The Serendipity Diet

Introducing
Ajahn Sucitto's
Serendipity Diet

The Serendipity Diet is about nutritious delights accidentally discovered right in front of you, especially while looking for something else entirely unrelated. Foregoing the search after the things we crave and avoiding the rest, this diet is based on letting go and discovering what's in the pantry right now. This nutritious and richly flavorful diet is free of metabolic opinions and is liberally seasoned with absolute honesty. With the Serendipity Diet you depend on what is unknown and inconceivable to sustain you.

The lightness of The Serendipity Diet contrasts with the heavy personal grasping of The Ultimate Truth Diet, grasping onto feelings or imaginings, wishes, desires, to be, to not be, perceptions, truth, liberation, freedom, emptiness, oneness, knowingness. Whatever the flavor of the month is. You know the way that we kind of find ourselves forming around these, and then really wanting to have them, be them, realize them, discover them. Then there's the frustrating bit, where they don't quite get it: Ultimate Truth is just the other side of this particular annoying, nagging bit of me that's getting in the way of me and ultimate freedom and flavor, out there, peaceful, realized, savory, I won't have any struggle with this stuff anymore.

Because you begin to recognize as you contemplate grasping on your palate, grasping only occurs because of some state imagined or felt. So even the imagined states are a kind of state, aren't they? An indefinable state. You can grasp onto tastes and flavors as that, and grasp onto moods and feelings as that. The really, really nasty stuff is the stuff you can't even see. You see, the stuff you can see you can grasp, tastes and flavors, like 'yeah, so what, yeah, well enough of that' or 'that was nice but so...'. So imagining something like Ultimate Truth, because you never get it, it MUST be good. It's like the donut you don't eat is always the best one, isn't it? You know, out there somewhere is the Ultimate Donut. So this wasn't it, that wasn't it, but, really the one you see in the advertisements, the glistening, creamy, stuffed full of whatever it is, beautifully brown with chocolate, 'Oh wow to eat that, fantastic!' That would be it. And you eat it, it's just another donut.

Out there in virtual reality you can still carry all this wonderful imagined meaning, where there is this craving for ultimate flavor of some sort or another. Ultimate experience of some sort. So when you don't get it, it must be because you can't actually get a hold of it, then something in you still dreams it, maybe you don't even think it, but something in you still wishes, '...one day...' the veils will be drawn, the clouds will break, '...yeah...' Which is profound enough intuition, but the point is that as long as one is caught in that kitchen we tend to look over the top of this irritating bit that's getting in the way. Really, it is not a 'what' kind of diet, we don't say 'what it is' we just tell you 'how'. So it's how to handle this, how to be with this, how to focus on that, eventually it's 'how does grasping work'.

This is really what we come to, maybe this is the way it's supposed to be, to experience things like this. This is what happens to people. So if we're actually being absolutely honest, then you can notice this is what it comes to in its various forms. And I'd recommend, rather than searching for ultimate truth, just being absolutely honest.

Recipes follow. Bon Appétit

Easy Chuckles, with Leaps of Heart
à la Chef Shannon

I N G R E D I E N T S

1 bit lateness (about a minute)
1 small daughter, arriving
1/2 block of sidewalk
3/4 school bus of children, a driver, stirred
1/4 block of road, bumpy
5 seconds of clear blue sky

I N S T R U C T I O N S
Yesterday, as I was walking to the bus stop to greet Lauren, I was running a bit late. I am usually there waiting. As I rounded the corner I saw the bus driving by. I caught a glimpse as it passed, and I chuckled when I saw the driver, bobbing up and down along the bumpy road. My heart leaped as I heard the hyperactive, delightful giggles; squeals and shouts of all the tiny, innocent, contented little children emanating from the open bus windows. It was the best 5 seconds I've had all month.

Simply delicious.

Spiritual Pizza, with Nowness
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

I N G R E D I E N T S

99 cups, different experiences, unjumbled
1 gallon, invaders and dictators, all kinds
1 cup, nowness, personally experienced
1 reality, very much there.

I N S T R U C T I O N S
People have different experiences of reality, which cannot be jumbled together. Invaders and dictators of all kinds have tried to make others have their experience, to make a big concoction of minds controlled by one person. But that is impossible. Everyone who has tried to make that kind of spiritual pizza has failed. So you have to accept that your experience is personal. The personal experience of nowness is very much there and very obviously there. You cannot even throw it away!

Recipe from "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness," in THE SANITY WE ARE BORN WITH: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology and Pizza Pie, page 37.

Dog, skin on
Master Zhaozhou

P R E P A R A T I O N
A gourd floating on the water—push it down and it turns: a jewel in the sunlight—it has no definite shape. It cannot be attained by mindlessness, nor known by mindfulness. Immeasurably great people are turned about in the stream of words—is there anyone who can escape?

I N G R E D I E N T S

A Monk asked Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have a Buddha-nature or not?"
Zhaozhou said, "Yes."
The monk said, "Since it has, why is it then in this skin bag?"
Zhaozhou said, "Because he knows yet deliberately transgresses."
Another monk asked Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have a Buddha-nature or not?"
Zhaozhou said, "No."
The monk said, "All sentient beings have Buddha-nature — why does a dog have none, then?"
Zhaozhou said, "Because he still has impulsive consciousness."

I N S T R U C T I O N S
If you say a dog's Buddha-nature surely exists, afterwards he said 'no'—if it surely does not exist, still previously he said 'yes.' And if you say that to say 'yes' or 'no' is just a temporary response spoken according to the situation, in each there is some reason. That is why it is said that someone with clear eyes has no nest.

The point of this monk's question was to broaden his perspective and learning; he didn't base it on his own fundamental endowment. Zhaozhou said 'yes', using poison to get rid of poison, using sickness to cure sickness.

This monk also said, "Since it has, why is it then in this skin bag?" He didn't realize he himself had been born in the belly of a dog. Zhaozhou strikes twice; a fleeting opportunity is hard to catch.

This monk might have thought that he was judging the result on the basis of the cause, but if you understand in this way, you cannot even be the slave of a professor.

Later a monk asked this again, whereat Zhaozhou said 'no'. He was one who had attained—whether he said 'yes' or 'no' he had a way out. This monk judged the fundamental way on the basis of words: "All beings have Buddha-nature; why doesn't a dog have it?" Thus challenged, I dare say that even the hand that can move the North Star has no way to turn around, but Zhaozhou answered sincerely with this: "Because he still has impulsive consciousness." Now you tell me—did this monk have blood under his skin after all? Tiantong cannot avoid putting more moxa to burn on the scar on the red flesh:

V E R S E
A dog's Buddha-nature exists, a dog's Buddha-nature does not exist;
A straight hook basically seeks fish who turn away from life.
Chasing the air, pursuing fragrance, cloud and water travelers—
In noisy confusion they make excuses and explanations.
Making an even presentation, he throws the shop wide open;
Don't blame him for not being careful in the beginning—
Pointing out the flaw, he takes away the jewel;
The king of Chin didn't know Lian Xiangru.

C O M M E N T A R Y
"A dog's Buddha-nature exists, a dog's Buddha-nature does not exist"—the two parts are not the same; he brings them out together, just like Xuedou's "One has many kinds, two have no duality." Tiantong wants to meet with Zhaozhou, that's why he versifies in this way. Yingtian Zhen said, "A straight harpoon catches ferocious dragons, a curved hook catches clams."

Afterwards, "chasing the air, pursuing fragrance," like hunting dogs they make excuses and explanations in noisy confusion. What juice is there in a dry bone?

Recipe from "Book of Serenity; One Hundred Zen Dialogues", translated by Thomas Cleary