The Flavour of These Days

There is  something indulgent about the holiday season, all the tastes and smells and sights that give pleasure.  I am good with this season of celebration as long as it sidesteps the madness of the consumer driven holiday.  I don't want to know about angry shoppers or maxed out credit cards or .....  Call me the Christmas ostrich but I am sticking my head in the sand to holiday madness, to desire run rampant.

Today a walk in the foggy rainforest, salal glistening in the rain but we, the walkers, protected by the forest canopy.  The dreamy feeling of walking through the forest of hulking green giants in the fog.  Christmas chocolate in the pocket, just in case.  Smoke from the chimney at dusk when we return home.  The reflection of Christmas lights in the window.

I am savouring  a slate wiped clean of commitments and plans by the holidays.  A day for leisurely cooking and baking of plant based treats.  Blogging friend, David Ashton at Snow Branches often reminds us about extending our compassion to the animal world by declining to eat them.  For me I am more conscious of it at this time of year seeing how simple and delicious it is to eat a plant based diet.  Vegan shortbread made with "Earth Balance" and panela sugar, my mother's old carrot pudding recipe (read plum pudding but less rich) made vegan by using canola oil and EB, kale chips (recipe here) a holiday main dish created by my nutritionist daughter that includes nuts and white beans, and many other treats.  The joy of spending time in the kitchen together creating and laughing,

Tenzin Palmo in her book "Reflections on a Mountain Lake" responds to a question regarding vegetarianism & Buddhism by saying: "These days, more and more lamas are becoming vegetarian, especially the younger ones, partly for health reasons and partly because they recognize the hypocrisy of talking about universal compassion and then sitting down to a steak or a chicken dinner."

the modern family enjoys the holidays!

As we spend the evenings together we have been enjoying a few movies on the computer.  I was introduced to "Dr Who" via the Christmas special which reminded me a lot of the old children's story "The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe."  We watched a Christmas episode of "Supernatural", a favourite show of my daughter's which gave me nightmares in which I was accused of being a witch at a border crossing.  I pleaded I was not a "dark witch".

The solstice sock monkey

As a new year draws near the following thoughts from Tenzin Palmo form a strong part of my resolve for my myself. "It is not enough to hold vast views.  If there is no correspondence between these views and our conduct, we are in danger.  Guru Padmasambhava once said to King Trisong Detsen, "Your view must be as vast as the sky, but your conduct must be as finely sifted as barley flour."

I hope your holidays are filled with simple joys and the opportunity to contemplate the year that is slipping through our fingers and look forward with gusto to the one tiptoeing up the path.

Sukkha, Dukkha & Cranberry Sauce

I have fallen down the rabbit hole of family and holiday events and become only an apparition in the kingdom of blog. It has been a happy kind of falling. And where is the Dharma in that? Things are flowing smoothly along. I have less grist for the Dharma mill, less to blog about.

I remember my Zen teachers saying, when things are going well, we just go about our lives. We don't give it a lot of thought. It's when things are difficult that we really look to the Dharma to help us out, to light the way, to make us feel less crazy. Is that selfish or bad or just human nature?

I am savouring this time of things going well. Perhaps that is the Dharma of it. When we know that things don't have to be this way, that things don't always go well, it allows us to appreciate the preciousness of those times when all seems right in the world. And we've all been served our helpings of Dukkha in large or small dishes at some point.

It is a real joy to have our daughter, who lives several thousand miles away, home for several weeks. It warms my heart that the little girl who grumbled that her mother wouldn't buy jelly dinasour fruit snacks like all the other "normal" moms, way back when, is now studying to be a nutritionist. Cancel sugar, flour, animal products of any sort. Mom can now learn a few tricks from her. Tables turn, their contents get shaken up.

So when she suggested we have a "raw" Christmas dinner I extracted the dehydrator from the cupboard and we got to work. Here's a picture of dinner. We dressed it up in a suit and took it to see Santa Claus! Okay so no Santa Claus but it's cute anyway, complete with raw cranberry sauce, a version of mashed potatoes (made from raw parsnips), a raw stuffing made with mushrooms and a cashew cream and a dehydrated burger impersonating a turkey created from the loins of some shitake mushrooms, a few nuts and lots of herbs that smell like Christmas (sage, rosemary & thyme). Simon and Garfunkel did not drop by. Probably the no turkey thing kept them away.

There has been much visiting and chatting and just quiet sitting around. No rushing about, no packing in of thousands of events and activities, no dreaded or difficult visits with family and friends. We had a heart warming visit with family just before Christmas when we gathered to scatter my mother's ashes. It wasn't a sad event at all. We scattered ashes, we visited, we had dinner together and then we looked at old pictures of mom/grandma and listened to some recordings of my mother talking about her life that I had made a month or two before she died. Everyone wanted to hear what she had to say. It felt like sharing a very deep experience of getting to know my mother.

The lovely gift of the season has been this simple sense of easy togetherness, a few gifts, some tasty treats. And what does a budding nutritionist give their parents for Christmas? How about "Dr. Jensen's Guide to Diet and Detoxification" & "Dr Jensen's Guide to Better Bowel Care" (some interesting photos here, not recommended for the squeamish and a section that qualifies for the comment, kid's you might not want to try this at home). And I haven't even got to the "Encyclopedia of Natural Healing". I might even get healthy yet! " It is both a hoot to get these, an expression of caring and an invitation to better health.

I will end with a quote from Bernard Jensen from his "Guide to Diet & Detoxification": "Nature's creative power exceeds man's inclination to destroy." This seems like an optimistic world view, perhaps a vision for planetary detoxification?