Editor’s note: Teresa Shimogawa, a Minister’s Assistant at the Orange County Buddhist Church (OCBC), delivered the following presentation at OCBC’s service on Oct. 13, 2024. The Wheel of Dharma is pleased to publish Shimogawa’s message with her permission.
I recently went to a sourdough class with a friend from work. I did not participate in the sourdough craze or any baking craze during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The kids and I instead got into raising monarch butterflies, which arguably wasn’t as tasty, but it was a way to pass the time and get absorbed in something beyond our current state of affairs.
It was a stress reliever, a way to focus on something other than myself. My life has been exceptionally busy lately, so sourdough has become a reprieve from the chaos, something to get lost in, almost meditative as I weigh flour and water to feed my starter, stretching dough, fussing over timing, marveling at my successes and failures like a science project.
One aspect about sourdough baking that intrigued me was the fact that it is an ancient practice. Sourdough is made by the fermentation of dough using wild yeast. They found evidence of sourdough as far back as 3,700 BC.
When you think of sourdough, you may also think of the sourdough bread bowls popularly made in San Francisco. French bakers brought the technique to the area during the Gold Rush.
As I learn more about it, I’m falling into the rabbit hole of online communities, where enthusiastic sourdough hobbyists share their tips and tricks and troubleshoot problems together.
I really love the tradition of sharing starters — some people have starters that are decades and decades old — and exchanging knowledge about the art of sourdough baking. To me, this is interdependence. It’s one of the more beautiful sides of humanity, the part where we work together, help each other, create together, share and celebrate. In a world with so much darkness, this is a bright spot.
Another fascinating aspect about sourdough bread making is that it is kind of a game or a puzzle to be solved due to the number of causes and conditions that can affect the outcome of your bread. Variables such as temperature, fermentation time and moisture levels can all produce different outcomes.
You begin the process with a starter. I was given mine at the class I went to, which was given to the teacher by a friend. You feed it with a mix of water and flour to produce carbon dioxide gas in the fermentation cycle to create a levain that will be used to bake your sourdough bread. It is generally a two-day process.
Based on the problems your loaf may have, a sourdough baker then takes pleasure in troubleshooting so their next loaf is better. I learned in my class and from the online communities that there is always a way to fix your bread. It’s a never ending journey of learning technique and style. There are numerous recipes and several possible methods and ideas about what works best in baking sourdough. With so many causes and conditions, you can't really take it personally if you don't get a beautiful loaf each time you bake.
My sourdough bread journey made me think about Buddhism. Rev. Dr. Kenneth Tanaka’s parable of the drowning sailor came to mind. Rev. Dr. Tanaka uses the parable of the drowning sailor to illustrate the “Shin way” in the Spring 2019 Tricycle article “To the Pure Land and Back.”
In short, the sailor boards a ship, encounters choppy waters and is thrown overboard. He is convinced he is going to die until he hears a call from the ocean, “Let go. Let go of your striving. You’re fine just as you are.”
This prompts the sailor to turn over on his back and float until he finds safety.
The ocean represents Amida, a manifestation of ultimate reality. In Shin Buddhism, the sailor turning on his back and allowing the ocean to hold him up represents shinjin. One lets go of striving and realizes that the ocean embraces and uplifts them, letting go of egoic self-power and awakening to other power, just as they are. Nothing about the ocean changes; only the perspective of the sailor. The sailor is embraced by the compassion of Other Power.
In the Fall 2022 Tricycle article “The Awakening of Infinite Light,” Rev. Dr. Mark Unno wrote that “‘Other Power’ does not refer to an external being, like a god. It really means ‘other than ego.’ The foolish being filled with blind passions is the calculating ego, the karmic self. Amida Buddha as the self-expression of emptiness, oneness and boundless compassion, the deepest reality of the self, is the ‘Amida Self,’ as it were. For this reason, Shinran states that ‘true entrusting is buddhanature.’”
He goes on to explain, “Letting go of the ego and entrusting oneself to the flow of reality that arises from deep within occurs from the true self beyond words — one’s own buddhanature.”
It makes me think about Namo Amida Butsu and being grateful for everything I’ve been given in this life. This gift to try again. To be. To experience joy. To taste joy, even. It’s something we likely will never fully appreciate until we no longer have it.
Sourdough baking isn’t fun if you are attached to the results. It’s enjoyable precisely because of the unknown; the joy of discovering, trial and error, creating something out of a magical starter nurtured with the knowledge of people from thousands of years ago, the interdependence, the love, the spirit of the here and now.
Imagine if you approached life that way -— with curiosity — not attached to the results, but in love with the process. You were given a magical starter of life. It’s a rare and wondrous gift. What will you do with it?
In Fast Food Simulator, you’ll need to juggle multiple tasks at once.