introduction to the book, which was about trusting and developing your own sensibilities rather than cooking by the directions. That you can actually look at things, you can actually taste things, you can actually smell things, and you can actually then decide things, and you can know things from that. And then you can taste what things taste like, and then you can know what you want to put in a dish. And since then, now, when I teach cooking classes, I suggest to people, put in, when you make a dish, when you make a soup or a sauce or something, put in one ingredient at a time and taste what it does. And pretty soon, then, you develop your own sense, you develop your own, that's like your own vocabulary, your own dictionary. Then you know what onions do, and you know what garlic does,

[24:42]

and you know what wine does, and you know what the basil does, and you know what the oregano does, and you know what the parsley does. Because you know in your own taste and in your own experience what it does. Otherwise, everything gets in the pot, and then you go, my God, why does it taste like this? What can I do to fix it, to make it better? What does it need? But you haven't had the experience as you go along of finding out for yourself what each thing does. And the cookbooks don't tell you to do that. They just say, put in what we tell you with our directions in it, and it's going to be good, don't worry. And so, you know, the artist is in the same way, you know, somebody who's cooking. We tend to want the recipe because if we follow the recipe, then you can do what you've been told. And if it doesn't come out good, then you blame the recipe, right? Say, well, I did what I was told. I followed the recipe. It must not be a good recipe.

[25:43]

It's not my fault. And then if it comes out good, you say, oh, thank you. But, you know, this is the way our life goes. It's very hard to decide and to actually trust your own experience enough to say, I'll go along with this. I won't go along with this. I mean, the classic example is the, you know, the Germans saying, you know, we always refer back to Germany. I just did what I was told. That's what most of us do most of the time. We try to do the right thing, the thing that we were told to do. And it doesn't have to do with about trusting our own following and knowing our own experience closely enough that we can act on it and believe in it. Another sort of thing is, you know, related to that, I found out that enjoying one's food is really important.

[26:44]

So now my meditation retreats, I say, my meditation instruction for lunch is please enjoy your lunch. Please enjoy your food. And most of the time I try to let it go at that because if you tell people too much, then they start to work too hard at enjoying their food. And then if you're working too hard at enjoying it, you can't enjoy it because you're working too hard. You're trying too hard to enjoy it. But a lot of the time we're so busy, like doing what's going to get us through, we forget to enjoy something. So I tell people, please enjoy your food. And because actually if you enjoy something, and we have, you know, for our culture, American culture, I think generally we all know that whether it's Puritan or whatever it is, American culture, we're not very good at enjoying things. We're supposed to produce something. We're supposed to accomplish something. We're supposed to have something to show for it. And so just to enjoy eating though,

[27:48]

you actually have to pay attention to what you're eating. You actually have to be able to taste what's in your mouth. Because if you're not tasting what's in your mouth, you can't enjoy it. So you already are practicing concentration and mindfulness and attention. And then, you know, just by enjoying something. See, that's pretty good. And then you also have to really pay attention or, you know, if you get greedy, now you're projecting yourself into the future. How do I get more? You're thinking like, how do I get more? This is really good. So now you've lost and you're no longer paying attention to it. And now you're not enjoying it either because you're busy being greedy. So it's actually to enjoy eating, you know, to enjoy your meal. This is not a simple practice. I presented it so it's a simple practice. I say to people, please enjoy your food. Sometimes I explain, you know, a little more of what I just said to you. But this is interesting, you see,

[28:50]

to actually enjoy something. And something comes out of that enjoyment, which is, you know, our real nourishment. And interestingly, over the years and working with people, the people who have the least enjoyment of food, you know, are the people with the most severe weight problems. They're the people who enjoy the food. I thought maybe they were, people are overweight because they enjoy the food so much. But no, it's because they don't enjoy food at all. It's just the opposite of what you might think. And just to finish that up, I did, when I was doing a workshop last February, I decided to do this meditation. Maybe some of you have had that meditation where you meditate on eating a raisin. And at Vipassana retreats, you pass out raisins and you get a few in your hand and say, don't eat it yet. Just look at it now. And then after a while,

[29:51]

after looking at it, and then, you know, then you get to like smell it and then you can put it in your mouth. Don't chew it yet, just feel it. And then finally, you can chew your raisin and swallow it. You're supposed to pay attention and enjoy it and all this stuff. So I thought, well, let's try it. Like, okay, anybody can do this raisins. Let's do it with Ruffles potato chips. And sure enough, it was interesting, but here's a room of 15 people and nobody enjoyed the potato chip. And that when we actually tasted the potato chip with awareness, it just disappeared. There wasn't any flavor to it. There was nothing there. And so the only way you can enjoy potato chips is to not pay attention to them. This is the pinnacle of, you know, American marketing to manufacture something that can't be enjoyed except by not paying attention to it. So if you just eat it and you're busy watching television, basically paying attention to something else, then you can eat lots of potato chips.

[30:53]

And the reason you eat more of them is because they're so inherently unsatisfying and incapable of producing any enjoyment. And so you keep eating another one. Maybe the next one is going to give you some enjoyment. No, but when you actually taste it with mindfulness, there's this little hit of grease and salt and then it's gone. And you're like, God, there was nothing there. And so I advise people anyway, you know, eat with, enjoy your food. But anyway. So for me, this is, so we're shifting from, you know, astounding and impressing and trying to prove one's self-worth to appreciating plainness and simple things and observing and knowing things for oneself and enjoying one's experience, trying to know and enjoy one's experience

[31:53]

and trusting and developing your own sensibilities. What's salty? What is sweet? What is sour? What is peppery? What is satisfying? What isn't? What is enjoyable? What isn't? What tastes good? What doesn't? And so it's really getting to know one's own being, one's own body and mind. Anyway, I want to talk also a little bit about my photography. I started taking pictures when I got out of Zen Center, by and large. I'd taken a few pictures while I was still at Zen Center, but by and large, I took pictures, I've taken pictures since I got out of Zen Center. And I've taken pictures And I don't know that, you know, to me taking pictures isn't much of being an artist, you don't really do much, you know, you hold the camera there and click it, I mean, you know.

[32:56]

And then I take it to somebody else and they print it and develop it, you know, so a lot of the art is really in the printing and developing, but it's just these big machines anyway, right? And they just spin a few dials. So I don't know if it has anything to do with art, but it's been kind of interesting how it happens. And one of the things that I found out after a while, I found that there was a difference between taking a picture of a thing and taking a picture where you actually look at what's in the viewfinder. This is very much like what I've been talking to you about cooking. But, for a long time, if you want to take a picture of a statue, I've taken a lot of pictures of statues, most of the pictures you see of statues, people take the whole statue. It's this thing there, and so you want to take a picture of it, you put the thing in the picture, the whole thing in the picture.

[33:59]

And then you concentrate on getting it lit, you know, right, everything. And then when you do that, though, you don't get any detail in the picture. And something happens in the picture which is different than, you know, the picture does something to things, so the picture doesn't look like the original thing. And so what I found is, if I actually look at it, then I can take just the head, or the upper part of the body, or just the head and the gesture. And oftentimes, those pictures, then, are more powerful than if you take the whole statue. And the same thing, I found, if I want to take a picture of a flower, you start looking at the background, too. You look at everything that's in the, you actually look at what's in the little square instead of thinking, like, I point the camera at this thing I want to take a picture of and take the picture.

[35:01]

So I actually started looking at what's in the viewfinder. This was a revelation. It's pretty interesting. It's so simple. And yet, most of us, we take a lot of pictures without actually looking at what's in the picture, what the camera is actually saying. We point the camera at something we think is there. So, as soon as you start looking at the whole thing, then the picture, the flower that you're going to take can be anywhere in the picture. It doesn't have to be, like, right in the middle. So the flower can be off to the left, it can be off to the right, the lower left, the upper right. The flower could be in any number of places. And then the background becomes important. It's a little bit like how things taste, you know, compared to plain taste. So it's how things look on the background. And then the background is just as important as the foreground. So, I started taking pictures of, and then I, you know, so I stopped taking pictures

[36:19]

of things, and I started taking pictures of images, or creating images, or framing images. And so, the whole, it all changed what I would take pictures of. And then I have a whole, and then I have pictures like of, you know, sky, where there's sort of nothing going on. Or, you know, a whole picture of just clouds. Or like sand on the beach, where it's just like it's been walked on a lot. And there's nothing, there's no thing in the picture. It's just like, it's like taking a picture of a cloth, it's like fabric. And, to me, so to me I think this very much comes out of my meditation experience. And also this sort of notion of plainness.

[37:23]

And actually being able to be touched by something very simple. Simplicity, simple things in our life. So, you know, one or two grasses become interesting. A couple of footsteps in the sand become interesting. The way the light hits on something becomes interesting. And then what I found myself doing, and taking the pictures for me is a kind of meditation. Because I have to adjust the camera, I have a kind of, you know, what nowadays is kind of a, nowadays you can get automatic focusing, automatic this, my camera is like a minimum of automatic. It's like a few years old now. So I like it like that.

[38:25]

So I have to fiddle with it. And if I want, and I don't have a zoom lens, so if I want to I have to change lenses. This takes a little while too, it's kind of nice. And then I have to look, I have, so then I spend a certain amount of time with the object usually. And it takes a while of spending time with the object for pictures to come out of it. And then it has to do with breathing. And I become, when I'm taking a picture I become very aware of my breath. And then a lot of the time when I actually take the picture I close my eyes. And instead of actually looking. So I can hold the camera very still and at the last moment I close my eyes. And then what I do is I sit with the pictures and I decided to, I decided to put the pictures

[39:35]

on cards because, and this had to do again, this to me is partly coming out of practice because, you know, I've decided not to put, not to manufacture my pictures. You know, like you have them printed on cards and then, so my pictures basically only get sold to people that I meet for the most part. They're in a few stores but mostly the pictures only get sold to people I meet. Most of the pictures are sold person to person. So this to me has something to do with the fact that I want to convey something to somebody. It's a little bit like in Japan there's restaurants where, you know, you only get to go if they know you. So it's a different idea than here. Here if you have money you're supposed to be able to, you know, go into any restaurant and get them to feed you. But in Japan there's these restaurants where there's no sign up and you wouldn't know it's

[40:40]

a restaurant. You'd have to be a little nosy to find out it's a restaurant. But if you just happen to be that nosy and walk in and say, look, gee, this looks like a restaurant and I wonder if I could have dinner, and then they say, no, this isn't a restaurant. No, we're not serving dinner. And then the only way you can get in is like if somebody that they know invites you, and then if they like you, then you can be invited or then you can call them and, you know, if you've gotten introduced. So it has to do with a certain connection, there's a certain connection there. And so it's not just art that goes out into the, it's not just something that goes out into the world anonymously and anybody can get it. The artist Hundertwasser is a little bit like this, you know, he wants to know and he, if you buy any of his paintings, you have to, you have to agree that if you sell it you will let him know who you sell it to.

[41:41]

So he has a list of who owns every one of his prints and paintings. He wants to know that. But anyway, I figured the best way to share the images with people is to put them on little cards, and because little cards sort of frames the picture, and then, and then I sit and look at the picture, and I let the picture, and I put the picture inside me. This is in order to title it. So I sit and I let the image be inside my body. So it's a kind of a meditation, you know, to have the image be in my hand or in my chest

[42:43]

or in my stomach, and to feel the image inside. So I create, I only do particular kinds of images to, to see if it can awaken something in people, okay? Now there's one other thing I wanted to talk about tonight. So anyway, just to finish up on that though, to me that has something to do with Buddhism and American culture, and this is to that, you know, I think Buddhist art and people who have been influenced by Buddhist practice, there's going to be more art and more things that are more everyday, more practical, and more sort of home-scale like this.

[43:43]

You know, less sort of mass-produced, mass-marketing, you know, being famous through television and media, and for me I would rather just connect with, you know, people I meet. I don't want to worry about connecting with people through some strange mass media sort of thing, you know, it's just not interesting to me. But this then is more like, I haven't been to Bali, but more like what people say about, you know, being in Bali where there's many more things that people do, which is everybody does art, and rather than the idea that there's only certain artists. So anyway, this brings me to the last thing I want to talk about, which is the idea, the notion about the inner critic, and hopefully Buddhism is a little useful for turning off

[44:50]

the inner critic. You know, the voice in us that says, this isn't going to be good enough, don't bother, don't even try, and you know, it happens to writers, it's called writer's block, sit there and the page stays empty, and anything you think of to say is not good enough, and anything you think of to draw is not good enough, and any music you might imagine is not good enough. So this is all part of that original, you know, that basic mode I started with, right? Of something not being good enough, and there's some part of us that's not saying it's not good enough, and finally there's some eruption out of that, that has to break through this tremendous criticism, which is the kind of genius of a Van Gogh, that something actually can break through finally. But for most of us, we get the critic and then nothing ever can break through, but this critic

[45:52]

is supposed to be the way to produce genius, the way to produce creativity, right? If you criticize yourself enough, then it's for your own good, right, that you're getting criticized. If you get criticized enough, then you'll, you know, you'll show them, so it's supposed to motivate you, this kind of criticism, and this is one of the basic sort of points in meditation is, how do you disregard this or how do you turn this off? Because otherwise, in meditation, you sit there and go like, God, I'm not getting anywhere, this is stupid, why am I spending my time sitting here? Not only that, my legs hurt, and you know, why don't you get out and do something, etc. So one has to learn, whether it's in meditation or whether it's writing or cooking or any

[46:57]

kind of art, one has to learn how to, in some way, turn off the critic. So that something can appear, you know, and so it actually is manifest in the world as opposed to something that's inside you that you just tell yourself is not good enough and you don't even show it to the world. And this happens, like, to cook, you would say, oh, that poppy seed cake, 1976, and she dated everything on her menu, you know, she knew right when, you know, and then, you know, it was sort of like, oh, your Green's Cookbook, that's not cutting edge, and we try to say, lady, this isn't about cutting edge, this is about classic cuisine, this is just good things, we're not talking about selling this to people because it's the cutting edge. So I don't, I don't have any, you know, I think, to a certain extent, I don't, I don't

[48:22]

think, how to work with one's critic is, of course, pivotal in all this, and there's not some simple sort of piece of advice, but for the most part, it actually turns out that you can talk to your own critic, and, you know, say something like, excuse me, but this isn't helpful, and I'd like you to go into the other room for a little while and just let me do something, and I promise you, when I'm done, you can come back and look at it, and I'll show it to you. The critic gets nervous if you tell the critic, like, I want you out of here, and I don't want to ever see you again. This makes the critic very nervous, because the critic is then afraid that, you know, it's going to get offed, because it's only life is through you, and if you don't give it any access, it's going to try to stay around every instant, because it knows how much you hate it, and want to get rid of it.

[49:22]

So the strategy, you know, the general sort of Buddhist strategy is, look, I can appreciate the usefulness of some criticism, but if it's all the time, I can't get any work done. So let's work this out, okay? Give me some space, half hour, hour, and then I invite you back, I'll look at it, you can look at it, we'll look at it together, you can tell me whatever you want to tell me, but at least give me, and you can start with five minutes, or three minutes. Write something down and say, okay, promised you I'd let you look at it, okay, now look at it, now be critical. So you have to somehow work this out so that you get some space with your critic. And artists, you know, I've talked to, have their own devices for this. And sometimes it's, you know, it's one of the reasons I think why, you know, a lot of

[50:26]

artists are, you know, historically, and at least in the Western world, a lot of artists are alcoholic, and not very happy people, and not very, people who are very difficult to live with, and so on. And of course, maybe if they weren't there, you know, their art would disappear. Because a certain kind of art does come out of this dynamic of it's not good enough, and then finally having to prove yourself or put something out there that overcomes that. But I think from, you know, as a Buddhist, certainly one is interested, a Buddhist practitioner, one becomes interested in the activity that can arise when you, when there's no, when you're not criticizing yourself constantly. And then what can come out of your being in that case? And it doesn't have the same kind of genius or force or power, but there is a kind of

[51:35]

sweetness to it, and a kind of compassion and a warmheartedness, and a kind of joy and delight, which doesn't come out of the intense works of art. Well, I think that's about all I want to say in my talk tonight, okay? And so I'm going to stop now, thank you. If you'd like to ask any questions or if you want to talk, you want to stretch, stand up, sit down, whatever, or if some of you need to go someplace, please. But if you have any questions, I'll, you know, we have a few more minutes according to our schedule tonight, where we can talk some more if you want. Yes, ma'am? I have a question. You were talking about an alternative game that's one that I feel like you were saying.

[52:38]

Berman. Morris Berman. Morris Berman. And that book is called Coming to Our Senses. He wrote another book, which I think was, perhaps, was it The Enchanted Forest? I can't remember, but somebody said, oh, that one, the other book is even better. But anyway, I like that one, Coming to Our Senses. And he applies this same, he describes Western culture as being basically organized around this principle of the critic putting things down and establishing that kind of hierarchical order in the world and in oneself. And then that which has been put down is always trying to transcend, transcend, and when you transcend, then there's this big explosion of creativity. And then, usually that gets then put down again in this ongoing hierarchical order. And this is different than the basic, than this mode of actually being in your, trusting

[53:40]

and developing your own sensibilities. Knowing and, you know, tasting and knowing for yourself what's what. And acting on that rather than continuing to buy into the hierarchical order, which is something in the society and then something in you. And he does various historical analysis with that too, which are interesting. I thought it was interesting. I'm not a big fan of books, so, but certain ones I find interesting. Anything else? Yes? Where can I see your photographs? Your photographs? Oh, my photographs. I did bring some cards tonight and I put them out on the, out there, so, if you're interested you can look at them.

[54:40]

Every so often I get shows up, but, you know, photographs don't sell. You know, you put, good night, thank you. So, I found it's much better on cards, you know. I have so many photographs around the house, you know, matted and framed photographs. I'm going to save them until they become world famous, you know, and the price goes up. Maybe my ancestors, you know, in 50 or 100 years can sell them for the big, the big dollars. We knew him then. I don't know. Yes? Sometimes when we talk about creativity, I don't know if you've touched on it, we talk about painting or music, but, you know, it seems to me you're creative in all your activities when you're a waiter or organizing greens. You have a creative spirit. I wish I could apply that somehow to my daily life.

[55:43]

I guess I've sort of done that, but it's somehow, you know, like, it still doesn't seem to work very well, I don't know. But, yes? Is that because you're so creative in your life? Oh, my life? So that I can invent things? Well, it's, you know, to me it's very much in the mode of beginner's mind. I tell people this over and over again. Suzuki Roshi and Zen taught us beginner's mind and to practice beginner's mind, which is to be finding out and to be creating and doing things in the present time. And I show people sometimes how I cut vegetables, and I can cut vegetables very fast, and it's not because anybody showed me anything. It's because even now when I cut vegetables, I'm finding out how to cut them. And it all comes out of finding out how to do it.

[56:48]

And if you're not finding out how to do something, then it's just a chore. It's the same thing you've done over and over again. And then you have to do something that supposedly you already know how to do, but you have to do it, you have to wash the lettuce, you have to cut the vegetables, you have to, and if it's, so when you do it without beginner's mind, then it's called a chore. When you can do it and be finding out how to do it and finding out what's going on in the present, and actually experiencing the present moment, then something creative comes out of it. And it's interesting and more fun that way than just doing chores all the time. Because most of our life, you know, it's, I mean, people talk about food, you know, lots of things people talk about as being creative, and sometimes I wonder if there's any such thing as creativity. You know, people say, oh, you know, that food you cook is so creative. And most of cooking is, you know, washing and cutting and drying and sorting through these things. And, you know, you take the stems out from the leaves and the, you know, the dirt out

[57:53]

from the, you know, you have to get the grit out of there, and so you want the dirt out of the rice, and you want the, you know, so you have to, the stones out of the beans, and, you know, the carrot tops off the carrot, and so it's just a lot of sorting. You know, it's all that Persephone stuff, you know, to sort all these things and to clean all these things, and that's mostly what cooking is. It's not creativity. And most of art is like that, you know. You have to mix up the pool paints, you have to stretch the pool canvas until you become famous, and you say, oh, please, why don't you stretch my canvases for me, you know, like that sort of thing. And then, you know, you're really, so like, I'm just going to do the creative part now, you know. And, of course, the epitome of that finally becomes that, you know, who is that guy? You know, the Italian guy who just conceives of the work and then tells his Italian sculptors what to do. You know, what's his name? Kunz.

[58:53]

You know, the guy, the photographer out in West Marin sued him because he had the picture of the Basset Hounds or whatever it was on the bench, and this guy just got this postcard someplace that was Art Rogers' postcard and told his Italian, you know, sculptors, you know, make this. And then he sold them. He was selling them for $300,000 a piece. And the guy calls himself an artist, you know. So this is, and so that's really creative, isn't it? But I don't believe in that, you know, as being particularly creative. I don't know. I mean, so most of what goes on is just, it's just work, you know, and it's just feeling your way along and not being too critical too soon. Wayne Thiebold, is it Thiebold, the painter? Thiebo? Thie? Thiebo. There was a great article about him in the paper a while back. A friend of mine was just down at some gallery or something downtown and said, oh, they looked

[59:58]

at a little drawing of his and they thought, well, maybe they could buy it. It turned out it was $120,000, you know. But he said, I don't know what I'm doing. People don't believe me when I say this, but I don't know what I'm doing. I just fiddle around until I like something. But that's the same spirit, you know. It's not like, and you know, if he knew what he was doing, then, you know, he probably wouldn't be able to do it. But because he can bumble along and do things that, and he can do 99 things that don't interest him, then once in a while he does something that he really likes. So that's life, huh? But if all those things are, you know, but he actually puts them on the paper. He doesn't do the 99 things just in his head and wait for the hundreds to come out on the paper.

[61:02]

Yeah. I have a related question. When you did sensory stimulation and drank your food, mixing spices and flavors, it seemed to me that it might have played with the class exam that you're doing. Is this a part of your study? Could you comment about that? And then my second question, how do you feel about mental health? I enjoy it. Well, something like discipline and austerity, I feel like these things, the same with silence. I found it really interesting. A couple months ago at my retreat at Green Gulch, I was saying at the beginning of the

[62:12]

day, we practice silence. And then a little while later, some woman said to me, well, why do we practice silence? I thought that was really good. Like, who cares? You know, is silence more spiritual than sound? Is it more inherently holy somehow? And from that point of view, silence isn't any more spiritual or holy than sound is. And the point of practicing silence is so you can start to hear things. And this is the same with discipline or austerity. Because if you have some discipline, it takes discipline to enjoy your food or you get greedy. You have to have some basic sort of sense of austerity or you get involved in the food in a way that you don't enjoy it and it takes you over. And you're no longer enjoying it because you're consumed by it. So you need some discipline and austerity in order to have just a kind of natural enjoyment.

[63:15]

You need some restraint there. And the sound, you know, we all, for years, we thought, well, being silent is spiritual and holy, so then we made a point of not talking to one another. And so we didn't develop much in the way of communication skills. And for me, I thought, and I think a lot of us sort of thought that, well, if you practice meditation, all that stuff just goes away. You don't have to actually learn how to talk to anybody. You just meditate it away. And then, you know, you're not going to ever have to actually confront anybody, you know, or stand up to anybody. My God, that would be, oh, that wouldn't be spiritual now, would it? You know. So it turns out that, you know, the reason we're practicing silence is not so that, you know, because it's going to take care of all our problems and because it's more holy. It's because then we can understand, then we can listen more carefully and we hear better what we actually do say. And at some point, we understand what we need to say better

[64:16]

because we can reflect on it. We have some silence and we're not all the time constantly involved just in the words. So discipline and austerity is what, if you, you know, it's a kind of a tool in a certain way and it has a certain value. But if that's just the goal in and of itself, then from my point of view, it's a kind of mistake. Then, and you're not learning then, you know, much about the actual, the way, you know, and in that sense, the Zen tradition is like you empty things out and then because you learn how to empty things out, now you also then you turn around and learn how to create things. So you practice detachment, not so that you can endlessly be detached, but then you're supposed to, then you're said to, after you have, after you have some detachment, then you, if you just stick to detachment, now you're attached to your detachment.

[65:18]

So you want to let go of your detachment. So the sort of the, you know, the sort of humorous example of that is a friend of mine was in France at a session and they served wine at lunch. And so he had some wine and then he found that during the meditation that afternoon, he was sleepy. So the next day at lunch, he said, oh, no, thank you. When they served the wine and they said, don't be attached to not drinking. So all these things are very, you know, like, well, you have to sort them out. What is detachment? What is austerity? You know, which is which is which. But the classic sort of scheme is you develop detachment, then you have some detachment from that. And then you have some understanding about how to manifest things in the world, how to manifest yourself in the world, how to work with things in the world. And it's based on or grounded in some detachment, but a kind of detachment that you're not holding on to so that you can't,

[66:22]

so that you have this tremendous, you know, it's a kind of another kind of critic then over you. Anyway, that helps. So as far as wine goes, I know I am I've been I've enjoyed wine over the years and I have to I can't drink very much. And the older I get, the more I notice it affects me. So, again, you know, in some ways it's simpler if you just decide not to have alcohol. And taking out Han's precepts now. He says no alcohol for his his precept. So I'm still in the sort of Japanese Zen school fudging a bit there. So I enjoy a little wine. Yeah.

[67:33]

Well, should we stop anything else? Last chance. For now. Well, you can always keep it to yourself. OK, well, thank you. Have a good evening. If you'd like to see it. Next week, the next in the series is never over. And she'll be meeting on January 11th, not the 4th. We also anticipate that it's her only speaking time in the area. It'll be quite crowded. We'll be in the dining room and so come on. Thank you. Probably about 300 people. Maybe stay in the moment.

[68:27]

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