Greetings. I'm Tara Brock and I'd like to welcome you to these podcasts. While the

talks and meditations are offered freely, we'd very much appreciate your support. To

make a donation or learn more about my schedule, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.

Thank you.

Namaste and welcome. I'd like to start this talk with a reading from author and teacher,

Zen Teacher Ed Brown, who's also known as being a great cook at the Tassahara restaurant.

When I first started cooking at Tassahara, I had a problem. I couldn't get my biscuits to

come out the way they were supposed to. I'd follow the recipe and try variations of it,

nothing worked. These biscuits just didn't measure up. Growing up, I had made it two kinds

of biscuits. One was from Biscuit and the other was from Pillsbury. For the Biscuit biscuits,

you added milk to the mix, then you blob the dough and spoonfuls on the pan. You didn't

even need to roll them out. The biscuits from Pillsbury came in a kind of cardboard can.

You wrapped the can on the corner of the counter and it popped open. Remember those? Then you

twisted the can open more. The pre-made biscuits on the pan, they baked and that was it. I

liked those Pillsbury biscuits. Isn't that what biscuits should taste like? Mine just weren't

coming out right. It's wonderful and amazing. The ideas we get about what biscuits should

taste like or what a life should look like. Compare to what? Can biscuits from Pillsbury?

Leave it to be, people who ate my biscuits could extol their virtues, eating one after another,

but to me these perfectly good biscuits weren't just right. Finally, one day came a shifting

into place and awakening. Not right compared to what? Oh, my word, I'd been trying to make

hand Pillsbury biscuits. And came an exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without

comparing them to some previously hidden standard. They were weedy, flaky, buttery, sunny,

...