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The Mystical Body of Anthony Bourdain

August 13, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

The mystical Body of Bourdain is the mystical body of cooking itself, which is a Eucharist we all participate in everyday to some extent. But Bourdain by making a show if it, creates a ritual that to me is a metaphor of the Catholic Mass, which itself is a metaphor of the Dying and Resurrection of Life the eats life to live. Life must die so life can be born. Life gives itself unto death so that new live can be created. Whether we like that or not, that’s the truth. Most of us in the squeamish West can’t handle that truth. We don’t like to see animals killed for our meal in the village market. We like it all packaged and renamed. We avoid this truth of life that is death. Life and death are ONE. You can’t separate them, but we try. 

VIEW TALK HERE

The mystical Body of Bourdain is the alchemy of the chef who through his magic transmutes the fragmented animal and vegetable parts into a meal that brings unity to the family of man, a communion if you will. Through eating together we find unity together. Our fragmentation is healed through the unity of the Mystical Meal. The master chef is the Sacrificial Priest. His ingredients are what’s given in his region, and through his personal unity of body/mind (his art) he restores unity in his guests or family. Great cooking is magic. 

Great food is great taste and great taste is a blend of opposite flavors and textures. Our taste buds instinctively know what is whole and what is not, what is complete and what needs something else. 

Bourdain’s mystical adventure is visiting parts unknown in a quest for completion through the experience of taste. He metaphorically captures our own quest for completion and satisfaction in experience. Perhaps when he realized that he could not find completion or peace in his life through new tastes, he decided to really go to parts unknown. (Who knows).

Every moment is the crucible where the old become the new, where the known dies into the unknown and rises as the known. Every moment of the Now is where clear and distinct ideas become ambiguous, and a new Idea is born (or not). In mystical language every moment is the breaking of the body (crucifixion of Christ) and the Resurrection of the Body, both simultaneously. When we know the spontaneous union of opposites, that is the Christ Consciousness (Awareness) that transcends the fragmentation of consciousness in names and forms. 

Mystical means transcendent of experience. Experience is fragmented; Transcendence unifies this broken bread into a Single Idea that contains all the fragments. This Single Idea is the Parts Unknown. It is the unknown known.

The modern world is crying out for unity, for its lost center. Scientific materialism makes stuff, but it doesn’t restore our center because it’s flat and we see ourselves as just so many ants crawling on the earth like as if it were a ripe fig. Each ant wants to get as must sweetness before it dies. This is a Wasteland, a Flatland that has been wiped clean like a white board of all the ancient myths that once made us aware of the Tree instead of just the figs. We find our unifying myths in movies and Romances of the Quest for unity, which I see Parts Unknown as metaphorically. 

Like Percival of the Arthurian Round Table, Bourdain is questing for the Holy Grail, that meal, that food that will give final satisfaction and end his need to keep searching parts unknown. The Holy Grail (metaphor alert) is the completion of the Quest and the search for meaning. Bourdain’s quest for satisfaction or completion in food is a metaphor for our quest for meaning in the material world. Can we find satisfaction, completion, and the end of the pain of seeking in material form, in the next best thing? Can we find it in time, in parts unknown?

Filed Under: Buddhas in your Landfill Tagged With: Anthony Bourdain, Eucharist, Mystical body of Christ

The Mystical Body of Arrowheads

October 27, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

I don’t know where this talk came from because today has been a low energy day, the funeral and all. On the surface nothing was moving, but when I stepped up to the live mike, something very interesting popped up, as if I had Found the One. When we speak the One our soul is healed, or our Soul is the One.

The thrust of this talk is that your passion, whatever it is for, is the Force of the One (of God if you want). The One is a Force that drives creation itself, seeking itself, knowing itself as the One, ongoing, ongoing unfolding of the One. Worlds without end, the One without end.

Others may think our passions to collect the One is crazy. A matchbook collector sees the Beloved One in every new matchbook. What we collect, what our passion yearns for, is a metaphor for the One in form, in our life. We give God form. We make the universal concrete.

The idea here is that the Many, which is all the arrowheads or martini glasses we have collected, is the the One when we find a new piece. There is a flip in consciousness, a shift in perspective when we have collected the many and they sit on our shelves, but we still are on the lookout for a new piece. John Wells could not have enough arrowheads, even though to the uneducated eye they all look the same. See on, see them all, one would say.

But to the passionate eye the new find is THE ONE! But then the One shifts back to the many, and the New One becomes an old many, catalogued and put away. But the yearning is still there for the ONE. So the ONE is a yearning, not an object. The ONE is a verb not a noun. The new pieces find find are emissaries of the ONE. So our passion for collecting, for integrating, for bringing the lost children home, is our Passion for God as the ONE. And our form of collecting is a metaphor for the Passion of Christ, which is the yearning of God for Himself, the yearning of God to Know Himself as the One in the many. This is all very mystical so I hope you can stay with me here…and just let go of our obsession on seeing just the many without seeing the One as the Many.

Whenever we feel the power of integration, the force that drives us to unity, to completion, to resolution, and to home and peace, that is the Power of the One. Now the ONE is a fill in the blank word because. you can write any noun you want there: God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, the Self, the Cosmos, Nature, Goddess..whatever…But these are all nouns, and the ONE is a Verb. The One has no name because if you give it a name it is not the One; then the One is one of Many names, many sounds, many things. So the ONE can have no name. But we can feel the One. But our map of many hames has no place of a Verb. You can’t but a Verb on a map. Only things, only nouns can go on a map. So we are lost without a map when it comes to the One.

We are looking for God, or the ONE is the wrong places. In a materialistic culture or world view, all we see are things, and things are many, so where can the ONE that holds all things be? The ONE must be there somewhere or else what holds all this stuff together. What keeps it from exploding like a Big Bang. The ONE is there but we can’t find it—and yet we must find it because it is our Source—because all we see are things. All our maps are useless. Maps only map things.. Who is it that is reading the map? The ONE is reading the map. You never count the ONE because the ONE is never on the map. YOU are the ONE. That’s why you can’t find the ONE (Thou Art That) on the map. You never count yourself.  You can’t count yourself, because if you counted yourself then you would be something, a thing counted, and that’s not the ONE who is never counted.

Whatever level we are living on, we are still collecting the ONE. On the base level we may be collecting sexual conquests, to possess the One. On the power level, we may be collecting power. On the moral level we may be collecting converts, on the intellectual level we may be collect ideas to find the Theory that explains everything, or the ONE. On the mystical level, we may be collecting dots that connect the Soul, that realizes the Soul as the ONE. Whatever level, we are all the ONE yearning for the ONE.

But the dividing line is between collecting the ONE in order to possess the ONE, and the yearning to BE the ONE. To BE the ONE you have to let go of trying to possess the ONE…in form. The ONE is formless. In order to BE the One you have to be formless too. One must let go of the desire to possess the One, to possess God…and that is not easy. Why should I give up my desire for God, to have God? How can I give up my desire for God? Ah….here is the mystery…the nut even squirrels can’t crack.

Filed Under: It's Martini Time Tagged With: Eucharist, Mystical body of Christ

Ed is a Zen Writer and story teller who finds insights in the truth of his life in everyday mind and events. Learn more

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