When my son was twenty, he once said to me, “Look at you, Dad. You are old, short, balding, and have crooked teeth. You have the responsibility of caring for children, and you run a business and own a home. I don’t think I want to be anything like you.” I felt tremendous love and affection from and for my son. I could see that he was struggling to understand his own future and the decisions and choices that would confront him as he developed. I felt proud to see my son searching and questioning. What is real freedom? What is responsibility? How do our ideas get in the way? How do we act freely, effectively, beyond success or failure, free of fear, free from hindrance?

I pointed out that he probably would, unfortunately, look like me when he got to be my age. About the responsibility of having children and running a business, I asked him, “What’s the alternative? Do you think that freedom means not having responsibility, not making difficult choices?”

There is a famous story from Zen literature that goes like this:

Teacher A asks Teacher B, “Where do you come from?” (Sometimes a trick question.)
Teacher B replies, “From the south.” (Ah, a safe answer.)
A asks, “How is Zen practice in the South these days?”
B responds, “There lots of discussion.”
A states, “How can all the discussion compare to planting the fields and cooking rice?
B asks, “What can you do about the world.”
A replies, “What do you call the world.”

This are interesting questions, not to be taken lightly – 1) What can you do about the world? Meaning, what are you doing to improve, to help, to heal yourself, to heal the world? And 2) What do you call the world?

It seems strange to think about needing to practice wonder. I’ve read that in some cultures there is a belief, or understanding that just being born as a human being is enough – this alone is a tremendous gift and miracle. No more striving is necessary. But we humans are strange creatures. It seems that we forget. Here are two short pieces of writing, one by Paul Hawken, and another by Norman Fischer that help me to remember:

“There are 100 trillion cells in your body. 90% are not human cells – they are microorganisms, bacteria, and fungi. Right now, inside your body, six septillion activities are going on simultaneously – a six with 24 zeroes. Can you feel it? It is happening this very moment to everyone here. You can feel it because it is the feeling of being alive. More things will have happened in your body in just one second of your life than there are stars and planets in the universe. Who is in charge? Luckily, no one. We cannot control this miracle.”

A student asked the teacher, “How do you avoid the discomfort of hot and cold?”

The teacher said, “Go to that place where there is no hot and cold.”

The student asked, “Where is that place?”

The teacher responded, “When you are hot, be hot and when you are cold, be cold.”

Growing up I always believed that my family was wealthy. Though I didn’t want much as a child, it always seemed like I got most of the things I wanted. When I was a junior in high school I was accepted to early admissions at Rutgers University. I was excited to inform my parents, who were very happy for me. Then my mother looked at me and asked how I was planning to pay for it. She informed me that our family did not have any money to contribute to my college education. This came as quite a shock.

A Strange Feather, by Hafiz

All
The craziness.
All the empty plots,
All the ghosts and fears,

All the grudges and sorrows have
Now
Passed.

I must have inhaled
A strange
Feather

That finally

Fell

Out.

Mindfulness is the quality of awareness of paying attention in a particular way:

- With purpose
- In the present moment
- Non-judgmentally

Mindfulness includes the capacity to notice and observe bodily sensations, thoughts and feelings, to decrease reactivity to challenging experiences. Mindfulness is a way of increasing awareness, and being less on autopilot. The focus is more on our experience then on the labels and judgments we apply to our experience.

Another way to define mindfulness is “a penetrating understanding of reality.” Practicing mindfulness means not just noticing what is happening on the surface, but also penetrating – seeing beneath-the surface of our conventional ideas and beliefs. When we do this we begin to realize that that how we think of ourselves is not a fixed, solid, unchanging entity, but a series of ever changing processes.

I once had about 25 people to my home for a fundraiser to support the organization A World Without Armies. I decided to cook a large pot of steamed kale, seasoned with nutritional yeast, garlic, olive oil, and salt. I was in my kitchen stirring the pot, when Ed Brown, author of the Tassajara Bread Book (and many other books) walked into the kitchen. “What are you cooking, Marc?” Ed asked. “Kale” I responded. “Is this your signature dish?”, Ed inquired. Without hesitating, I answered “Yes.”

Since that evening kale has become my signature dish. Here is the recipe:

My preference is Dinosaur Kale (Lacinato Kale), but any variety will do:

- Wash, and remove leaves from stems.

- Steam the leaves until tender (takes 3 – 5 minutes, once water is steaming.)

One night, after reading a story to my then 10-year-old daughter, she looked up at me and said, “Daddy, when we die, will all the answers to life be revealed to us; like when you play a game and the answer is at the back of the book?” The truth is, I don’t remember how I responded.

What I hope I said is that I think we don’t need to wait until we die in order for the answers to be revealed. Perhaps the answers are revealed in many moments, perhaps in every moment of our lives. We just need to be open enough, or still enough, or ready enough to receive them. We can even practice and cultivate this kind of readiness, by paying attention to and letting go of whatever gets in our way. And, what after all, do I or anyone, really know about life and death?

Two Zen teachers meet; one is carrying his bags. “Where are you going?”, inquires the first teacher.

“I’m going on a pilgrimage”, the other teacher responds.

“What’s the purpose of pilgrimage?” asks the first teacher.

“I don’t know.” he responds.

“Not knowing is most intimate.” Replies the first teacher

This phrase, “not knowing is most intimate” could be said to be the heart of Zen philosophy. It is also much like the second part of the “Less Manifesto” – Less Assumptions (from the book Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less. The others are less fear, distractions, resistance, and busyness.)

In Zen, like in our lives, much of the dialogue is in metaphors. “Where are you going” can be a simple query, or it can mean, “What are you doing with your life?”