Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for coming today. How are you doing? I'm scared. I've given a lot of talks, but somehow today I feel concerned about whether you'll like it or not. Oh, well. Sometimes people say, but you've been practicing Zen for more than 40 years. How could that be? So this is... It turns out what I want to talk about today.

[01:04]

So I'd like to start with something that happened, I think it was about a year and a half ago. My computer had broken down. My PC. And my computer guru said, well, you might want to consider getting a Mac. why don't you go to the Mac store in Corte Madera and check them out? So I thought, okay. So I went to the Mac store. I'm not much for shopping malls. I hardly ever get to shopping malls. So once I parked, I had to go to the You Are Here sign. And then look to see where to go from there. There is a Tibetan teacher who said, you Americans always want to get somewhere in your spiritual practice.

[02:16]

Why don't you find out where you are? If you start from where you are, it will be easier to get to where you want to go. So I started from the you are here sign. And... I found my way around to the Mac store. Even without going into the store, I could tell that's a high energy place. I know some of you have probably been there. And I went in anyway. They have a huge, I don't know, high-definition TV or something because you can download movies on your Mac or to your HDTV screen. So people are doing the computers and they're talking and there's all this energy in the store and the music's going and the TV's showing.

[03:26]

And everybody but me kind of seems to know what they're doing there. I don't know. You can tell I'm not particularly savvy around computers, and I'm kind of old-fashioned. I don't even have a cell phone. People say, how could you? They're like, well, why would I? I'm sorry, I don't know. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I don't really have a big interest in supporting corporate America, as little as possible as far as I'm concerned. Bless your hearts and your telephones. Richard Baker years ago used to say it was one of his great breakthroughs, you know, he was working on a koan and his phone kept ringing. I don't think in those days it was a cell phone, it was just a regular phone.

[04:29]

I think he said it was a brown. But anyway, the phone was ringing and he finally answered it and it was the answer to his koan. All right. So I tried out a couple computers, and then I was kind of wandering around the store. And a woman came up to me, and I think she probably had a little badge that had her name or something, and hi, I'm, or whatever they say there. And she said, may I help you? And I said, well, maybe. We'll see. I'm feeling rather overwhelmed with all the energy in this store, I must confess. And she said to me, have you tried meditation? I said, well, a little.

[05:48]

How about you? And she said, oh, I meditate, blah, blah, blah. And this is, I have a teacher in somewhere, San Rafael or Cordo Madero. So things are going great and it's really wonderful. You should try it. So. You know, this leads me to suspect that either I'm not a very good student of meditation, you know, and I've been kind of haven't really gotten it over all these years, or people's understanding about what meditation would be good for is askew. You know, if you meditated, you wouldn't have to feel overwhelmed or stressed or anxious or scared or worried or angry or frustrated.

[06:52]

You know, you could, you would just breeze through. So in my experience, this is not true. Often I think, I will start the get real school of Zen. Maybe I have. Let's get real. And what would that be like? So one thing I want to bring up today is the first sentence of probably Zen Master Dogen's most famous writing. It's from the Genjo Koan. And he says, the first sentence is, when, well, it's when all things, when all things are Buddha Dharma, or when you see things truly, when you see things as they are, when all things are Buddha Dharma, there is birth and death, practice, Buddhas and sentient beings, enlightenment and delusion.

[08:05]

So funny thing, after 40 years, I'm still finding that's true. But I think one idea, usual idea, practice is, no, no, no, I'm going to be a living, breathing, enlightened Buddha. And I'm going to get beyond that delusion, sentient being, death thing. I'll just go for the pleasant stuff and not the unpleasant stuff. Thank you. I think this is pretty common. And it's upsetting to find out, you know, that these things are still around if you've set out to do this. Does this make sense? So today, you know,

[09:08]

I'm also here because I have a new book out, The Complete Tassar Cookbook. It's a kind of redoing of several of my old books, going back to 1973. So I have rewritten it some. You know, I added goat cheese and balsamic vinegar and red bell peppers. And I put it a little bit more in the English language rather than Suzuki Rishi English. And I use some other verbs beside the verb to be. It's a simple way to make your writing more interesting is just eliminate the verb to be. Do not use it. And then your writing becomes interesting. So I've started doing some book events at stores and things. And of course, one of the things I hear is people saying, I don't have time to cook.

[10:08]

Some of you may be in this world predicament. And this is curious to me because I'm not sure that that's what is actually going on. So I would like to suggest something about what's going on. I would suggest that the kitchen and cooking is rather like walking into the Mac store in Corte Madera for me. You might get a little overwhelmed. And most of us would rather not go there. I don't want to be overwhelmed. I don't want to be scared. I don't want to be anxious. I don't want to be stressed. So I'd like this food to just come without my having to do anything. Which is what all the packages you get from the store say, I'm quick, I'm easy. I'm quick, I'm easy.

[11:12]

Put me in the microwave and I'll be there for you. You won't have to relate to me at all. Once you actually start relating to anything, birth, and death, Buddhas and sentient beings, enlightenment and delusion. Once you start relating to anything, food, your companion, your friend, your partner, your children, your parents, your own body, it's not the way you actually want it to be if you had a choice. Let's have it be just pleasant. So this is actually the huge, huge issue for all of us is thank you very much, but life is too much for me. I'm going to just see if I can not really get up right in the front of it. I'm going to kind of stay back a little bit and see if I could not experience anything.

[12:19]

Maybe if it's something really good, I'll see if I can actually have it. But if it's not really good, maybe I can... If I'm far enough back from my experience and not really showing up for it, I won't have to feel, I won't have to notice the death part of birth and death, and I won't have to notice the sentient being part, and I won't have to notice the delusion part. And things will go pretty well. So, you know, I don't know, I'm just sort of silly that way. I decided I want my life. I want the life that I have. And I realized at some point after I started sitting, in order to have the pleasant, I'm gonna have to have the painful. In order to have the joy, I'm gonna have to have the sorrow. I'm gonna have to, if I'm gonna show up for anything, I'm gonna have to show up for everything. There's no way to, I don't know, maybe some of you are savvy and hip,

[13:25]

and you've got all the right gizmos and gadgets. And, you know, if you want to go out to a restaurant, you just look it up on your iPod, and it makes a reservation for you. And then you get to the restaurant, and they park your car, and somehow the money just falls out of the sky, and it's all just paid for, and, you know, it's cool, you know. I don't know. But that's not the way my life works, you know. I don't know. It's sort of sad. I was trying there for a while to be a savvy, competent, skillful, hip kind of a person, you know, but it hasn't worked out. Before that I was trying to be, you know, the only reason I started practicing Zen is because I was never good at being a hippie. You know, if I could have just been a hippie and had long hair and, you know, smoke dope and then, you know, free sex and, you know, whatever, And then, you know, a few rock concerts thrown in and, you know.

[14:27]

And if that would have worked for me, I would have done that. But somehow just, I just didn't seem to be very good at it. Other people seem to be just way more like, hey, it's all cool, it's hip. You know, and it's, and they just seem to be very comfortable hanging, hanging, loose or, you know, whatever that was. And I was just never very good at it. So I started practicing Zen. Oh, well. And I spent the Vietnam War at Tassajara serving my country as a gunship disobjector. Oh, well. So I was a very happy person until I started cooking. And I decided to do it anyway. You know, within a matter of minutes, within hours, you know, I had Cook's temperament. Get the eggs out while they're hot.

[15:30]

You know, I want this food to reflect well on me. That's what we think. Food is so intimate. It's so close to your body, to your heart, to your being. And you want it to reflect. We want it to reflect well on me. And then there's all these books. You probably don't know how to cook as well as I do. Some of them are guys. Some of them are women with their beautiful hair and big white teeth, lipstick. Some of you probably don't know how to cook as well as I do. Why don't you get my book and learn how it's done? So if you do exactly what I tell you, you won't have to be stressed. You won't have to be anxious. You won't have to be scared. You won't have to get overwhelmed. Just do what I tell you. Everything will be okay. How well has that worked for you? I mean, that's basically what we all do, what we were told, you know, when we were however old.

[16:35]

And we're still doing it. So my book is the anti-cookbook, you know, why don't you get in the kitchen and have a few fits and turn it into food? And you'll have something to eat and get over that business about how you could do this whole thing stress-free and show up, have your life, work at something and turn it into food, turn it into nourishment, turn your life into something you can share with others. And don't worry if it's not a masterpiece and maybe you're less than perfect. You might just need to meditate a little bit more. So I don't think it's that we don't have time to cook. It's that I don't feel like taking it.

[17:39]

Do you know, I mean, Michael Pollan's article in the New York Times Magazine in the last month, I don't know, it was three or four weeks ago, people are watching more competition cooking shows than they are cooking. So people would rather not cook, but watch cooking shows, which don't teach you how to cook, but which have this competition between who's going to get it fastest or bestest or something or other. And maybe you just need to go home and invite some friends over and have a cooking competition in order to... really get into this and make it worthwhile for you to hang in the kitchen and spend your time there and, like, let's compete. So anyway, I think the reason we don't cook, you know, is because we're so scared. We're so overwhelmed. We're so concerned about how it would look.

[18:39]

And you'd actually have to relate to something. When Deborah and I wrote The Greens Cookbook in 1986 or 7, we worked really hard on it, you know. And then we worked with the food editor for a month. So every time there's supposed to be the numeral four, it's the numeral four, and every time it's supposed to be F-O-U-R, there's F-O-U-R. And Parmesan always has a capital P and, you know, But the book came back, the manuscript came back with all these, this is before computers, you know, with all these little pink press apply labels sticking out the side. We could not believe it. How could they have found so many mistakes in our book? How? So it turns out where we said, cook the onions until they're translucent, the pink label says, how long?

[19:41]

So do you want to look at the onions or are you going to look at the clock? I don't know. We were trying to give people... And do you want to just do something with your senses? See, this is so important because we're starting to think there's a way to do it where you get it right, where nobody can criticize you in the least. I did what I was supposed to do. I followed the directions. If you don't like it, well, go complain to Edward and Deborah, because this is the greens cookbook, and I did what they told me, and this is right. If you don't like it, tough. But if you like it, then, oh, yes, thank you. Appreciate it, yeah. And then where it says, season to taste with vinegar, it says, how much? And then, you know, About 100 pages in the book it says, cook the vegetables until they're as tender as you like.

[20:47]

And the label says, how long? How do we know? How do we have a clue what we like? Do you understand? Because people are so busy, we're so busy getting it right, having it come out the way it's supposed to, thinking there is a way it's supposed to come out and you could compare the way you're doing it with the way it's supposed to come out and see whether yours is good enough or not. So this is so, you know, how, you know, the energy goes out of our lives then. So sad. I do cooking classes and I say, let's taste this. I make tomato sauces. These are in the cookbook, by the way. You can try it. You don't have to come to the class, save your money. But we start with canned tomatoes. So I used to have canned tomato tastings. Which brand do we like?

[21:51]

But whether it's that or whatever it is, people say, what should I be tasting? See, this is so difficult for us. Could you just have your experience? Could you have your life? Could you have your body? Could you have your mind? Will you? Will you have this body? It probably has some aches and pains. Will you have this mind? You're probably a little tired or you're stiff. But it's pretty sweet. You could come home to your heart and to your body and to your mind. and have your feelings, think your thoughts, see with your eyes, smell with your nose. And then you could have an aesthetic. We all have an aesthetic. It's the aesthetic of our heart. And we get busy with our heads going like, is this good enough? What should I be tasting? Because I don't know about just having my experience.

[22:56]

I want to have the right experience. And can I get my body mind in my experience to be the way it's supposed to be so that I get a good grade and so I get approval so I get recognition can I have it the way it's supposed to be as though there was such a thing and you could just you know you could actually have your aesthetic you can taste things and you can know you know is something sweet you know, Banke said, Banke is one of those Zen people who sat, you know, weeks and years, and I think he's the one who got sores on his buttock, you know, because he used to sit outside on rocks, and he went on sitting, you know, with his pussy, you know, buttocks. And later he said, I did that, you don't need to.

[23:58]

It's overrated. And then he said, just awaken your unborn Buddha mind. Just awaken your unborn Buddha mind. So this is what I try to tell you in my cookbook. You can taste what you put in your mouth. Taste what you put in your mouth, and your whole world will awaken with you. And you know whether or not to eat potato chips or what... You know, because you have an aesthetic, and your aesthetic can develop, and you can know what you like and what you don't like, and you can try new things and see if you can make them the way that they're tasty to you. Yesterday, I did a cooking demo at the dance, not the dance palace, but Toby's Feet Barn in Point Reyes at the farmer's market there. Afterward, a woman with two beautiful blonde-haired, a boy and a girl, came up to me, and she said, My kids love that raw zucchini with just the salt on it. They never eat zucchini.

[25:04]

Well, they haven't had my zucchini with just salt on it, I guess. Cut in, you know, ovals and then in juliennes with green on the ends. It's so good. And then we added a little honey and lemon juice. and various things one at a time, tasting it after each thing. And then you taste the vitality of life. You taste it in your mouth. You don't taste that when you eat a potato chip. I'm sorry. You might get attracted to it. Because the corporate world is creating food and media and television to grab your attention. Because that's money. If we can grab your attention, you know, successfully enough, you will pay. You will pay to have your attention grabbed.

[26:10]

You know, all the fast cuts on television. Hey, look at this. How about that? Hey, wait a minute. Don't go anywhere. Look at this. And you know, if you cook, you cook because you choose to give your attention to something. You give your attention to something. Why do you give your attention? Because that's what is in our heart finally to do, to give our attention to things and to choose what to give our attention to rather than letting our attention be grabbed by something that we don't have to relate to. When we give our attention to something, then it's how we have connection and relationship and intimacy. because we give our attention. And when we give our attention to something, birth and death, enlightenment and delusion, Buddhas and sentient beings, when you give your attention to something, the whole world is there. It's not just this one-sided things that we thought we could have.

[27:17]

So my encouragement is to give your attention to things, to food, to your own body, your being, to your thoughts, to your feelings. You give your attention. The commercial foods grab your attention, and then the more you chew on it, the less interesting, the less that's there. And a food, food, you bite into it, and there's not much there. And you think, oh. Why bother? But the more you chew it and the more you give your attention to it, then there's vitality and there's essence and there's sunlight and sky and rain and the fields and you taste it. We can all taste that once we give our attention. So this is a choice that we make, what to give our attention to and to not let it get grabbed by So, you know, simple things, I encourage people to do simple things.

[28:47]

One is, you taste what you put in your mouth. And then in that way, and then you add one ingredient at a time. Salt, sweet, sour. That's lemon vinegar, the tart flavor. And then pungent, all the flavors that are hot. Garlic, ginger, mustard, red pepper, all the range of red chilies, green chilies. When you have a hot flavor like that, it fills your mouth. The flavors start to fill your mouth, and you're like, oh, this is good. It doesn't have to be like, kill you. You don't have to put that much in. You don't have to cry to have that, you know. You can know. Because you know, and you taste it. So I don't think I quite finished with unborn Buddha mind, but people would then, of course, ask Banke, What are you talking about?

[29:48]

What is this unborn Buddha mind? And he'd say, well, his example would be, do you hear that dog barking? Maybe there's a dog barking. Do you sense your own breath? And then, is it the inhalation or the exhalation? You know. That's your unborn Buddha mind. Inhaling and exhaling and knowing whether it's an inhaling or an exhaling. You know when the dog barks as a dog. You know when the vegetables are as tender as you like. You know when the onions, you can see with your own eyes, this is all just awakening. Nobody's ever explained this. Right? Science says, well, the light comes into your eyes, and it goes through the lens, and then it impacts the retina, and then it's translated into a chemical thing, and then there's this nervous impulse, and it goes to your occiput, right? And then you see. And then you see.

[30:55]

Nobody has ever explained this, actually. And then you see. That's your unborn Buddha mind. that does that, and then you see, and then you hear. You know, thoughts aren't even in your body. They can measure them outside your body electromagnetically. Then you think, well, they're mine. So this is all your unborn Buddha mind appearing, one thing after another. So this is shifting from trying to get it right, having it come out the way it's supposed to, not having to worry or stress if it's good enough, to tasting, smelling, seeing, sensing, trusting your own aesthetic, letting your own aesthetic develop.

[31:57]

What pleases you? Otherwise, you end up going through... along sections of your life not good enough. And then you don't have a life because you're... Show up. See what's happening. Work with it. So, you know, Dogen in the Tenzo Kyokin and his instructions to the cooks is not to complain about the quality or quantity of the ingredients that you're given to work with. So he's mostly talking about food. But this is also like what you have to work with, your hands. Your hands can do astounding things and you can learn how to use your awareness to help your hands find out how to do stuff. This is liberating your hands rather than telling your hands, do this, don't do that.

[33:01]

Wait a minute, no, you're not getting... That's not what he said. Could you feel what your hands are doing when they're doing something? And you can do this in meditation. You know, this is, I've been, you know, after 45 years, I thought, why don't I feel my hands? And I go right here, the middle finger right to the edge of the palm. The knuckles right on top of the knuckles. And that middle finger, when I concentrate on those two middle fingers, And then where does that go? In the elbows, in the shoulders. And then my chest starts to lift. My hands come up off of my thighs. And then all that energy and awareness goes right to the heart. You can do this. Anybody can do this. You study. See what you can find out. Using your intelligence, your consciousness to have a body. To have hands, to have feet, to have a nose, to see, to smell, to taste, to think, to feel.

[34:08]

Could you have just, you know, your experience? And chances are, you know, your experience won't be the way it's supposed to be. Because you've heard all those stories about, you know, the enlightened people. So maybe next lifetime. We'll get there. All right. I think I'm going to finish up. I want to tell you, I know I've told you before, but I love the sonnet by Rainer Maria Rocha about food. He was somebody who, you know, learned to study, you know, how to see and experience things. He has another poem, you know, you see, I want a lot. I want a lot.

[35:11]

Perhaps everything. This is such a shift, you see. The darkness of each infinite fall, the shivering blaze of each step up. There are those who want little. and are raised to the rank of Prince by the slippery ease of their light judgments. But what you love to see are faces that feel thirst and do work. Most of all, you love those who need you like a crowbar or a hoe. It's not too late And you are not too old to dive into the increasing depths of your life where it calmly gives out its secret. Dive into the depths. You know, they're right there in the kitchen.

[36:13]

The reason why you're not going there is because it's a deep place and you could drown. It's not because you don't have time. It's because I'm not going into that kind of deep place. I'd rather watch competition cooking on television. Well, I get my food from Whole Foods. Organic. And that, by the way, that dive into the depths, that's trust or faith, Shraddha. You know, that's confidence to actually dive into the depths. You believe, you have trust and faith that you can do that. And faith is said to dive into the depths. And once you dive into the depths, everything becomes clear. From the surface, it looks like the water is, you know, a desire. It's lots of colors swirling.

[37:14]

And it's boiling with anger or rage. And it's all smooth and scum with, you know, sloth and torpor. Anyway, and so forth, you know, and you dive in, faith dives into the water, everything becomes clear. You dive into your experience. You don't stay on the surface and then wonder like, why can't I get this right? This isn't coming out the way it's supposed to. What's below the surface? So I don't say this is easy, and I don't say you should be doing this. It's just like if you choose to, you know, If you choose to, you know, you can do that. Anyway, the other poem of Rilke is about the food. You know, he says, it's one of the sonnets to Orpheus. Round apple. This is mostly Stephen Mitchell's translation. Round apple, smooth, banana, melon, gooseberry, peach.

[38:16]

How all this affluent speaks. Death and life in the mouth. Didn't expect that, did you? How all this affluence speaks of beauty and loveliness and the beauties and loveliness of nature and the bounty of blessedness of creation. How all this affluence speaks, death and life in the mouth. I sense observe it in a child's transparent features while he tastes. This comes from far away. From far away. Dare to say what apple truly is. The sweetness that feels thick, dark, dense at first.

[39:21]

then exquisitely lifted in your taste, grows luminous, sunny, earthy, grows luminous, clear, sunny, earthy, real. Oh, knowledge, pleasure, joy, immense. This is when you give your attention to something. It comes from far away, your unborn Buddha mind. birth and death, Buddhas and sentient beings, enlightenment and delusion. So Zen people, you know, are encouraged to sport in it, to sport about in all of this. And the ingredients include not just the food, but, you know, your own heart, your own willingness to give yourself to something.

[40:26]

And the ingredients are also the time you have and how much energy you have. Do something you can do. Okay. I've talked long enough. Thank you very much. Blessings and have a wonderful afternoon.

[40:48]

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