Recipe for Zen

I used to spend an extraordinary amount of energy and emotion manipulating experiences to be to my taste. Had I not noticed that life is full of different flavours? Becoming familiar with the bitter and the sour as well as the sweet not only gave me a richer life, it aligned me with the truth of how things are.

“We think that to study Buddhism is to take the food out of the refrigerator. Whenever you want it, it is already there. Instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce food from the field, from the garden, should put the emphasis on the ground. If you look at the empty garden you won’t see anything, but if you take care of the seed — Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, by David Chadwick