Every single day, 365 days a year, our lunch happens in the Zen Center at precisely 12. It is silent, except for the sounds of the birds, the tolling church bells both distant and near, the clattering of a bicycle’s crankshaft arcing past the window, the clatter of heels on the cobblestone streets.

Without speech, without conceptual thinking, even these experiences represent true silence.

The tradition of silent meditative eating has caused me to grow deeply averse to any kind of eating which involves chatter and random, scattershot thinking — even over “important“ subjects.

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