This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. It's good to see you all here. Welcome to this evening, waning moon, 10 days before the... Autumn Deepinox, right? Green Gulch, Green Dragon Temple. I always like to know kind of where I am and what time it is. I was asked to say some things about food because it's Food Awareness Month. Is that just local here? Is it? We're trying to get the rest of the country to catch on.

[01:00]

We're at the roots at this point. So far, Congress hasn't passed the law about it. Okay. It's wonderful to have a food awareness month. That's a good time for it. Good time of the year for it. Maybe I should introduce myself a little bit. Some of you may not have any idea. who I am or why I'm here. You got it. You got it. I actually came to the Zen Center in 1972 and that was also the year that the Zen Center, acquired Green Gulch Farm. And so I moved here in the fall of 1972.

[02:02]

I was working as a carpenter, actually building a house out in Stinson Beach. And for the first few months anyway, I was here as what we'd call an RBT student now in the city, room board tuition. So I was paying my way. And then I applied for a practice period. January 1973 and was accepted. I was already living here for a few months, but we actually had an idea of having a practice period. And then I was asked if I would take charge of developing an organic vegetable farm. And I thought, why me? I came here to practice Zen. Although I did appreciate that Zen involved work and paying attention to food.

[03:04]

I actually had come in contact with the Tassajara Bread Book a couple of years before that. I think the first thing I heard about San Francisco Zen Center was the Tassajara Bread Book. I knew that food was important. I had a little help tearing up the grasses that were in the fields. And I actually borrowed a tractor from the neighbors, the Banducci's flower farm down in Frank Valley. And then we, with John Coonan, who was the senior member of our team, We tried everything. We planted all kinds of things. And we started studying organic gardening and organic farming.

[04:06]

And we built big compost bins. We were both carpenters, so we knew how to build stuff. We took some of the planks from the old corrals up here and everything and made these. compost bins that were about, I don't know, eight feet wide and 100 feet long or something. We did various things. We also went, I remember going to Sausalito and getting truckloads of fish scraps, bringing them in and burying them, mixing them with compost and stuff. So we had the idea of developing the fertility of the earth. and also experimenting with what might grow here. So, I lived at Green Gulch most of the, well, until 1980, and then I moved over the hill and did various other things and came back five years ago to become Abbott.

[05:12]

And I lived here as Abbott for a couple of years and then moved to the city. And so I'm, It's called central abbot. We have three abbots, two of the three are abbesses and the central abbot is looking at how all of Zen center as a whole functions, how our three temples are integrated and trying to deal with issues that pertain to the whole of Zen center. Maybe that's enough of an introduction to myself. Anyway, I was asked about doing something about food, and my first thought was gratitude. Like for dinner tonight, I thought, oh, thank you. Thank you to the people who grew the zucchini and who baked the bread and made the noodles, cooked the noodles, served them.

[06:19]

So my first thought, and I just want to suggest that whenever you think about food awareness, that you bring up the thought of gratitude. There's a lot that we can get into around food, but if you don't have gratitude as a basis, then it doesn't really, I think, mean that much or help that much. Can people hear me back there? It's okay? Well, before I get into this, I thought I should just take a moment to acknowledge yesterday's was 9-11. Many people in the country and the world recalling that trauma 11 years ago now, is that right? Yeah, it's had a great deal of impact on many ways, and it was completely insignificant in other ways, but still, just to acknowledge that.

[07:30]

I don't know, did you do any service or anything around that here? No. I also want to acknowledge, for those who knew David Cody, this past weekend I was at Tatsahara, and we did... and ashes scattering ceremony for some of his ashes. And his mother and brother Stephen and sister-in-law came. So this is kind of an ongoing care. And as I was scattering David's ashes in various places, I was actually feeling kind of happy for the plants that were right there. And I thought, oh, you're a lucky plant. You're a lucky plant. You're getting some of David's body here. So this is part of a whole cycle. I think when we think of food, we also ought to recognize that from other points of view, we ourselves are food.

[08:39]

And be ready to be food when the time comes. So this is a kind of balance of understanding of who we are, that food is also very much relative and absolutely empty. I'm going to read an ode. Along with the thought of gratitude, someone some years ago gave me a book of Pablo Neruda's poetry, and Pablo Neruda wrote many odes to all kinds of things, including odes to artichokes and lemons and tomatoes. But here's the ode, Oda La Cebolla.

[09:41]

But I won't read the Spanish. But it is Ode to the Onion. Onion. Luminous flask. Your beauty formed petal by petal. Crystal scales expanded you. And in the secrecy of the dark earth, your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth, the miracle happened. And when your clumsy green stem appeared and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, The earth heaped up her power, showing your naked transparency. And as the remote sea and lifting the breasts of Aphrodite duplicated the magnolia, so did the earth make you onion, clear as a planet and destined to shine, constant constellation, round rows of water upon the table of the poor. Generously, you undo your globe of freshness in the fervent consummation of the cooking pot.

[10:49]

I can't read that line without laughing, excuse me. Generously, you undo your globe of freshness in the fervent consummation of the cooking pot. And the crystal shred in the flaming heat of the oil is transformed into a curled golden feather. Then too I will recall how fertile is your influence on the love of the salad. And it seems that the sky contributes by giving you the shape of hailstones to celebrate your chopped brightness on the hemispheres of a tomato. But within reach of the hands of the common people, sprinkled with oil, dusted with a bit of salt, you kill the hunger of the day laborer on his hard path. Star of the poor, fairy godmother wrapped in delicate paper. You rise from the ground, eternal, whole, pure, like an astral seed, and when the kitchen knife cuts you, there arises the only tear without sorrow.

[11:56]

You make us cry without hurting us. I have praised everything that exists, but to me, Onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers. You are to my eyes a heavenly globe, a platinum goblet, an unmoving dance of the snowy anemone, and the fragrance of the earth lives in your crystalline nature. So how's that for gratitude? So we say, we have these five contemplations that we say with our meal chant, which are traditional Buddhist contemplations. when receiving food saying that we reflect on the now we say we reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us we reflect on our own virtue and practice and whether we are worthy of this offering we regard it this is a cautionary note we regard it as essential to keep the mind

[13:10]

free from excesses such as greed. And we regard the food as medicine, as good medicine to stay in our life, and it is for the sake of enlightenment that we receive the food. So in receiving the food, we're dedicating ourselves to the great, say, awakening of all beings through this receiving, of this kind of nourishment. And the first line we used to say, the most literal translation, where we now say, we reflect on the effort that brought us this food. When I first came to Zen Center, we recited, 72 labors brought us this rice. Anyone remember that? Yeah. No? No one was here then. We did talk about this last week. Wendy talked about it.

[14:11]

You've already heard this, huh? We heard it recited. We heard it recited. Huh? You don't remember 72... I remember 72 laborers brought us this food. 72 laborers brought us this rice. It was the most literal. It was like a... And then we changed it into innumerable laborers brought us... Did Wendy say that? I don't know. I actually think innumerable labors is much better than the current way, you know, because it puts the effort on the vast interconnectedness of all the elements that go into producing what's here. It truly is the work of so many beings. So it's not just that 72 labors sounded like a linear process, right? But actually what's happening is much, much more dynamic and interrelated. So to understand, when we say to consider how it comes to us, this is a deep and profound study.

[15:21]

I'd say a lifelong study. It's not something to just say, okay, I get it. So I want to come back to that. But I thought I would... refer to Zen Master Dogen's Dharma for taking food, right? I think that I brought a few books along here as references. So that's translated in this Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen community. So there's this translation from Shohaka Okamura and Taigen Leighton. And... So Dogen begins by quoting the Vimalakirti Sutra. This is Subhuti actually challenging, actually Subhuti being challenged by Vimalakirti about his whole practice of begging for food.

[16:26]

And so there's just one line that Dogen quotes, says, if you can remain the same with food, all dharmas also remain the same. If all dharmas are the same, then also with food, you will remain the same. So then Dogen comments, Just let dharma be the same as food, and let food be the same as dharma. For this reason, if dharmas are the dharma nature, then food also is dharma nature. If the dharma is suchness, food also is suchness. If the dharma is the single mind, food also is the single mind. If the Dharma is Bodhi, food also is Bodhi. They are the same and their significance is the same. So it is said that they are the same. So being the same points to understanding the interconnectedness of things, interconnectedness which extends to

[17:35]

the non-existence of things. So the non-existence of food as separate from oneself. So taking food is already the same as not taking food because there's no separation of oneself and food. So this is, and then there's a whole discussion that Dogen offers. And recently, Shohako Komura came out with a book called Something about vow. Living vow? Living by vow. Living by vow. And he has a more complete commentary on this whole verse and that particular statement of Dogan's. So I just want to refer to it and let you go study it because I want to move along a little bit tonight. So food, my second thought about food was was that food is one, in a sense, there's the specific, there's the need that we have to take something into our mouths.

[18:40]

And I looked up the root of the word nourishment coming from the Indo-European root snu. Snu, which means to suckle or flow, that there's actually a flow. And it refers to this intense, intense human need that we have. And those of you who are mothers would know how it is when a newborn human being very soon has this powerful urge to receive nourishment. And they start going... We all do this, right? And we're... We're looking for nourishment at this point. We don't know where to get it, right? But we know there's that need. It's built into us so deeply that we tend to forget it then later on until circumstances are such that we don't have food.

[19:49]

Most of us, probably here in this room and living here at Green Gulch, now become accustomed to going to the dining room and there's food. So in a way it's a problem. We do such a good job of providing for ourselves that it makes it even more difficult for us to understand this first verse of considering how it comes to us. Considering how it comes to us. So food is... deeply, you know, such deeply needed. And at the same time, it's something that too often we take for granted. People who have lived in community for a while and then go out suddenly are confronted with having to

[20:52]

prepare their own food. Obtain it somehow. And then realize, you know, I realized after when I moved from Zen Center living with an individual household, how much of a big deal it is every day. And that I think that points to the On the one side, it points to the value of having a community practice with food so that there's a tremendous kind of simplification and efficiency. It's much more economical for a whole group of people to have food prepared together and eat together than it is for every individual to be doing all that. At Green Gulch, We had the idea at the beginning that we would grow food for ourselves and that we would eat what we produced.

[22:03]

That didn't last very long. We had an idealistic idea even that we could just live off of what we grew here. I found out as the head of the farm that, okay, there's certain times of the year we can produce a lot and other times of the year we can produce very little. That means we'd have to do a lot of storage and there are some things that are easy to preserve and keep and other things that are not. There's also the thought that we should eat certain things when they're in season. So I proposed to... the staff, the rest of the staff, that we only eat strawberries. I picked one thing. I picked strawberries. I said, let's just eat strawberries when we grow them here. That was a terrible idea, people thought. People thought the idea of just eating things in season was a good idea.

[23:13]

That seemed like a good idea as a concept. But then when it came down to not having strawberry shortcake for the Chouseau's dinner after the winter practice period, that was not a good idea. We want to have our strawberries when we want to have strawberries. So we have this. So I think it's, I don't really have an answer for this. I think it's good to have the question. I think there's a kind of humility in not knowing and that we should be studying food and have a balance of gratitude and not knowing. And there's a kind of joy in that, a kind of a joy in the play of that. It's based, though, upon having more and more of an understanding of where our food really does come from. So I think just taking the first...

[24:14]

of the five reflections and saying, innumerable labors brought us this food. Let's consider where it comes, how it comes to us. Let's consider how it comes to us. The practice of agriculture was something that we debated a little bit here. Some people felt we should be hunter-gatherers, right? Or we should just eat the fruit that fell from the tree. We had to deal with the fact that once we started growing vegetables for ourselves, there were other competitors. We had a big debate about whether to put up a fence for the deer. Believe it or not. Hmm. Now you go down the field, there's a big gate, and there's fence all around the field.

[25:21]

But at first it was a question, how do we respect the needs of deer? How do we appreciate deer, our interplay with deer in the environment? Does it make sense to include deer by including them on the other side of the fence? That's actually... what it comes down to. We're including the deer by including them on the other side of a fence. And we do find ourselves confronted with as beings in relationship with other beings to create boundaries. To create boundaries for ourselves, to create boundaries in our relationships with each other, and to create boundaries that say, okay, on this side of the line, this is... human food on the other side of the line. We'll leave that. That takes some effort and it's somewhat painful to enforce it.

[26:27]

Sometimes a deer manages to get in and then they're trapped. How do we deal with that? It's not possible, I think, to appreciate where our food comes from without appreciating the whole matter of birth and death. That there is a matter of birth and death. And that each time we receive some food, we have to accept we ourselves are surviving and thriving upon the birth and death of myriad, myriad beings. Many of them so small we can't see them. And many of them large enough that we feel maybe some real empathy with them. And there may be a tendency to not want to see that.

[27:28]

Like people say, you don't want to see how sausage is made. But it's actually good for us to know how sausage is made and then do we want to eat it. we here have a vegetarian cuisine, but it's an ovo-lacto-vegetarian cuisine for the most part. There's also the vegan option, right? And so we've kind of said, okay, here's where we draw the line for the community. And we experimented with having... We had chickens here. We had many chickens here for quite a while, and the eggs that we got from the chickens were the best eggs because the chickens could roam all over the hillside, and they could eat it. They were eating grasshoppers, and they were eating all kinds of things. And so all that kind of nutrient went into their bodies and into the eggs.

[28:36]

We found it was very hard for us to maintain... our practice and to cope with the whole life cycle of the chickens. What do you do with the hens when they're old and they're not laying anymore? What do you do with the roosters that never lay anything, never lay any eggs? And we're not eating chicken here, so... So we did find ways of finding other groups of people who really appreciated having the old hens. And they would come and take them and pluck them and have roast chicken. So then we were realizing, I actually thought that it was good for us to know that that was part of where our eggs come from rather than just buying eggs and letting someone else face that. We also had, for a while, we had one cow, Sweet Daisy, New Jersey.

[29:44]

I remember, and this is where our milk and yogurt and cheese all come from, right? So we don't know unless we actually have some experience of that. We are somehow insulated from understanding where our milk and cheese and yogurt comes from. We still have, of course, groups of school kids coming out here, and I remember vividly when I was showing Daisy the cow to a group of first graders, and I said, here, put your hand right under the cow. And I milked some milk right under the hands of the first graders, and they were shocked. that it was warm. It never occurred to them, of course, they're only first graders, right? But it never occurred to them that milk came from a living source, that it was actually warm, originally warm.

[30:53]

And maybe some people here in this room haven't really had that experience. And so it's powerful to have that direct experience of milk coming from a living being you know and realizing okay for us for us as humans to take that is a powerful kind of say we could say whatever you have it's definitely has a powerful impact on the whole species you know of bovines right and so and then we make a lot of decisions around around that that are driven sometimes more by our greed or by our notions of efficiency than by an interest in nourishment, an interest in the balance of the life of the animal and the life of human beings.

[32:05]

So last night I was at Sonoma County Heirloom Exposition of Seeds. Heirloom Seed Exposition. I've got more things here now. Here's the book. I don't know if any... It's happening today and it's happening tomorrow. So if anyone can go up tomorrow and go see... See, many, many wonderful things are on display, and they're good speakers. And there's even a good bluegrass band that was playing. But last night I heard the keynote speaker by Carlo Petrini. How many people would know who Carlo Petrini is? Hey, people here know Carlo Petrini. He spoke Italian. He spoke Italian. There was a translator, though.

[33:10]

This is his book, Slow Food Nation. So, Carla Petrini is working with the language. He calls himself... What does he call himself? A gastronome, I think. A gastronome. Someone who's really studying what happens with the whole experience. of food, and I think he's coming from the point of view of joy in food and looking at how the global industrial technological culture is making, is at least diminishing the joy in food for many people. I'm going to read just a little bit. Men and women of the world perform complex productive activities conditioned by centuries of culture and know-how.

[34:15]

Activities that are representations of diversities and identities, the products of relations and social interdependencies, mirrors of the complexity of the world. These human activities are strongly influenced by the relationship between man and nature, an intimate connection which has changed. radically since the rise of industrial capitalism. Nature has become an object of domination and we can see the effects of this if we consider what has been done in the so-called food and agriculture sector. At the end of World War II, in response to the needs of a hungry world, this sector underwent a complete transformation, immediately adhering to the technocratic ideology. Agriculture, a source of food for humanity, had to assume the colors, characteristics, and dimensions of the classic industrial sector, turning into what is commonly termed agro-industry, an unfortunate term that conceals a number of contradictions.

[35:21]

In fact, it is an oxymoron. Today we are still paying for this and other major transformations at a price that is unsustainable for the planet. So he goes on from there. So this is pointing to something that's hard for us to say, I think, to understand because we're in the middle of it. It's hard for us to understand the transformation of the world in the last, well, particularly in the last 150 years, something like that. So there's been a huge shift in the way human beings have how we've supported ourselves as human beings. And because of the power of our industry and our technology and because of the available fossil fuels that we've been burning up at a great rate, coal, oil, and natural gas, we've been able to dominate and we've been able to

[36:30]

multiply our own human power so much that it's beyond what we can even quite understand the impact of. So we're relatedly beginning to understand that we need to educate ourselves differently so that we understand the impact of our activity. So I don't think that... that we have yet understood how we need to educate ourselves and how we need to educate the coming generations so that we can find a sustainable balance. I'll read just a little bit more later in the book. He says, under the frenetic impulse of technocratic and reductionist thought. So this is actually looking at how our minds work if our minds work in a particular goal-oriented linear pattern, we will be doing things to achieve a particular goal and ignore all the other consequences that come along with it.

[37:40]

So he's pointing that out here, saying, under the frenetic impulse of technocratic and reductionist thought, we have fallen into the temptation of neglecting the totality of the processes and the interrelations that enable us to eat every day, considering only the result, the food that we swallow. Yet these roots, all these different contributing, he had the image, he borrowed an image from another thinker saying, if you look at a tree, the roots actually, or any plant, the stem is here, and the fruit is here, but underneath it's supported by a whole network of roots. And so to actually look at the network of roots that's producing, this is just a kind of a metaphor for understanding what we usually think of and focus on as food. Yet these roots are crucial and must be a major subject of discussion.

[38:42]

I would say that the product is on the surface, visible. That is what we have on our plate every day and what is most talked about. The roots are below, abundant, numerous, wide-spreading. They represent the way food on our plate became food, the way it was created. So understanding this phrase, understanding how this food comes to us, is really changing our minds, changing our whole conception of things. so that we appreciate that every step and every element is food. Every element that contributes to what's on the onion and the olive oil and the salt and the water that's right in front of us. In each of those, there are myriad phenomena that all must be contributed

[39:49]

for that to be appearing the way it does and nourishing us the way it does. So it's worth studying. And do we have this in our library here? Slow food? Somebody, no? The farm didn't have it? Well, I will either leave this copy here, I'll get a copy. Because I think people should be aware of this. Everyone here should be aware of it. Another book by Carlo Petrini with a foreword by Alice Waters, Terra Madre. Terra Madre is actually referencing a global organization working with food. People know Michael Pollan's book, Food Rules. If you're not living where somebody else is doing a community kitchen, then you really need food rules. But here you probably need some of them. Let's kind of open up the book and see. There's like a rule on one page.

[40:51]

And it says, avoid food products that contain high fructose corn syrup. Now, many people in America do not avoid those foods that contain the corn syrup, which is a problem in many ways. It's a problem for... the kind of mistaken use or maybe the overabundance of growing corn, which has a particular impact. By the way, I grew up in Kansas, and I knew something about growing wheat, corn, soybeans, all that, but most of that agriculture contributes to a tremendous loss of topsoil. So, Thank you. Sneezing just at that moment caused me to remember that I'd just like to request that everyone, every day contribute to the making of topsoil.

[42:13]

See if you can figure out how to do that. This is so important. Most people probably go through their whole week without thinking of how they're contributing to making topsoil. But as I was saying with corn, corn is a crop that tends to be cultivated... Was that too much of a... Too much of a twist? Anyway. What? Thank you. You're making big topsoil. But everyone should be helping. The growth of corn as a row crop means cultivating ground between the rows of corn and

[43:14]

And then the rains, so the soil is loosened, and then the rains come and wash soil down into the creek, into the stream, into the river, which is creating a whole, and along with it comes the nitrogen fertilizers that are dumped onto the corn crops, and it creates a whole expansion of the, you know, much more rapid expansion of the Mississippi Delta and the of algae in the Gulf of Mexico. So sometimes I assume everybody knows all that, but maybe you just don't think about it on a daily basis. So I just turned a page that says, treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food. Another page, make water your beverage of choice. So anyway, I think Michael Pollan's wonderful, this is actually a wonderful contribution to the culture.

[44:18]

There are people working very hard in America to communicate the significance of food, including Michelle Obama. This is the story of the White House kitchen garden. And This is an inspiring book for many people. And I really appreciate Michelle's effort in getting out there and helping people see, oh, this is something that we need to do. We need to understand where food comes from. And the best way to understand it is to get out there and get in touch with the earth. So there are many issues. Let's see. I wanted people to be aware of. In Kansas, there's the Land Institute. Wes Jackson is working with this problem of, say, soil erosion by developing strains and selecting seeds from perennials to actually try to develop.

[45:34]

It'll take decades to do to cultivate perennial crops that will produce seeds, grains like wheat, so they don't have to be planted every year, but they can be cut and harvested as perennials. So that's the main idea. But this is a land report that comes out. So send some money to West Jackson and help support that. We had a Zen student here years ago named Bradley Miller. Bradley Miller was really touched by the... pain experienced by animals in factory farms and decided to create an organization. He originally created an organization called the Buddhist Concern for Animals, BCA. And then he found out that there were people who are not Buddhists who are also concerned about animals. And he thought, well, we'll change the name and focus on farm animals. And so...

[46:36]

So the organization is now called the Humane Farming Association. Humane Farming Association, this particular issue, they just send a report every now and then. There's a whole campaign going on right now to what's called Stop the Rotten Egg Bill. So the industrial egg industry is trying to prevent states from passing laws that prevent chickens from being in such tiny cages. So many cages, so many chickens that are in production for eggs across the country are in cages, and here to make it obvious, this is the cage space for one hen. 67 square inches.

[47:39]

And there would usually be like a cage with a floor space about twice, two or three times this, and there'd be either two or three hens in that kind of space for their whole life. They can't really even stretch their wings, you know. So this is a great effort from the Humane Farming Association. which has been very successful. They're very strategic, very well informed. And I'm just, every time I see Bradley Miller, I just thank him for his work because he has an additional staff of people working with him. But they're doing very important work. And some of it is simply to remind people the agencies that are supposed to support existing laws to actually do it, to actually enforce existing laws. So anyway, this is, maybe I'll leave this one someplace here for people.

[48:42]

The other thing, so this is more political than my usual. Food is also, you know, politics, because food is a global, you know, highly, highly, competitive matter. I won't say more about that. I'll just say right now, at the exposition I was at yesterday, I picked up this. Yes, vote yes for Proposition 37. Proposition 37 is the labeling of genetically modified foods, sometimes called GM foods. Now they're changing it to GE foods. They're saying genetically engineered food. Why, I don't know. But anyway, GMO or GE food.

[49:46]

So I think the campaign is, this proposition is written... without, say, particularly making judgments on genetically modified foods, but it's just to support people's access to information. So this is called right to know, and I think that's because a lot of it is we just don't know. We don't know the impact of any particular genetically modified food. We know that there are... So consequences, like if you have corn, I was talking about corn. So if you have corn that's genetically modified to have the VT, which is actually a pesticide in the corn, then that pesticide in the corn, of course, goes into the whole ecosystem. So it protects the corn, but then it also has all kinds of other effects downstream that we don't really need.

[50:54]

A very difficult time, you know, even studying because it's so complex. So we are capable now, technologically capable of doing all kinds of things that we don't know the impact of. And so this particular bill would at least give people the information on the label of the food to know whether the food is genetically engineered or not. So I have some of these flyers I'll leave. And you can read it and decide for yourself if you want to support that. I have this also. This is in Spanish, so that's helpful too, right? So what else do I have? I'll stop talking and see if there are any questions. We have another five minutes or so here before. Oh, here's, yeah, these two. Anyone wants to wear a button?

[51:55]

You got a few buttons. And then here are little seeds. So with information here about this, LabelGMOs. You can go online and look up LabelGMOs.org. But you can also see that there are tomato seeds here. They won't work very well here at Green Gulch. We tried that. But you might find some other place or someone else who can grow tomatoes where it's a little bit warmer. So these are... Anyway, I've got a little stack of these. So anyway, that was some of the haul that I obtained up at the expo yesterday. And I want to mention one other thing, which is a source of information. Lester Brown has been for years working on how to take care of the planet and how to take care of actually human civilization on the planet in a way that's sustainable.

[53:10]

So this is his current book, came out this year, World on the Edge. And it has a whole section on water and the relation of water to shrinking harvests around the world. It has a whole section on soils and a whole section on food politics. And then has many good suggestions for what to do to take care of... ourselves and take care of feeding ourselves in a way that's sustainable and in a way that takes care of the whole global ecosystem that supports us. So Lester Brown has been doing good work on that for some years. Okay, I'll stop talking. I was wondering if you would actually talk a little bit more and share your experience of harvesting oats.

[54:21]

You talked about... Harvesting oats? Oh, okay. You talked about that Tosahara once, and it made a kind of strong impact on it. I just wondered if you would be up for sharing. In that pause before you said oats, I had the word rutabaga come to mind. But that's another story, isn't it? I can only say that there was a year here where we had so many rutabagas that there was a big battle between the farm and the kitchen. We kept bringing in rutabagas and said, do something great with these rutabagas. Oats. Well, when I was a kid, starting from age nine to... For about nine years, until I was 18, then I retired from being a harvester.

[55:33]

But our family did... mostly cutting wheat starting in Texas each year in May and working our way up through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, really right up to the Canadian border as the wheat ripened successively farther north. And every once in a while we'd get into a field of dreaded oats So when I was eating my oatmeal one morning at Tatsahara, I had this whole memory of great sympathy for the people who are out there running the machines because oats is painful. Oat dust, something about oat dust, I think it has little kind of fibers that kind of go right into your skin and it just itches. Wheat dust is kind of itchy.

[56:34]

Marley dust is kind of itchy. Rye dust is kind of itchy. Rice, I actually don't know. I've never really harvested rice. But oats burns. It really burns. So I think that's what you're talking about. So when you are eating your oatmeal now, which is great. It's great to have a bowl of oatmeal. And at the same time, to realize where does it come from? There's somebody out there who is working with the dust of oats. And it depends, of course, on the day and the temperature and the wind. And even if you're not on the machine that's harvesting the oats, if you're in the, what's called, usually we call it grain elevator or the grain elevator and the oats are brought in and then they're unloaded and there's more dust coming off of them and then it goes into the mill where it's cleaned.

[57:35]

So the, you know, I hated oats. I'm sorry to say that. Now I love oatmeal. But I hated oats because, you know, I thought this is bad enough. Cutting wheat, you know, harvesting wheat is bad enough. But don't give me oats. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So there's a little ditty, right? Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow. Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow. Do you or I or does anyone know how oats, peas, beans, and barley grow? You know? That's a good question. Thank you. Yeah. So I feel like, you know, like any food that I'm going to eat has the potential to cause suffering, like oats.

[58:42]

Who in a Todd? I know, right. So I have the opportunity to leave property this Sunday, and my intention has been to eat some cow. And, you know, So I struggle with this, though, because this is the longest time that I've actually been completely vegetarian. And so then I think, well, I guess my question is, why do a lot of times we practice a vegetarian diet in our practice? How could I look at that, I guess? Because I'm struggling with it. It's the first time that I, I mean, I've thought about it before. I've thought about the suffering and thanked the animal. I'm like, thank you for making this tasty burger for me.

[59:43]

Becoming this burger. And, you know, but then now I'm kind of thinking about its last moments. And it would have end of days anyway, so... I mean, I'd like to be an iceberg for someone when I die. But I don't think anyone would want that. Well, I mean, I'll become a potato or something, you know. I mean, I'll become top-soiled eventually. So I'm struggling with that, you know, of that cycle where it seems natural in a certain way that we all feed each other. And it's good to know... to really take up educating yourself about the source. Not all burgers are equal, for one thing. And then to recognize your own fragility and vulnerability and have that in balance

[60:56]

with what you understand about where this is coming from. So I can't answer that for you, but I can just invite you to inquire more and more into it. There's a fast food burger nation, right? And then there is the slow food nation, which is The slowness, I think, is really focusing on inquiry, to investigate carefully what all is happening for that burger to be presented so fast. And where's it coming from? And what does it actually cost? What does it cost the environment?

[61:58]

What does it cost the planet? So this is something to just look at carefully. And it might, as in food rules, Michael Pollan is saying, well, it's a special occasion. But even that, okay, you really have to deal with it. I think it's good to struggle with it and to be ready to die. We're asking some other form of life to die, and so we should be ready to die. So that's part of Zen practice, I think, as well. But thanks for the question.

[63:00]

Even if people would just reduce the frequency and maybe go just have grass-fed. My teacher Harry would only eat grass-fed So the animal did not stand around in a feedlot, which is really miserable conditions generally. So it's sobering, and it's also a joyful process that we're participating in. There is a fresh nourishment. And we here at the farm at Green Gulch and Garden are producing our own nourishment. And we're in the Zendo. We're also producing spiritual nourishment. I think it's good to understand that nourishment, whether it's food or Zazen or how we just speak to each other, we actually nourish each other in our relationships

[64:16]

We nourish each other emotionally and psychologically and relationally as well as spiritually. And all of that is part of how we enter into every aspect of food. So it's great to have this full awareness. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast. offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[65:14]

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