In this episode, a joyful conversation about plantains leads Supreme Master Ching Hai to reflect on the loving meaning of the banana offering, laughter as a sign of spiritual ease, and the deeper value of inner wisdom.
(You want this one to be ripened. This one is eaten for food, not as…) (For cooking.) Yeah. For cooking. (It’s plantain.) But they have to be ripened a little, no? (If it’s ripened, it’s not as sweet as the ordinary one.) Oh, really? Like this, you can eat already? (Yes, you cook it.) (This one is normally cooked.) (Right.) How do you cook? You boil it. (They steam it.) Oh, oh. (If you boil it, it is OK, but steaming, it is better.) Oh, because the juice stays inside. You steam it and eat it just like that, you don’t wait anymore, right? It’s already OK. Oh, oh, I learn a lot today. Breakfast tomorrow, OK? Not for you – you go home to sleep. You just smoke the banana with your eyes, and then it’s ripe for me tomorrow. Yeah. So, next time when we go on airplane full of smoke, we take the bananas. So we don’t scold the people, but we utilize the negative force for the positive.
(And by the time You come in July, You will find that the plantation has a lot of them.) Full of. (Many of them will be ready.) Oh, fine. Then we’ll be having breakfast every day. (A lot of plantation.) (In fact, we want to make quite a large scale of this kind of bananas. We want to make at least 100 acres so far. I’m also going to plant the small ones.) How much…? (And it needs to be like) (The sweet banana.) (the sweet bananas.) Maybe that envelop will help you to make a corner of the plantation. (Yes.) I don’t know. Oh, please, please. Make a corner more. One corner.
OK. I’m very happy that you have come. You shouldn’t have brought this. This is heavy weight. And you don’t have to bring so much. Maybe just symbolic three – that’s enough. Three for The Trinity. (It’s OK. Because our ticket was OK.) It’s alright? It’s not overweight? Oh. It’s only the African people who would do that.
You know, they sent the two representatives of the highest order of the ashram with bananas, full of love and family atmosphere. If you send me a basket of gold, it wouldn’t be appreciated that much. Therefore, I let everybody enjoy the presents of the bananas. It’s not only bananas – it’s a love from the highly developed spiritual Master from Africa, representing the whole African people. Understand? And especially delivered – hand delivered. Hand carried and hand delivered, with all love and respect. So, everybody can eat one piece of the skin, and the rest for me.
There’s enough for everybody. Tomorrow – can we eat it tomorrow already, or we wait a few more days? (Yes.) Really. I can’t believe it. I’m not a banana expert, you know. (It’s ready for eating.) Really? Are you sure? If something happened to me, I’d complain up to Africa. You know that. You know I am not a guy to be cheated very easily.
You know how I demand my food, huh? OK. (No, I am telling You from my experience.) Experience. Oh, yes, yes. From childhood, right? (Yes.) Your own experience is the best. Now, so for that, we steam all this tomorrow. How to steam it? Just put it in a steamer. And steam – how long? (Well, traditionally… I don’t know where. But the tree upon which it grows has very big leaves.) Yes. (And then these leaves are folded together and then you put water in the saucepan and then this one after peeling.) After peeling. (You peel, yes, they peel it for you.) Oh, and put it on the leaves of the… (And then they tie in the leaves of the banana.) Like banana cake. (And then cover it together, and then boil.) Oh, boil it. (The bananas and the banana leaves.) (But it does not touch the water.) Understand, because it’s kind of steaming. Yeah, even then. So now can… (But for easy purposes, you can just (Steam the whole.) put in water and boil like (Boil like that.) the vegetables after peeling it. What? (And you cook it, so the steam goes out of the banana, so it doesn’t explode. Or something like that.) Oh, it would be like a bomb.
(We peel them.) Oh, that is not bad. It’s not bad. You put banana inside, steam it and when the time is coming, it is sent here to the table. It will explode to the table, and we just sit there waiting with the mouth open. And the banana will come shooting right in. That’s the modern technique of eating the African banana. So, tomorrow who is going to take the responsibility to boil these bananas? (We will. Chantal is very good at preparing the bananas and the sauce.) Does she know? (We make a sauce.) Really. You make trouble for her. You ask her if she’s willing to do it. (We will help. We will be her assistants.) (I am very slow to peel them, my…) Peeling is no problem. You just throw it to the mass and it is peeled in no time. (We will prepare them.) Yeah. You just assign one banana for two persons, and they rip it.
Brother, you’ve never seen a Master laugh so much before? Yeah. You’re so serious. He is less serious. (I know.) How long you’ve been with the Master? Longer than him? (Eleven years.) And he? (Five years.) Five and a half years? (Five years.) Five years. (Yes. We are coming from Rwanda.) No wonder, you laugh only half of the time that he laughs. He’s eleven years with the Master. He’s more loose. The Master “beat” him from top to bottom. And he’s very soft and pliable now. And you need five more years or six more years. (OK.) Yeah, and then you can laugh like him. But then he will overrun you already.
Yes, it is true. The more you are with the Master, the easier it is for you to laugh at everything. (Exactly, yes.) Just to be one with the situation – not because of laughing but to be one with the situation. (The situation, yes.) And you feel no obstruction with the surroundings. You feel you immediately mixed in, and you’re just one of them. That’s why we laugh easily, or we understand the other partner. But it’s good how your Master trained you – eleven years, huh? Made you become like that. You must have been half like him before. Right? (I was even harder than him.) We’re laughing at your expense, you see, but that’s the price you have to pay when no one else is around.
So what is your name? I forgot. (Bukka.) Bukka? (Muyambi.) Muyambi. What does it mean – “Muyambi”? (Muyambi that means “helper.”) Huh? (A helper.) Helper. And you? (Bukka is when one sneezes…) They say, “Bless you.” (They say, “Bukka.”) Bless you, right? (Which actually means that when someone is drowning, and you are telling him, “Don’t drown, please resurface.”) Oh, is that right? (So the process of resurfacing instead of drowning is “bukka.”) So you’re resurfaced now?
Oh, that’s good. Is this chosen by the Master or at your birth? (No, my name is that. That’s “Muyambi,” “Bavasi,” “Vetu Ikira.” Those are the names of the Master. “Muyambi” means “the helper,” “Bavasi” means “the compassionate,” “Vetu Ikira” means “One who has reached the Source.”) Oh, so “the helper of the One who has reached the Source.” Is that right? (I guess, that’s what it means.) I see, I see. So kind of an assistant of the Master, right?
Yeah. I think French is your better language, is that right? (Yes, it’s my better language, because I learned it from…) Childhood. (Childhood, my...) Yeah. (I used to work in a French…) Oh. Is that right? But how come you speak also English? (I learned from from the Foundation.) (He has learnt it from the Foundation.) Oh, yeah? (Yes.) You learned it there only? (Yes, but I also studied in Boston.) In Boston? Oh, I see. I see. At Harvard? No? (No, Boston College.) Oh, OK. And you studied there for a long time? (No, it was my post-graduate. After my MBA, I went there for a course.) So both of you are very educated in spirituality as well as in worldly knowledge. So Master chose the top ten of Africa to work for Him. (Spiritual knowledge is infinite. So...) Yes, it’s true. (We just have speckles of it.)
But you see how the elite come to the feet of the Master. He has very little education. He didn’t care for a high degree, but He knows many things, knows about science and languages and all that. He knows many things. So we know this spiritual knowledge is superior to any worldly knowledge. Many Indian masters also – they’re not very highly educated, but many people run to their feet all the same. (But personally, I think that they don’t need it because what you are learning in this ordinary school, they know it already.) Yes, yes, yes. (…and you learn the wrong things.) Wrong things. And then, after you come to the Master, you have to erase all that, (Yes.) the wrong tape, the wrong record. And to make the tape clear again, in order to record new and useful things. (Yes.) It’s amazing, it’s amazing what we have to do.
And how we are cheated in this world. Some of the Zen masters say that it’s better that we be born deaf and dumb from the beginning, and blind even, because the eyes here – we cannot see the Truth. The ears – we cannot hear the Wisdom from God. Yeah? And the speech that we babble in this world – also have no use, nonsense. The language that we learn from childhood, and take so much time and effort to polish, is useless compared to the (inner Heavenly) Language that we hear from inside. Right? And that’s the Source of all wisdom. And the one who hears that (inner Heavenly) Language inside knows all the languages. Actually, it’s like that, because the Master inside speaks all languages. The manifestation of the Master inside – even though the Master outside cannot speak one or two languages, but the inner Master responds to all the disciples, from different countries, different languages, in their own language. Therefore, actually, the inner (Heavenly) Language is the language of all languages – the Source of all wisdom and knowledge, the Source of all language and music in this world. So when we have that, we have everything. It’s truly that – it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, our Method. The inner (Heavenly) Sound is beautiful.
What time is it? I think we should be liberated now, huh? (11:00 (PM).) Eleven? (11:10 (PM).) Oh! So fast! (Yes.) Oh!
Photo Caption: “All Love 2 Shine in GODLOVE”
