That's what happens in hot weather. It reminds me of when I came to Arizona. So that's a free association. So I did cut myself. It was the first morning of the first retreat. Fairly seriously, I had my finger pretty well back, but not quite enough, and so I kind of sliced the nail kind of right in line with the finger. So it's about a third of the nail. That's why you should never use a sharp knife. There were two doctors here, so I've been ministered to. I was pleased because one of the doctors

[01:03]

suggested that I take care of it about the way I would. We bandaged it up, and then I put a piece of rubber glove over it, taped that shut, and then just let it ooze for two days. And do what it wants, and you know, kind of knit and melt it out in all the pussies and stuff. And then I took it off this morning, and it was just fine. And I'm just fine, and so they said I didn't need to be airlifted any further. So I've had medical attention. But I was mentioning it now just to remind you, word of wise, word of caution to the wise, or word of wise to the cautious, that you might endeavor not to do this while you're here. And I did dispose of the fingernails,

[02:14]

so it's not going to be... I thought it was better that I do it rather than you. And I did it like the first morning, so kind of do it, get out of the way. Is this kind of form of expediency the other usual, or something more spiritual? I'm not sure. I think mine was kind of one of the uses, but it wasn't that loud. And... I thought I did pretty well. I did find some of my Chinese blood pills and Chinese shock pill

[03:18]

back in my cabin, and so I gave myself medication too. I have the yunan baiya, which is a Chinese herbal remedy for knife wounds, gunshot wounds, traumatic bleeding, hemorrhage, irrespective of their being serious or otherwise. In normal instances it's best to take it with wine. And now Dennis is down here, yeah. I've actually seen three or four doctors. So Denny looked at it this morning pretty well. Did you get a type of shock sometime around 5 or 6? No, I don't think so. No, my knives are very sharp, very clean. Well, I'll just go ahead and talk about some things, and then if you have some

[04:19]

other things to talk about or follow up to what I talk about, we'll do that. So I wanted to tell you a few stories, and those of you who have read my books may know all of them, but you wouldn't have heard them in person. So I'm going to So over the years, and partly because I've done classes, I think a lot about what I want to communicate to people and what to me has been important about cooking and Sam and so forth. So we're kind of starting with that and one of the

[05:23]

things, and I find stories useful, I spent a lot of years actually listening to fairly boring talks, so I decided I wanted to do talks that were me. So several years ago, I worked on the greens cookbook with Deborah, and we had worked on it quite a lot, and I edited her recipes and she edited mine, and we worked as a food editor for a month, and then we sent it in. So we thought we'd done a good job. And then we got back the manuscript with all these little pink precipitates sticking out the side of it for things that needed to be corrected. Scads of these things sticking out the side of the manuscript. So we were very surprised.

[06:24]

And most of them said, we were trying to give people instructions on how to cook, rather than numbers. And these are recipes, but some said cook the endings until they're translucent. Little pink label says how long. And Deborah and I were both very frustrated. Are people going to cook by looking at the clock or by looking at the onions? And then it would say season to taste with vinegar, and the little pink label would say how much. How are you going to season to taste if you don't season to taste? If you don't taste it. And at some point we were thinking, maybe there's a difference between New York and California. And Kelly and I were saying, maybe there's a difference between L.A. and Northern California. The East Coast seemed to be like, if you want to know how to

[07:28]

do something, you get an expert to tell you, and you do what they say. And then you too could cook like me. And most cookbooks are I'm a great chef, we have a great restaurant, and if you do what I tell you, then you too could produce masterpieces. This came up at one point. Somebody wanted to advertise one of my books. It said, Ed Brown would teach even inveterate meat eaters how to produce vegetarian masterpieces. And I said, no, that is not the idea of the tomato blueprints. We are not endeavoring to produce masterpieces, we're endeavoring to cook, relate to the food, and smell it, taste it, touch it, and dream up what to do with it. And not to turn it into some masterpiece that then we get accolades from. And finally, we got to the pasta section in the Greens Cookbook

[08:28]

and there was a recipe that said, cook the vegetables until they're as tender as you like. And the little note says, how long? And then it said, how do we know? And we just couldn't, you know. So I actually ended up writing a little introduction to the Greens Cookbook. Finally talking about cooking, as opposed to following recipes. And this has been very interesting because people and recipes do have a place, they're very useful. And on the other hand there's no recipe for being a father, or a mother, or a husband, or a wife. Most of what we do in our life, there's no recipe for it. And this is why in Zen school, in meditation, sit down in this posture and figure it out. And meditate. And you'll find

[09:31]

out how to meditate by meditating, not because you're good at following our directions. So it turns out that the way I cook is not so, you know, it's the same sort of sense of it's not like I'm going to give anybody a recipe. And so I tell people, if you want to cook, we'll go in the kitchen and cook. So what's the, and people have all these ideas about cooking and at some point it's like, well are you willing to go into the kitchen or not? In meditation are you going to go to the meditation hall or not? And it's not like and people think, well I should be good at it, I should be so do we want to limit ourselves to doing things, only the things that we're good at? And couldn't we sometimes do some things that we're not so good at? Or kind of learning to do something So it's a very strange mentality a few years ago, I read a wonderful it used to get the Sun Magazine, the magazine that comes out of probably North Carolina

[10:35]

and they have a reader's write-in section so one month was the reader's write-in about dieting so there's a lot of kind of foresters, but people who've been on diets and things that happen to them. And then there was this one great letter a woman wrote and said that she'd noticed that there hadn't been very many studies done of people who'd lost a lot of weight and kept it off because it's notorious that people go on diets and then you gain back all the weight you lost. And so she thought she'd do her own study and she identified some number of people, 20 or 25 people who'd lost some significant amount of weight, she had some number 15% or something like that, and they kept it off for 5 years or more and she interviewed them and she found that they had one thing in common which is that they'd each figured out for themselves how to do it

[11:37]

and that was it and then the kicker to the story was that she'd written a book about this and been turned down by 13 New York publishers who told her to write a book about dieting because people aren't going to buy or be interested in a book that says you could figure this out for yourself and probably if you're going to be successful at dieting this is what you're going to need to do so this is so it's interesting how much to me this comes up and partly this is around the issue of responsibility and in Zen it turns out there's this so called concept of each of us we're each who we are and no one can take our place no one can take over our position so the person in our position where you are

[12:45]

no one's going to take over that position so that means mom isn't going to come and do the dishes after you nobody's going to pick up, if you're not taking care of it nobody else is going to take care of it if it's not something you do no one's going to do it so each of us are in this sort of position of how do I do my position and if I don't do it so one of the stories you know in the Tenzo Kiyoken there is one of the famous stories, there's two mushroom stories I don't know if you have a chance to read that yet but the first mushroom story is here's this great, who later is recognized as being a great teacher, Dogen, the founder of the Zen school in Japan and when he was in China he was at a monastery and he's walking some place and here's the

[13:45]

head cook out in the courtyard there drying mushrooms in the noon day sun and he's completely bent over he says his back was like a bow, his hair is turning white and don't exist and how long have you been a monk and he says 68 years and Dogen says 68 years so this is somebody, I think this is a monk who went 15 or 13 or somewhere in his 80s and Dogen says isn't there somebody around the monastery who's a little younger who might be able to be out here in the sun like this and he says they're not me and couldn't you do this another time of day and that wouldn't be now but in

[14:46]

Suzuki Rishi wrote, in one of the lectures that we put in not always so, it's called the teaching just for you it's actually all the teaching is just for you and there's a certain kind of sense and that's also the kind of sense that no one else can do your life we're each in this position of doing, we're the one who's going to do our life, there's not somebody else who's going to do that and so there's also the sense that and this is related to responsibility then experiencing things and responding to things and if I don't respond and experience things in my life nobody else is going to do the experiencing things and relating to things and I'm the one who's going to have to do that and so there's something here and at one point I was even thinking

[15:48]

and I think it came up sometime while we were working on the grand script book what is it then about recipes and there's something in recipes that's about how you avoid responsibility, how we avoid responsibility because if the recipe works you can kind of say yeah that really is good isn't it, thank you, and if it doesn't work you can say well I followed the recipe, I guess it's a bad recipe so when things don't work you have this thing to say well I did what I was told I followed the recipe and of course in more serious situations you say well I did just following orders I don't know whether it's good or bad I just did what I was told and so in terms of kitchens and cooking and recipes it's fairly small but it's just one more place where there's an opportunity

[16:52]

to actually see things, smell things, taste things, do something take care of the food in a way and the kitchen and the space and the other people and the circumstances and to me it's interesting so finding that there's something very challenging about this whether it's not necessarily some of us don't find cooking so challenging there's something very challenging about taking responsibility and so when I think about it it seems to be and that's where I said this afternoon when I think about America I think yeah happiness is never having to relate to anything that you never have to actually meet anything

[17:52]

or deal with anything and that if you kind of go around in a little platoon and then you can get things to eat and a few years ago and some of you may remember from tomato blossoms when I would leave Tessahari here and go out to the stores after you're here for six months or nine months or something and go out in the middle of the street rows and aisles and you have twenty feet of tomatoes which one do you buy? and they're all kind of like buy me, buy me and then there's all these prepared foods why buy me? I'm quick, I'm easy, I'm quick, I'm easy

[18:55]

you won't have to relate to me at all I'm here for you and all you need to do and it turns out that even fifteen years ago there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about how fewer and fewer people were cooking and that at least twenty-five percent of American families never eat together mom buys these prepared foods they don't, they never eat together each person has their own TV in their own room and during station breaks they pop something into the microwave and then they have their pizza or whatever it is and they can go and watch television in their own room they don't have to relate to food, they don't relate to cooking, they don't relate to cleaning they don't relate to each other and it's passed something through you called the media and just let this stuff pass through you

[19:58]

and that's not something you actually have to relate to it's just something you let pass through and so twenty-five percent of the people at that time weren't cooking and part of the point of that article in the context of the Wall Street Journal was how much would people pay not to cook so then of course you have to go out and work all the harder to be able to afford to buy the food so that you don't have to actually work and so it seems like at some point to cook is work or it's actually relating to something something appears and you're like I don't know what to do with that I don't know how to handle that and then it's like could I figure something out or could I smell it, taste it, touch it could I try this or try that so it's a kind of different thing than the sort of mentality

[21:03]

and so it turns out that actually as soon as we relate to anything again this is basic Buddhism as soon as there's relating to anything then things are not behaving the way we might like them to whether the things out there, the people over there, the weather or you know in meditation you're going to find that your body and mind and your legs, your back, your thoughts, your feelings you're not going to do what you tell them to I mean you might tell them I'd like to have a kind of peaceful, quiet, serene time in meditation, I'll thank you very much and probably not and you'll have these various experiences which you won't know what to do with I need something, what do I do? that's why I say

[22:05]

so in samadhana we don't give you some recipe we're not really giving anything maybe you move, maybe you want to sit maybe you try to focus more on your breath, maybe you become annoyed maybe you're upset, and then what about that? is there something to do about that? but it's a kind of boot camp for actually taking responsibility and relating to your own experience and seeing what happens and in fact in moment after moment all these things are happening that we may not be able to do much about and so on one hand there's but this is the basic kind of issue of as soon as we have awareness then taste comes in and our thinking and our wishes

[23:07]

and our likes and our dislikes and if we're not related to something and we're not responsible then nothing is being asked of us and it's also like the way the world is going there's no reflection on me if you cook, am I good cook, am I bad cook, what do they think about me? and how I handle things is a reflection on me how I relate to somebody else in conversation is a reflection on me if I don't talk to anybody, it's not a reflection on me so sometimes people doing spiritual practice then they go around not relating to people because otherwise somebody might see them people kind of keep them to themselves because they're doing spiritual practice so I'm more and more thinking, you see, and Dogen finally says this in the texts of Kyokan, he says this is about letting your heart go out and be with things

[24:10]

he says abide in things, that things come and abide in your heart so it's this kind of capacity we're developing the capacity of working in a capacity to actually relate to things things being my thoughts, my feelings, my sensations the food, the people to actually experience these things and respond, how do I take care of things or what do I do, and somehow what we're going to do with the things is beyond or different than just get them to do what I want them to so it's something more like how do I bring out the best in them or how do I have them come forward and be more fully who they are or what they are or how can I help them realize or manifest themselves in some fuller way so helping things or people or your own body and being manifest itself more fully than it has been is different

[25:13]

than how do I get it to behave the way I think I would like it to because so much of how I get it to behave is the way I think I would like it to is don't do something that I don't know how to respond to, don't make me feel awkward behave in a way that I don't notice how awkward or incapable I am so if you say to the kids, I can't handle it when you talk so much, you should go to your room and be quiet and don't come out of your room until you're in the right mood so we kind of tend to do things like this where I'm just not going to relate, and we actually all have the capacity not to relate and we're all deserved to have times in our life when we have a break or we go to sleep at night give me a few minutes

[26:14]

it's important to structure things but part of the problem is because we're not willing to relate to things, when we relate to them we also don't understand actually taking a break and then relating or structuring that in some way so I have time to relate and time sort of off, so to speak, and then when I'm on I'm going to really relate to these things I don't know if I'm making sense, but I'm trying to express something, coming at it from different angles so when I started cooking, Suzuki told me a few things and one of the things he said is when you cook you're not just working with food, you're working on yourself and you're working on other people so this is actually what happens as soon as we actually relate to anything and we're studying how to do something again in terms of

[27:23]

how to bring people forward how to bring things into fuller manifestation myself into fuller manifestation in terms of how I express myself others by listening or drawing them out or responding and it's just so different last October I was in Cleveland and I started the cooking class I said you know I'm kind of anxious I haven't worked in this kitchen before and I'm not sure all the ingredients are here and right away one of them said but Ed you've been meditating for more than 30 years, why are you anxious? and this is kind of the idea that if you were capable and confident then you orchestrate everything you don't have to be anxious you're masterful

[28:27]

you have it together and you kind of rule and I went into a bit of a tirade I said oh, what do you think that after 30 years of meditating I'd be better at hiding my feelings is that what you do with yours? and you want me to hide my feelings so you don't have to feel yours? and I said, well and then I told her finally about I had a friend, she's since died, but Maureen Stewart who was a Zen teacher in Cambridge and she'd been married for 25 years and her husband was a professor at Smith or Swarthmore someplace with all these women students and they would have affairs with these students and she would tell him I'm kind of unhappy about this and then finally one day she says to him

[29:33]

I'm getting divorced, we're getting divorced and he says, Maureen you're a Buddhist priest, you should be more compassionate and she said, excuse me but it's because I'm a Buddhist priest I know how I feel and I don't like it so and then in contrast you see this is so she inadvertently brought something fuller out of me but it wasn't exactly like and on the other hand I was here at Tassajara several years ago starting my cooking workshop and coincidentally I just like you to share with you I'm kind of anxious and Tassajara asked me

[30:36]

to move a couple of days ago and it's been postponed from yesterday morning to yesterday afternoon to yesterday evening to this morning to this afternoon and now my stuff is all out in carts and the top server is covered in white sheets and I don't know where everything is and I'm having to start the workshop and the woman sitting next to me said oh Ed you're anxious, I'm anxious too and she grabs my hand my wrist, pulls it right up to her breast between her breasts and sure enough her heart is going thump thump thump oh my gosh you are anxious aren't you so we're still friends that's where oh you're anxious, oh, oh you know and oh I'm anxious too and we connect rather than oh you're anxious, ooh laughter so there's something about connection here

[31:38]

and meeting rather than I'm not sure and this is challenging because some things are difficult to actually meet and respond to or take care of or relate to because we don't know what to do and we don't know what to say and we feel I don't know about you but I get pretty lost sometimes when things come up so we're studying actually how to in that sense when Dogen says let things come home to your heart, it's also Shizuka she said we're practicing Zen to purify our love or in other words is there some way to trust yourself to be yourself to live your life rather than what should I be tasting, how am I supposed

[32:39]

to do this, what should I be doing here what do I do with anger, what do I do with this, oh I'm not supposed to be anxious, oh okay, and then rather than sort of moment by moment having the sense of there's actually some way I should be aiming to be so that and usually there's some kind of little thing in the background which we don't want to look at but like in order to gain approval, in order to be accepted to be loved with this little sort of sense of performance how do I, how can I perform so that people say thank you very much and I'm grateful so much and we approve and we appreciate you're great, so how do you, how can you do things so you get this I was at a I was one time at a, there was this couple out in Marin County

[33:43]

for a while who were doing this, I don't know what it is even it's sort of like this performance theater and they do these various skits and they've been doing this stuff for years and at one point the couple comes out and he's got this sort of rod and then he holds the edge of the rod and it turns out it's a cloth, a piece of cloth and he says I have the spot here and I put it down there so now here's the spot and a little later he was going to ask me if he wanted to be on the spot but just as a little background here I'm sure all of you have been very busy today and have a lot to do, a lot to take care of how many of you today received all the love you deserve and all the love you wanted

[34:44]

how many of you tried really hard to get the kids to soccer and shop and cook and clean and do your job and get your work done did you get all the love you deserved for that did it work out you've really been at this for a while now haven't you for a lot of years and you've been very successfully you're all successful people here, you've done your work you've been responsible people, you've paid your taxes are you getting the love you've been aiming for all this time and somehow to do all the things that we do and take care of but there's some way in which we can never quite do enough to earn or gain or acquire and to merit

[35:50]

some shift in our consciousness where we sort of feel happier or like we're at home in the world, in the universe and later, you know, so after they said, so is there anyone here who would like to be on the spot and see about getting the love you deserve and the love you want and then at some point you know, you've been the person on the spot there so, you know, just starting here and going out to your sit up on that ski on, this is like you didn't get any of the love you might have, and this is like you've got the whole world, how much love have you got today it's like that and then after a while, you know

[36:53]

they're talking us through all this and then he finally had us you know, start clapping to the person, to give them a hand and finally we gave them a standing ovation and we just kept on applauding and applauding and if you just start to feel anything, you can just let your hands go apart a little more but there's some way in which all this gets mixed up, because that love finally or well-being, or ease or at home in the world, ease and bliss in this world but like at home in the world, the kind of joy or resonance or connection with people and things, it's not it's not based on how well we're doing something, or that we're getting it right, or it's coming out the way it should it's not based on any of that, so how do we

[37:56]

so the sense in Buddhism is, can you let things come home to your heart, let your heart respond, and it's not about what you're supposed to do or not supposed to do, or you tell yourself, be kind don't be selfish, yeah you should say that, oh you shouldn't it's not about all those things that we're telling ourselves that we're getting it right, and so is there just some way that we can learn to trust our capacity to let in the world and let things into our experience and allow ourself to respond and so just go ahead and do that and sometimes it's going to work out pretty well, and other times it's not, but the sense is we could actually be in some kind of just give and take and let things in and respond to things, and there's a certain work to that because there's a kind of

[39:00]

commitment to, yes, I'm interested in relating, I'm interested in connecting they use this term in Zen sometimes, intimacy and that intimacy is used in place of realization and enlightenment, attaining intimacy, so there's actually this kind of quality of, is it possible to be intimate with things you know, with things you're holding, with things you're touching, your own breath, your thoughts, your feelings possibly be intimate Ed, can I ask you a question? I keep trying to look at my own experience when I was baking in Canada and there was the one main problem that I had

[40:03]

all the time, and that's why I'm here really, is there was a time limit I had to get something done by a certain time and I hope so and so I would lose what you're talking about and I would just get it done, I don't know how to marry the person in charge of the prep we were talking about that today, she said she can see the difference between the earlier in the prep and as it gets closer to the end of the prep time, and early in the prep the carrots are small and later they're twice as big but yeah, there is something about sustaining

[41:04]

one's effort and so forth and at some point there's and you know, sometimes I'm better at that than others, but at some point there's you know, re-mapping things or re-figuring things anyway, like, well maybe I don't need to do this and we'll just take care of this and this is what I'm going to offer, rather than I have to include this other thing, so maybe it's just carrots and it's not I'm not going to have the parsley or the basil with it or I'm not going to add this other thing to it, so sometimes or if you don't do it that time then you start being a little more realistic about what is possible for you to do the next time so that you, so I for instance have

[42:08]

endeavored to arrange a workshop here that I can do and that we can do, as opposed to I have these grand plans but actually when we go to do them, and I have all these things I want to share with you, but when we go to do it we're all just exhausted and collapsed so anyway, that's part of it the kind of planning and so forth because it seems like it's all of life, you know, as a massage therapist there's a time, there's a time to do and sometimes I would find myself getting into it and I'd get lost the next person would be, it seems like it's just how, it's a big question for me well then, you know, sometimes big questions mean that there's no answer and it's just something you keep working on

[43:12]

you know, the big question means you keep working on it and you work on it and you work on it and because you work on it and study that question you learn a lot you learn about where your awareness goes and doesn't go and what you like and what you don't like and you study and learn various things and it may never change but you're aware of it and because you study it you learn things, you know something you know something about you or the nature of the world one of the basic teachings in Zen and it comes up in here in a certain sense in various terms, but one of them is not to waste a single grain but in various ways Dogen says, don't be careless about one thing and careful about another handle each ingredient as though it was your eyesight there's some sense of that each thing you meet

[44:20]

is precious and the more general way that these things are said I mean Suzuki Roshi said to me, when you wash the rice, wash the rice when you cut the carrots, cut the carrots but the more general way is when you meet one moment, do that moment and the sense is that you know often times one possibility for what you're talking about is when you meet that moment, well what about those other moments and then there's a certain sense you're not quite confident or trusting to really take care of that one moment and so it's starting to go off other places, but that if you take care of this moment and this moment and this moment, things will be taken care of and that taking care of this one moment will include enough things so you don't have to feel like I need and I need to take care of that

[45:23]

and I need to take care of that and you won't have that feeling so much and sometimes, I don't know, sometimes it seems to be easier and sometimes it's way harder, over the last months and you know, I don't know what it is, my mom died last year but it's just been very hard for me to concentrate on anything, you know, and do one moment because it's just all this stuff and I'm always feeling depressed and overwhelmed and so much and so it's kind of a blessing to be here at Tessa Harlow, like I can just do this one thing tonight, 8.40, okay let it go and take care of one thing so that's the sort of basic concept, take care of one thing, let's take care of this and in cooking in particular in a way though, I found

[46:25]

that my tendency is to get going, my tendency certainly was to get going fast so fast that it was sort of this feeling that if I could just go faster then I would be sure to take care of anything and I don't even have time to stop and think about all the things I need to do I just need to go faster and I found that actually that wasn't true and that it was very useful to stop and think about the things I have to do and then do the next thing you know, the thing that needed to be done now and then the next thing and the next thing because otherwise it just it just would snowball and that that was all I could do and then sure enough, and then again partly that's being willing to stop and then if I think about it I can kind of list and then I can prioritize

[47:27]

and what's the next thing and what's the next thing and I found in cooking actually I actually learned this, well first of all in cooking and then I learned as a waiter, is I could not go fast enough to take care of all the tables and two or three of them would always be disappearing and if anything disappears when it reappears it's got problems and it's upset with you so you kind of want to keep things in mind whether it's tables or the things you're cooking or, so the way to keep things, to keep track of things is that you actually list the things to yourself mechanically, so what are the things I'm trying to keep track of what are the things I'm trying to do here and so here's a table that, well I just, I've just written that I need to get there on this day, this is all I can do so oh, I'm going to ask for some water for a minute, so you kind of go through all the tables and the more you do that mechanically the more it starts to happen automatically

[48:30]

and it's the same thing with food, okay we've got this dish, what's happening with that dish, and oh yeah I need to get this into the other one and you go through mechanically and then pretty soon it starts to happen automatically that when something needs to be done it pops into your mind and you don't and you're not even thinking about it anymore, but that doesn't just happen automatically that it happens automatically you train yourself mechanically for it to happen automatically does that make sense you actually remind yourself I'm going to stop now and I'm going to just go through what needs to be done and then the more you do that, stop and do that, then the more it just happens. I used to like to cook alone because if anybody came in to where I was cooking and started talking to me, I'd want to strangle them or something because they would

[49:33]

take my focus away and then everything would just Yeah I've been through things like that too and so that's pretty much and so, you know, I don't know, so on one hand, you know, it's again, on one hand it's something you work on and then on the other hand, you just seem to be seeing things through your life and, you know, sometimes you're more ready to go to sleep when everything's gone yeah and I like to cook

[50:37]

I thought the dinner tonight was delicious but that doesn't mean it tastes better than mine that doesn't mean it tastes better than mine oh, okay oh my goodness, it's 9.30 9.25 it's just occurring to me, I'd like to I do want to say some things about tomorrow but first, I want to tell you a poem, a favorite food poem so it's one of the sonnets to Orpheus by Wilco

[51:38]

so this is approximately the Stephen Mitchell translation do you remember, did you know Herman? yes, so Herman and I translated this too the one that's in the green screen, but the one that I memorized is the Stephen Mitchell so it goes like this, brown dapple, smooth banana, melon, easter egg, peach how all this afternoon speaks death and love, you know I sense, observe it in a child's transparence, features while he tastes this comes from far away what miracle is happening in your mouth while you eat instead of words, discoveries flow out of the flesh of the fruit astonished with fear dare to say what opportunity is

[52:41]

this sweetness, it feels thick dark, dense at first then exquisitely lifted, new taste, first clarified awake, nameless, double meaning sunny, earthy, real all knowledge closer to us, next so so so that's the quality more of letting something come home to your heart as opposed to, I did a great job preparing that didn't I? so so tomorrow, now the day after tomorrow we're going to have a period of meditation at 8.15 so in the morning

[53:43]

but tomorrow the opportunity for meditation is at 5.50 and then at 6.50 we do bowing and chanting so you can stay and bow and chant if you'd like I need you to remember to bring my reading glasses so I can sit your book in the dark and then after service everybody will leave if you need to leave by the way if you would like to leave during either the sitting or after the sitting before the service, you go out the back door one of the two back doors behind the altar you only go back up the front door otherwise you're as if you're sneaking out the back door you're not the back door you officially go out the front door

[54:48]

so if you're leaving unofficially, back door anyway, after and I didn't hear where anybody had a problem with this but after the service everybody's going out the front door and then there's somebody standing there and if you stop to talk to that person, they will give you a job to do if you just walk by her it's usually her these days, if you just walk by her then you will not get assigned a little job right from the grounds so we're not asking you to after service get a 15 or 20 minute job breaking the grounds or cleaning the toilets so you can just walk by anyway, and then tomorrow we're having the early breakfast with the students so the breakfast is about 7.35

[55:49]

and it's in the student eating area, that's the area between the office and the kitchen and there's if you're there at the beginning, there's before we start there's a chant that everybody does together and then we go through the breakfast line and pick up food and go and sit down for breakfast and the first part of the meal is silent and then there's some clackers that are hit and then people say good morning and start chatting away with one another and are we having a reserved table? we might have a reserved table and we all sit together so when it comes time to talk we can chat there and there's a couple reasons why we're having the main reason why we're having the student breakfast is because then at 8.30 we can go to the student work meeting and then we can start work in the kitchen

[56:50]

whenever that is, about quarter to 9 rather than starting the next day we'll have the guest breakfast at 9 and then we won't go to work in the kitchen until 10 so this way if we have the early breakfast we can go earlier into the kitchen and again I'm not sure exactly how this is going to work with all this going into the kitchen so we'll kind of gather outside the kitchen and actually we may be doing some of our work outside the kitchen which is those same tables where we serve up the food for the big student meals rather than actually in the kitchen so we'll see but did you find out about that? I think it says and then anyway about what happens is that after the guest meal goes out in the kitchen there's a little ceremony

[57:55]

where we do standing bows and then we actually chant some of the passages from this Tenzo Kiyoko we chant that together so then we're going to mention that we're here and we're taking over actually I'm going to mention to them and partly as a way of reminding us that on the whole this is a silent workplace, workspace, the kitchen and it's just enough talking to give little instructions here and there we're going to be doing a little bit more than that but if you all are talking to each other I'm not going to be able to say things to you or talk to you about what we're doing and you also won't be able to ask me questions because it would just be too much going on

[58:55]

so the quieter you can be in these circumstances the more in a certain sense you can be listening and be receptive to what's happening and kind of be alert so I'm also going to tell them, especially since there's so many of us if we're talking too much or we're in your way just a general reminder this is a quiet workplace or we're coming in, you can get out through here so I want to mention that to them too for sure that we wanted to the last retreat there wasn't a certain sense that we were there the kids were sort of standing there and she didn't seem to want it so she said excuse me and so I'm going back to my people trying to sort of direct traffic

[59:56]

anyway we'll work this out for a couple days but I'm going to mention to them but I wanted to give you also that there's that much in terms of as much as we can to be sensitive to the environment and the silence especially and the things that are going on and they're pretty good about a lot of things like somebody opens the oven, they say oven, or door, oven door open the oven, and sometimes when they come into the kitchen with the knife they say knife coming through or something so they have certain things and then if they're going to turn on the blender they say noise because otherwise it's that blender comes through yes and no, some of them have been there for

[61:00]

a couple of years and then there's some people who started last week so it's quite a range some of them started out not necessarily last week but within the last three weeks so it's a pretty complex situation because we're doing student meals and then we're doing guest meals and there's a little bit of overlap but they're largely like the breakfast cereal that we serve ourselves we put out for guests and often the lunch soup is the same but it's a fairly complex situation the way we're doing six meals a day thank you very much so that's the plan for the morning and then we'll be working up through about noon and then we'll have a

[62:00]

break until 1 o'clock

[62:01]

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