RA: Some people cannot afford different meat.
DD: The question is: do I really have to eat meat? Maybe an avocado is much better, healthier, and nicer. It is a myth that eating well has to be expensive. Good and healthy food can be cheap if you know what to look for. If you don’t know what to look for, then you are lost and will automatically buy prefabricated and ready-made products. Those products seem to be cheaper, but the way they are fabricated is to maximize profits.
In the film Edward Brown asks, “What are you willing to spend on food?” and continues directly by asking, “What you are willing to spend on yourself?”
RA: Do you think respect for food and respect for our world are connected to each other?
DD: We have mastered the ability to disconnect ourselves. We don’t think about where tomatoes and meat come from. We don’t think about the correlation of things. I believe that we can make the connection between a tomato from Spain and African refugees who picked these tomatoes for a starvation wage. This is what they teach in the kitchen in Tassajara: We are connected to everything. What does food mean to us? How do we cook food and how does food “cook” us?
RA: Who is the Japanese Buddhist teacher in the black-and-white archival film scenes?
DD: That’s Suzuki Roshi, the teacher of Edward Brown. He came from Japan to San Francisco in the 1960s. At the outset, a wild group of hippies were his followers. They founded a Zen center in the mountains of California, in Tassajara. Suzuki Roshi follows the tradition of Master Dogen, who brought Buddhism from China to Japan in the 13th century. Until today the tenzo kyokun, the old text from Master Dogen’s Instruction for the Cook, is sung in the kitchen in Tassajara: “Select the rice and prepare the vegetables by yourself with your own hands, watching closely with sincere diligence. Carefully protect these ingredients as if taking care of your own eyes. You should not attend to some things and neglect or be slack with others for even one moment. Do not give away a single drop from within the ocean of virtues; you must not fail to add a single speck on top of the mountain of good deeds.”
