I recently picked up The Complete Tassajara Cookbook from the library and have been slowly savoring it as I have time. I am a big fan of the Tassajara Bread Book, so it seemed logical that I would enjoy this book as well. I found this great story in the middle of the book and had to share it, as it is so poignant and relevant to where I am in my life and walk with the Lord right now.
Rotten Pickles
Suzuki Roshi once told us a story from his childhood that left a particularly poignant taste in my mouth. Food is not just food. The entire universe comes along with it. Human nature makes its appearance bite after bite.
As a boy of perhaps ten or eleven, Suzuki Roshi had been sent by his father to study with a Zen teacher who was his father’s disciple. There were apparently four or five boys altogether. In the spring they would help their teacher make daikon pickles. The long white radishes would be layered in barrels with salt and nuka (rice bran).
We used to make these pickles as Tassajara. The mixture is dry at the outset, but as the barrel sits, salt draws the water out of the radishes, moistening the nuka and thereby salting the radishes. At least, that’s how it’s meant to work. The salt acts as a preservative. The rice bran provides flavor and perhaps nutrition.
One year at the temple in Japan, a batch of pickles the boys and their teacher made didn’t quite make it; a number of the radishes developed noticeably “off” flavors, which happens when there is not enough salt. What to do when something doesn’t turn out the way it should, the way you wanted, the way you planned? The teacher served them anyway! Perhaps he found this all well and good, but boys will be boys, and the young Suzuki Roshi and his companions refused to eat them. Each day the pickles would be served, and each day studiously avoided.
At last Suzuki Roshi decided to take matters into his own hands. One night he got the pickles, took them out to the far end of the garden, dug a hole, and buried them. Isn’t that what you do with something distasteful? Dig a hole, put the rotten stuff in, and cover it with dirt–a straightforward, elegant solution, returning earth to earth. Let it compost, keep it covered.
Yet life is not always that simple. The next day the pickles were back on the table! Things you bury don’t always stay put. What an unpleasant surprise, and what a sinking feeling to have what you were trying to hide come out into the open. The teacher, however, did not say anything about the pickles having been buried, or whether or not he knew who buried them. He merely stated that those pickles would have to be eaten before the boys got anything else to eat.
Sometimes we have no choice; we have to taste and digest what we find distasteful. Suzuki Roshi said that it was his first experience of “no-thought,” when the conceptualizing mind stops and one experiences something nonreactively with no added comments. Chew and swallow. Chew and swallow. He could eat the pickles only if his mind did not produce a single thought.
The world itself is swallowed up. For a time the storyline disappears. No more “This is awful,” “How distasteful,” “How unfair,” “what did I do to deserve this,” or even “Yuck,” because then you would have to spit the pickle out, or choke it up. Just chew and swallow.
We need to be able to conceptualize, to decide what is good to eat and what is not, yet we can suffer a lot by trying to have nothing but delicious experiences. Inevitably we will have to chew on and digest something difficult, painful moments. We’ve all had our painful experiences: family tragedies, children with cancer, parents or partner’s with Alzheimer’s. And we do our best to chew and swallow.
We would like to say, “Skip the pickles,” but this is the great dilemma that life serves up: Not everything is tasty and cooked to perfection, and there is no way to avoid all that is unpleasant. If we become too finicky and picky, we are unable to eat, to really be nourished by life.
The dirt of our life contains both good and bad, sweet and sour, bitter and pungent. The cook unearths what is there and labors to make it nourishing.
-Pgs. 251-252, The Complete Tassajara Cookbook by Edward Espe Brown
I just relate so much to things that have to do with food. I just pictured this story with Jesus as the cook trying to make something nourishing of my life. What a beautiful picture, eh? I am in a chew and swallow period in my life, but I fully trust that God is going to make it something nourishing not only to me, but to the people around me as well. Thank you God for your mercy and direction in our lives, the Master Chef!
