On November 23rd, Daisy and I went to Green Gulch for their Sunday morning meditation, Dharma talk, and tea program. The speaker was Edward Espey Brown, an ordained Soto Zen priest, Master Chef, founder of the Peaceful Sea Sangha and the subject of the film How to Cook Your Life.

From his website, this quote sums the character of this beautiful man up perfectly;

The truth is you're already a cook.
Nobody teaches you anything,
but you can be touched, you can be awakened.
Put down the book and start asking,
"What have we here?"

Though recipes abound, for soups and salads,
breads and entrées, for getting enlightened
and perfecting the moment, still
the unique flavor of Reality
appears in each breath, each bite,
each step, unbounded and undirected.

Each thing just as it is,
What do you make of it?

His talk on this particular Sunday morning was about getting approval versus living as love. He spoke of the effort to get approval being a block against living as love. Living trying to get approval is the long way around to living as, and with, love. An example he gave illustrated the amount of work involved. In his role as cook at Tassajara Zen monastery he often would be concerned about how people responded to the food he cooked. His internal process went something like; If I cook this well then they will like the food, and approve of it. Then they'll like and approve of me. Then they'll love me. Then I'll be ok. Sound like the long way around? Does to me. It also presents no guarantees.

Another point he touched on that rang true for me was that love does not require perfection, but approval does. What are the chances that any of us will ever work ourselves to a place where we will always perform perfectly? How well has that path worked for us so far? Again, that's the long way around, and has even fewer guarantees.

The way to cultivate living as love, rather than performing for approval, is to start with the one person you always have access to; you. Take a gentle feeling and approach to yourself. Know that just as you don't expect everyone else to always be perfect, you should not knock yourself with that particular hammer either. And, when you do (who doesn't?) don't spend to long berating yourself.

Another gem I got from the talk was a teaching he shared from when he was first practicing at Tassajara, "Don't move." That's what was given to him as the most important thing for his meditation practice. He spoke of expanding that to a key on how to live life. For Ed Brown, that admonition turned into, "Don't move, from whatever is coming, whatever is here. Don't move, from the path of sublime generosity." By being where you are, only where you are, you open the way to the full power of the gift being given to you by the cosmos in that moment as it is.

When Ed Brown started the talk, he spoke of not being interested in sharing ideas mind to mind, but speaking instead as a whole person to whole people. Body to body. For me, this jelled with a talk I went to at Green Gulch in June of 2007. (See the post here.) The tongue is an organ, and limb, with multiple functions. It does not just serve as the receptor for the sense of taste. It also helps with speech, eating, expression and fun. The mind/brain is an organ that also has multiple functions. The mind is not just for sensing thoughts. We have all had experiences of applying a great deal of concentration to a problem until the solution is surrendered to our sweat. We have also all had the experience of a solution to a problem suddenly leaping into our awareness, seemingly without us consciously considering it at all. This is one of the mind's functions. It is a problem solving machine. It follows then that it is also a problem finding machine. Just as the eye is effortlessly always ready to receive images, and the tongue is ever ready to process tastes, so the mind is ever alert for problems. Everything that comes before it. everything it senses, is passed through the filter - is this a problem? The interesting bit is that the mind is also the processor, and coordinator, of all the sense organs. Thus, it has more than ample material to hunt through for problems. It is all to easy, in our modern Western culture, to live in that mode all our waking hours.

But, it is not only the mind that we can use to get us through life. Just as all of us have had the experience of the mind performing its function as a problem solving machine, we have all also had gut feelings, shivers of cold, warm "light" in our chests, pain in the knees, tingly noses; and all the ways that we understand that we are at risk, we have entered a negative energy place, there is the presence of love, rain is coming, and someone is talking about us. We are only just our minds when we identify as such. The truth is that we are much more, and have many tools at our disposal for skillful living. Many ways to bypass the hunt for approval and live as love in this one ever-present moment.

Self-Inquiry, the simple practice of looking at what you already are, just as you are is a strange beast sometimes.  One of the important keys to the practice is to not look for specific results.  Instead one should note when some result seems to happen due to the practice, but not make a big deal about it.

One such result occurred for me recently.  The wondrous and frustrating thing about these outcomes is there is very often no rational way to come up with a reasonable chain of cause and effect to match the outcome with the practice.  That can be weird, but you get used to it.

In this case the outcome showed itself while I was on the toilet.  Sorry for the image, but a good many of my insights happen while in the bathroom, which may mean I spend too much time in the bathroom.  In any event, there I was sitting quietly.  I looked up and for just a moment had no idea what I was looking at.  None.  Complete blank.  I registered something was there, but I had no words for it at all.  Not just the object most directly in vision, but the whole scene.  How it all "worked."  I had just long enough to think, "What the heck is that?"  Then it all flooded in: blue, towel, hanging, wall, etc.  The labels for what I was looking at flew in incredibly swiftly, but not swiftly enough to obliterate the memory of the moment of not knowing.  I knew intellectually that this occurs all the time.  Our minds constantly sort the incoming data our sense provide, form the various streams into a single picture, then apply labels and meanings from memory.  This is the "world" we project on the world to allow for easy navigation and something like comprehension.  I knew all that, but had not seen it for myself.

I can now see this "gap" whenever I choose to.  The constant application of labels and meanings is now apparent.  It often happens without my notice, but if I pay attention I can watch it occur.  It is still very, very fast, and I cannot pick out distinct portions, but the process is revealed.  Having that insight makes a lot of the funny little games we always play with the world just that; funny.  Not so confusing, not so painful.  This mapping of the world as it arises takes an effort.  Now that I have seen it, I can lay that effort aside.  Sometimes.  The habit is so strong, and critical, that it has a force all its own.  But, it can be quite a trip to walk down the street leaving the world a blank.

For myself, minding this gap has been very educational and useful.  Try it, you might like it.