I read a story recently from The Complete Tassajara Cookbook, recipes, techniques and reflections from the famed Zen kitchen, by Edward Espe Brown. The story is titled “Making the Perfect Biscuit” and begins with Brown reflecting on his beginnings at Tassajara. He writes, “When I first started cooking at Tassajara, I had a problem: I couldn’t get my biscuits to come out right. I’d follow the recipe and try variations…but nothing worked. I had in mind the ‘perfect’ biscuit, and these just didn’t measure up. After several failures, I finally got to thinking, ‘Right, compared to what?'” He recalls the biscuits of his childhood, of which there were only two kinds: “one was from Bisquik, and the other was from Pillsbury.” Neither required preparation really and made minimal dirty dishes. Brown writes, “I really liked those Pillsbury biscuits. Isn’t that what biscuits should taste like? Mine just weren’t coming out the way they were supposed to.”
Finally, the day of awakening comes when Brown realizes he’s been trying to make canned Pillsbury biscuits. He writes, “Then that exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without comparing them to some (previously hidden) standard: wheaty, flaky, buttery, sunny, earthy, here. Inconceivably delicious, incomparably alive, present, vibrant. In fact, much more satisfying than any memory, much more delicious than any concept.”
Reading this, I thought of how often I suffer because I’ve decided to measure my life by some hidden standard. Often, without even realizing it until much later, I find myself thick in the middle of agonizing over how something (my practice, my children, my husband, etc…) ought to look and act and respond, and forget to savor, as Brown says, “the biscuits of today.” So often my frustration is wrapped up in the portrayal that society or TV or parents have presented that it becomes difficult to even separate what I might find truly nourishing and delicious in my life and instead keep clinging to a design that is packaged and presented without one shred of reality.
Pillsbury biscuits are about as real as a Victoria’s Secret model. Make some biscuits from scratch and you’ll know exactly what I mean. But isn’t this what we all do, try to make everything look “right,” seem perfect on the outside, conceal all of our messes? How scary it can be to face the truth, and yet so liberating. To realize that every moment, every thought, every ounce of us is impermanent frees us up to face this truth and allow each moment to be, each imperfection of today folding gloriously into tomorrow’s perfection as we wake up to the possibility of endless new growth.
Brown writes, “Those moments–when you realize your life as it is is just fine, thank you–can be so stunning and liberating. Only the insidious comparison to a beautifully prepared, beautifully packaged product makes it seem insufficient. The effort to produce a life with no dirty bowls, no messy feelings, no depression, no anger is bound to fail–and be endlessly frustrating.”
Endlessly frustrating ,it is indeed. Recall a time recently when you felt yourself (or perhaps still do) stewing in disappointment about the way things aren’t. Maybe if we can hold those feelings a little closer, rather than pushing them away in our myriad ways, we could understand better where this “ideal” comes from, recognize it for what it is, and let it go. Perhaps we might let the frustration and the ideals be as impermanent as the rest of life and begin to surrender to and savor what actually is. As Brown says, “how about savoring some good old home-cooking, the biscuits of today?”