New Additions

I added a haiku page for stuff I've written and will write. I also put a couple links to haiku stuff down towards the bottom. As I add new haiku, I'll replace the recent haiku at the top of the home page.

I also added a page about some of my thoughts on cooking.

There's also a blog roll now with the blogs I read regularly. I'll probably add more as I get into some of the newer ones I've stumbled across.

I've got a couple more pages in the works to describe in more detail the other things important to me like Aikido.

The Guitar Koan

Many years ago, I lived the life a student musician playing bass guitar. My teacher placed a large emphasis on jazz and improvisation and after struggling a little with letting go and just allowing myself to play he asked me an unusual question.

"What is the most important note you will ever play?"

I paused for a second and responded without thinking.

"The one I'm playing."

He was a little taken aback.

"I've asked you this before, haven't I?"

I assured him, that he had not. It just made sense to me. This was before I really knew anything about Buddhism so there was no intellectualization over it, I just kind of knew.

So then he asked me another question.

"What's the least important note you'll ever play?"

"The last note I played, of course," I responded.

"I have to have asked you this before... I'm sure."

"Nope. It just makes sense. You can't unplay a note, and if you're all worried about what to play next, you'll freeze up. You can't ride the groove."

None the less, my improv improved. While I understood, I hadn't implemented the idea. I practiced my scales until my fingers knew what to play when, and I improved.

Now I'm not trying to toot my own horn,(bad musical pun, sorry) but I think it's important to stress that we can have realizations on our own, independent of teachings. I'm sure I'd been told several times the very lesson he'd tried to teach me and I just hadn't gotten it before, but the way he asked it that time was my "stone striking a tile" or whatever.

We can read and listen all we want, but until the spot in our mind is in the right shape for the right shaped piece of information, it won't matter. The purpose of our practice is to exercise the mind, to stretch it out and make it more malleable so that it can receive the Truth when it appears. This is the "immovable mind"* that doesn't get stuck by thoughts with preconceived notions.

While I can't really get behind the idea of koan for the sake of koan, I do understand their purpose when used by the right teacher in the right way. I think the classics are difficult since they've been translated so many times they've lost their cultural relevance and they seem to require an encyclopedic knowledge of zen heritage. But I think the right modern teacher would be able to see in their student the shape of that hole in the mind and be able to give them the right shaped piece to fit it. Well, dharma gates are boundless after all.

I've recently come to the conclusion that zen is the ideology that asks me to make the least changes in myself for practice. The changes and means it asks of me also seem to very straightforward and of obvious benefit. I'm not sure if that's the nature of zen, or if it's just me. As I look back over my life, I've noticed other memories, like this one, that were obvious fingers pointing me in the direction of zen.

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* I always found "immovable" tricky, but it's not immovable like the immovable object, it's immovable like the unstoppable force. If the mind is immovable, no thought can come and "move" it or make it stray from its path.

What Do I Cook?

There are a couple comments and questions I always get when I tell someone I'm a culinary student.

The first is usually, "Oh, so you want to open your own restaurant?" I don't really get this one. People don't ask law students if they want to start their own firm, or teaching students if they want to open their own schools.

In case you were wondering, no, I don't want my own restaurant. I don't even want to work in restaurants anymore, I have other goals. While Anthony Bourdain gives most of my reasons in wonderful, thought out, and colorful language not to own a restaurant in his now classic book, Kitchen Confidential, I really don't like the hours any more.

Another big question I get is "What do you like to cook?" I like to cook everything. I certainly have preferences, but they change all the time. Three main influences though: how much does it cost, how big of a mess does it make, and how long will I be standing in the kitchen.

I also don't like the perception that people, especially those preparing "home cooking," tend to think their cooking isn't good enough for me, that somehow I won't like it because it's "simple." That's far from the truth. A lot of care usually goes into preparing it and that comes through in the taste.

I like to explore other cultures through food. But with all the various techniques and ingredients, spices are the easiest to keep on hand for variety in the kitchen.

The most common things I do usually involve either pasta or rice, chicken, some vegetables and some sort of sauce. Just any culture you look at will have some variation of this and just the sauce ingredients determine its origin.

One annoying thing about making things up is people always want to know what you call it. Why does it have to have a name? Does it taste good? That's all that matters.

A lot of people find cooking intimidating, but they shouldn't. People have been cooking for millennia. In times like these, cooking is a very useful skill to have for yourself because it will save you money and allow you to control the nutritional value. If you have everything prepared before you actually start cooking, it can be enjoyable. Cut up all your produce and meat, have everything in front of you so you won't need to look around for some ingredient you forgot and accidentally burn something. This definitely includes reading a recipe a couple times and having it in front of you.

Cooking is definitely an art, but not everyone has to be a Picasso. It doesn't have to be complicated and difficult to understand. All that matters is that it tastes good. Just as any child can pick up a paintbrush and paint a nice picture, to some extent, anyone can take a few ingredients and prepare something tasty. You may not be super successful the first couple times, but confidence is just as much an ingredient as anything else. As long as you don't burn it, there's only so much damage you can do that will end up with something inedible.

So start simple, think it out, and have confidence. Don't be hard on yourself, it's an adventure and a journey so enjoy it.

Vow for the August Moon

In addition to renewing my commitment to myself at the full moon. I've decided to try to form a new habit each month to see what happens.

One thing I've been concerned with recently is the amount of food we end up throwing away at home because it goes bad. I could just make the compromise and buy canned everything, but fresh meat and produce is so much more versatile and good for us.

I should be cooking almost every night anyway. There's no reason I should be letting anything go bad, especially since the theme of this blog is using what's at hand.

This all kind of fits with how I interpret the first of the Ten Grave Precepts (usually "do not kill") as concerning the not wasting or destroying of things.

So until the September Moon, I will do my best to not waste food at home. Hopefully by then it will be a habit and I can find something else to dedicate myself to.

Presently Working

I went to St. Louis last week with my dad to do work on his mom's house. I initially thought I was going by myself, but since moving out, it was nice to spend the time with him.

While I have yet to participate in any sort of soji at the Zen Center, I did get to treat this work as such. After all, my grandma's house is essentially a temple that houses people I care about.

The biggest aspect of what I did, that reflects the silent nature of soji, was power-washing the outside. Due to the noise of the compressor, I didn't have the option of listening to anything on my iPod, let alone talk with someone. I had to be very mindful of what I was doing since there was a great deal of really caked on dirt and other stuff like mildew. I didn't have space for my mind to wander since every stroke of the washer's wand had to be precise to remove the debris.

It was a very pleasant experience. Usually my favorite cleaning task is sweeping or mopping, especially large areas. I really enjoy the physicallity of it for some reason. I was able to experience this in an odd way washing the driveway. The low pressure (for a power-washer) reduced the effective cleaning area to about two inches wide. This made the whole process like a sweeping a couple hundred square feet with a two inch paintbrush.

I've never really minded doing tasks like this and have definitely done my share. One of my favorites was working at a fast food restaurant putting together the boxes in which chicken fingers were served while working the back drive thru window. I used to get to watch the South Texas sunset almost everyday.

I used to use this an opportunity to daydream, since they were never tasks that took much effort or focus. Now I use them as an opportunity for mindful practice. I pay attention to my breath and posture while performing each moment of the task as perfectly as I can. I know each time won't be perfect, but I can't fix it once it happens so I just keep swimming along in the moment one by one.

Just like zazen, my mind wanders every once in a while, but I just come back to what I'm doing without being hard on myself. I am only human after all.

I do have questions about how to fully perform other kitchen duties that require you to pay attention to different things at the same time, but hope to have them answered soon.