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being good
June 2009 
killing the turkey
Posted on Dec 17th, 2006
by 
jhalifax
jhalifax
today a german student told me she wanted to kill me.
i thought: what a strange job i have:
a student wants to kill me.
why, i asked her. and she said
because we have turkey at thanksgiving at the zen center.
how could we do that?
i responded that i am adverse to too much piety.
or as the "vegetable sutra" says:
water that is too pure has no fish.
to be honest, i felt sorry for the turkey,
actually two turkeys.
i prayed for the turkeys
and we celebrate the dubious holiday of thanksgiving with turkey.
upaya's doors are always open
and on this night they are open too.
anyone who wants to eat is invited to join us......
for turkey.
then the student decided not to kill me
but try to kill her aversiveness. more of this killing.
we have a war going in iraq
with hundreds of people dead in the street,
and there is this thought to kill your teacher over a turkey
and then to kill your dogmaticism,
kill your hatred, your opinions.
maybe we should forget the turkey.
it doesn't feel good to feed people's aggression.
but if it is not turkey that enrages someone,
it will be leather clogs, or a silk raksu (poor worms),
or the pine beetles in the tree removed by manuel
or trapped mice or gassed moths.
it is the irrigated garden with drowned bugs
the knife-sharp words
the dark closed thoughts
there is just no end to it, is there
the first noble truth, suffering, there is no end of that either......
i thought: what a strange job i have:
a student wants to kill me.
why, i asked her. and she said
because we have turkey at thanksgiving at the zen center.
how could we do that?
i responded that i am adverse to too much piety.
or as the "vegetable sutra" says:
water that is too pure has no fish.
to be honest, i felt sorry for the turkey,
actually two turkeys.
i prayed for the turkeys
and we celebrate the dubious holiday of thanksgiving with turkey.
upaya's doors are always open
and on this night they are open too.
anyone who wants to eat is invited to join us......
for turkey.
then the student decided not to kill me
but try to kill her aversiveness. more of this killing.
we have a war going in iraq
with hundreds of people dead in the street,
and there is this thought to kill your teacher over a turkey
and then to kill your dogmaticism,
kill your hatred, your opinions.
maybe we should forget the turkey.
it doesn't feel good to feed people's aggression.
but if it is not turkey that enrages someone,
it will be leather clogs, or a silk raksu (poor worms),
or the pine beetles in the tree removed by manuel
or trapped mice or gassed moths.
it is the irrigated garden with drowned bugs
the knife-sharp words
the dark closed thoughts
there is just no end to it, is there
the first noble truth, suffering, there is no end of that either......
Access: PublicTagged with: piety, vegetable root sutra, being good, buddhism, upaya zen center, student, roshi joan halifax, zen buddhist, turkey, iraq, raksu, pine beetles, moths, mice
:) (this is a generic signature, just to say, was here and read your blog and appreciated it)
I enjoyed your post.
I am on the rebound from a Sangha where I felt I wasn't growing because the water was too pure. And for a long time I wondered, “What is wrong with me.” It didn’t occur to me that maybe this situation was just not a good fit.
The teacher and supporting students of this group were not only vegetarian but black foods were also on the verboten list: no onions, no garlic, no turnips. I was told that onions and garlic cloud one’s mind. I asked why and where did this idea come from and never got an answer.
The philosophy was that food should only be an antidote for hunger, nothing more. My thought is that food should be celebrated, maybe not to the point of addiction, but celebrated and embraced as other parts of our lives are embraced.
We are omnivores in our house and mindful of our good fortune to be homo sapiens this reincarnation. When we sit down to eat, we gives thanks to the sun and the water for making the plants grow and to the cows or chickens who have given to us so we can have protein.
Food is such a hot-button issue. I wish someone would write a book about all the dogma surrounding it.
Thanks again Roshi
posted comment and it disappeared.
it all does sooner or later.
religious purity plagues the world. guilt, hatred, righteousness, and war so forth. on the other hand, we endeavor to do our best to not harm. japanese have a term: mono non aware: the slender sadness, that just be living we take life. yes, dogen says: give life to life but…….
no support for cattle and turkey farms here. and one has to cultivate compassion as we move through the realities of the world where even turning on the lights harms beings.
my sense has always been that we have to provide contrast to stay awake to our suffering adn the suffering of others. so the turkey thing is a way for us to question our values and life. it's also a way to celebrate thanksgiving……
tibetans use their consumption of meat as a compassion practice. and when they go to lower altitudes where the diet is different, they are faced with an interesting dilemma.
but the issue with the student is really related to maturation. the student teacher relationship is always a lively ground for projections and problems. dependence, power imbalances, expectations, and the like. in fact, it is interesting that no one has openly discussed the turkey issue till recently and i look forward to jumping into it. but the turkey problem is not the problem. the problem is the heart and mind.
re relig. communities that are too pure……… this kind of aversion does not feed joy, talking about food.
about black foods: they are considered to be too stimulating. there must be other categories as well, for example, foods that make you dull. of course, food can produce greed and so forth. so your suggestion about religion and food is an interesting one.
thanks from the old anthropologist rjoan
maybe in the future of contemplative academies, we can cook chicken on our george foreman grills while considering karmic entanglements.
craig, you might be cooking chicken on the foreman grill….. somehow i don't think we have to worry about that here. but for karmic entanglements, so-called, we all, and i mean all of us, every single one of us, here and elsewhere, has a fair share. considering them is a good step; resolving them a bigger step. getting rid of them, impossible. to repeat the admonition: water that is too pure has no fish………
by the way, see you in the zendo in the morning………….