This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Thank you very much, Kodo, for the introduction. And also thank you very much, Nancy, for the invitation to speak this evening. It's lovely to have you as head of practice, and I appreciate all of the work both of you are doing. I actually really know about all the work you're doing. So as I said, it's lovely to be here on this February evening to share the Dharma. to share each other's presence, and to feel a connection, which is strangely evident through Zoom.

[01:12]

So thank you very much for joining this evening. These days, because of my job as head of the kitchen at City Centre, I think a lot about three things. I think a lot about food. I think a lot about the Dharma. And I think a lot about the planet. And of course, I think about other things. But those are the three things that seem to occupy a lot of space these days in my mind. And I'd like to talk about those things for the next 30 minutes or so. But before I speak about any of those things, I'd like to acknowledge my privilege. I'd like to acknowledge that I currently have a job. I have a place to live. I have food security. I have health.

[02:13]

I have a partner who I get along with very well and love deeply. And these are not things to be taken for granted these days. Recently, I was looking on the SF Marin Food Bank website, and the first statement that pops up is, as many as 55,000 households rely on SF Marin Food Bank every week, nearly twice as many as before the pandemic. 55,000 households. Reading that took my breath away. So I want to acknowledge that in speaking about food tonight, I realize the incredible privilege that I have to be able to sit down to meals, to be able to prepare meals, to be able to buy food for the temple, to be able to make choices.

[03:24]

rather than have them made for me. And to feel that I have security around food where I know so many people in the world and even in this neighborhood face food security, insecurity every day. So talking about food thinking about food is currently the role I have in the temple, which I take very seriously. But peeking around the corners of that all the time is this idea that right now, on this globe, there are millions of people that don't have the luxury that I have. And I feel it's important as a practitioner to keep those two ideas ever present.

[04:27]

That to practice with both of those, to have tension between those two ideas is extremely important for me as a person and also for the planet as a whole. It means that I can have sadness about that without being frozen It means that I can take on this job as head of the kitchen and think carefully about the food that's prepared. Think carefully about the budget. Think carefully about where the food is coming from. Think about all those things and at the same time acknowledging that that is privilege. Until very recently, the community at City Centre chanted a meal chant before every meal, or before dinner.

[05:43]

At Tazhara, we did it before every meal. We've stopped this because of COVID and because of the restrictions around chanting with groups of people. But I've been thinking a lot about the first line in particular of the meal chant, which is, We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us. And I wanted to tell you a story from my own memory about that particular topic. So as some of you might know, when I was an early teenager, my parents moved out to a farm. And my mother grew up in a family, a farming family. Her father was a fabulous gardener, and my mother became an equally diligent and wonderful and caring gardener.

[06:53]

So they bought this piece of property, and my mom... proceeded to locate a place for a garden and worked on that garden. And for the next 25 years, that was her full-time job, is she gardened. She had many different plants. It wasn't an acre, the garden, but it was close to an acre. It was very large. And we worked on it as kids, and there was always food. There was always fresh food. She took a lot of pride in this work and providing for us as we grew older. She would always bring in, you know, bags of food for us when we didn't live at the farm anymore. She'd give it away. This was part of our family heritage, I would say, is the garden and the produce from the garden.

[07:59]

At a certain point, my eldest sister decided to get married, she and her future husband, and they had a ceremony at a church close by, and they decided to have the reception at the local hall. And my parents thought it would be wonderful if they provided all the food. So it... We had beef on the farm, and so there was, I think, steak provided and peas and salad and other vegetables. And it was kind of an amazing feast. I think there were probably 50 or more people there, all of which came through the efforts, the labors of my parents and some from the kids, but probably not much, actually. My sister's husband, or then to be husband, at that point was her husband, had a sister who worked in a restaurant and had very clear ideas of what was good food and what wasn't good food and how to prepare food and how to serve food.

[09:22]

And during the reception, she said in a very loud voice, Something to the effect of this food is garbage. And of course my mother heard it and my father heard it. Everybody else at the head table heard. And there was this steely silence because we didn't know what to do. We didn't know how to react. And my brother-in-law's sister kept on going on about the quality of the food, the poor quality of the food. And I've been thinking about this lately. I'm quite certain she didn't put it together, that the food all came from the farm, that it came through the labors of my parents' hands.

[10:27]

I'm quite sure that she wasn't trying to be insulting. And I think it's possible that her habit pattern around the preparing and serving of food to guests, to paying guests, shaped her mind in a certain way that did not allow her to appreciate this food that was being served at the reception. And I think about that. I think about that as in my job as head of the kitchen. I think about what habit patterns we all have in relation to food, what we think of as good food, what we think of as bad food, how we hold that, The other day I was preparing breakfast and I went into the room we call the small kitchen, which is where all the residents have the ability to make coffee, tea.

[11:47]

There's a refrigerator there. There's always a bowl of fresh fruit. And that morning when I went to see what was in the fruit bowl, I noticed that every single piece of fruit in that bowl had some bruise, some mold, some piece of... something not desirable on it. So I think what happens is... People go into the kitchen and they want a piece of fruit. And so they look over the bowl. They pick out a piece that they want to eat. And over a day or a couple of days, all the pieces that have some sort of difficulty with them are left. So then I was thinking about this story that...

[12:54]

Suzuki Roshi is famous for, and I looked at it in Kyuk, David Chadwick's site, and there's many references to this notion that Suzuki Roshi would go shopping for groceries, and he'd always pick out the withered, the marred, the slightly deteriorating fruit, because he said that other people would take the other fruit, but nobody would take that fruit. And his wife also said, reportedly, that it wasn't the best thing to send him shopping. because he would invariably come back with challenged goods.

[13:57]

So that morning I thought about all this and I carefully cut up the fruit. I was able to save a lot of it. We made a fruit salad and It turned out, I think, to be a fine fruit salad. And through the process of that, I thought about Suzuki Roshi. I thought about him going shopping and looking for the pieces, actually seeking out the pieces of fruit and vegetables that were withered, that other people had rejected. So as you can see, I'm turning in this world of we reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us.

[15:07]

And Suzuki Roshi's idea that it's easy to pick the perfect fruit. It's easy to pick the most delicious tangerine. It's a preference. But what happens when we start examining our preferences? What happens when we combine this idea of likes and dislikes with Dharma? With our understanding of what Dharma is proposing to us? Which is that we... are in a situation, and if we pay enough attention, close attention, then we will notice our habit patterns. And once we start noticing our habit patterns, they lose their power over us.

[16:21]

we start being able to wonder if that habit pattern is who we are. We start being able to consider what our actions would be if we're not captivated by that habit pattern. We start to be able to be curious about what our what our minds would look like if we don't follow that same groove all the time. So it's a very enlivening process. And at the same time, it's very scary because habit is like an old tired chair or shoe or favorite shirt.

[17:29]

We just sit in it or put it on and it does what it always does. And we don't have to think about it, even if it doesn't fit very well anymore, even if it's not comfortable. It's this idea that expression, the devil you know. It's a familiar comfort. So my understanding of dharma is that the examination of our own activity allows us To see if what we do all the time is useful. If it's liberating.

[18:32]

Or if it's constricting. If it's holding us in a place that no longer fits us. So, of course, I come across a lot of recipes from the early days at Zen Center, from the 70s, the 80s, from all those young people who worked with Suzuki Roshi who could eat and eat and eat and eat. And they had cake for breakfast. There was this Dutch... that was part of the recipes when I was at Tassajara that they would make in the 70s for people for breakfast because they were working so hard building the kitchen, building the walls.

[19:40]

And now when I look at those recipes, it kind of shocks me to think of the way that they ate and the calories that they had and the labor that they did. And those old recipes speak of a time that isn't so real anymore. A lot of the recipes from those early days or I think of them as the early days anyway. Somebody said to me recently, oh, they're so old-fashioned, which I kind of laughed at. But when I think about some of those recipes, I think, well, I wonder if they're old-fashioned.

[20:43]

And I was looking through some recipes from City Center that were written in 2005, And therefore, 70 people in the zendo, 90 people in the zendo for a one-day sit, they were cooking a mountain of food. And right now at City Center, 20 people come to meals. So the kitchen is a very different place. What I hope is that through that difference, the one thing that is the same is the care that people take with cutting vegetables, making soup, preparing rice, that that care exists, that it's enlivening for people, that it allows them to see how they relate

[21:50]

to their mind, that that care and attention for the vegetables is something that they can also bring into their own hearts as care and attention for themselves. The kitchen really is like a backdrop. It allows one to see where one's standing. And it doesn't just have to be a Zen kitchen. Each of you at home right now must eat. At least I think that's probably true. Eating is going on. And so what's happening when that eating is going on? I'm quite sure that for those of you that are at home and you're alone,

[22:51]

That eating at a table, eating without device, eating without a book, eating without a newspaper, can be really hard. That in our busy lives right now, in our unpredictable world right now, even though we eat all the time, somehow it has taken, for many people, sort of a backward step, maybe. It's not as important. It's not the most important thing, let's say. And I'm not suggesting that food has to be the most important thing, except for, possibly, when you're eating. When you're engaged in that activity, it's an interesting thing to be engaged in that one activity.

[24:04]

You know, that idea that when you're eating, just eat. When you're preparing vegetables, just prepare vegetables. So these are the things I think about these days. I think about how to practice in this time of turmoil, in this time of change, and wondering how the people in the temple, the people that are eating, the people that are cooking, can feel the dharma through food, feel the dharma through preparation, through caring for one another and for food.

[25:31]

And I think about all the people in the world who are going through a really hard time right now, who have had loved ones that are dying or have died, who don't have work, who don't have their health. And I think of those things while I'm engaged fully in the temple, thinking about food, and how those two things aren't necessarily at odds. And at the bottom of those, all those things that I've mentioned, I would say is the idea of gratitude.

[26:47]

How grateful I am for all of you. How grateful I am for both the perfect mandarin orange and the bruised apple. How grateful I am for the practice that we all share. I feel so fortunate to be living now with all of you. So thank you very much for sharing this journey with me. I hope that you sleep well tonight and that you had enough to eat today and that you have enough to eat tomorrow and that soon everybody, every being will have enough to eat.

[28:13]

Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[28:43]

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