by Parmjit Singh, PhD
If you want to understand how form and formlessness interchange constantly, focus on chewing the rice. Shunryu Suzuki says that you can come to understand the very nature of your life through chewing the rice you just cooked.
When rice disappears into your stomach, they lose their form so that you can continue to exist and prosper in your form. One form changes hands to continue the cycle of life.
A gesture, a kiss, a slap, a step, a leap, a trip to washroom, a kernel of rice all leads us to enlightenment; they are steps of form for entry into formless. To keep the form well and alive we need to know the means of entering the formless.
Being with the rice at this moment, or anything you are doing, in your totality is what being spiritual is.
Chew your rice well.