Pizza and Breathing

I swear Kenneth Folk once said (I can't find the thread) that the importance/urgency of the need to awaken is somewhere between the need for pizza and the need to breathe. I remember being startled by this, because if you'd been around the people I'd known for the last few years you'd think very little else mattered. Pizza seems insufficient to describe the low end. Some practices posit that it is more important than breathing, at least in the long run, because your awakeness impacts what happens after you die. In any case, I wondered if anyone else found these parameters relevant.

Just trying to justify the pizza part, I guess he's saying that you can live to eighty whether or not you're awakened, some people will like it, some won't, some people will like one kind, some another.

Weird Brazilian pizza flavors (very popular):
-Portuguese: scrambled eggs, cubes of ham, and black olives
-Shopping mall favorite: french fries
-Four cheeses: it must be italian, but pretty much anything here can be got with four cheeses.
-Chicken (or shrimp) with cream cheese
-Nutella: dessert pizza. really.

Didn't Kenneth Folk work as pizza deliverer? He probably has some serious direct experience of seeing pizza munchers in need.

PS: Nutella pizza?!?!?!? That is scandalous. Or genius. Probably both.

www.dharmaoverground.org/documents/portl...86-90c1-bf2646c2ea02

All occurrences of the word pizza in Kenneth's book:

"Bill suggested that I go to Asia, check myself into a monastery, and get stream entry. So that’s
what I decided to do. At the time, I only cared about meditation. The rest of my life didn’t matter.
Bill told me: “Everything you do in order to make your next retreat possible is part of your
practice.” I found this vastly empowering; now it was possible to view all aspects of my life as
supporting my practice, rather than getting in the way of it. I had a job delivering pizzas at
Domino’s Pizza, which was demoralizing due to the low wage. Again, Bill came to the rescue:
“Just figure out how many pizzas you need to hustle to buy a ticket to Burma. Then, get busy.”
I got busy. Although I didn’t earn much at the pizza store, my goal was concrete, and I could see
progress each day as my piggy bank filled up. I sold my car and bought a one-way ticket to
Malaysia, understanding that I was going to meditate at a Burmese-style monastery in Penang
while applying for a visa to continue on to Burma. I didn’t know when or whether I would return
home. In fact, returning home was the furthest thing from my mind. I planned to get enlightened.
"

Daniel's mention of Kenneth delivering pizza:

www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/par...ark-night-gets-ugly/

"I used those tickets to go to California for a few days in December 1995, to see Kenneth in his rundown trailer in a small dusty desert town that smelt pungently of agriculture. He was living with a girlfriend, delivering pizza, and just chilling out. He was probably second path by this point, and somewhere in there had done another retreat in Burma. He told me more about the maps and gave me some pointers on how to perceive some subtleties about impermanence, drawing an incomplete circle on the ground with a stick to represent the arising and passing of phenomena; that somehow made a strong impression on me, and helped me get a sense of how to see the end of phenomena to help achieve stream entry. "

And Ron Crouch on Pizza in Siberia:
alohadharma.com/2014/07/24/eating-pizza-in-siberia/

"A student recently asked about the relationship between psychedelics and awakening. “It’s kind of like…” I thought for a moment, searching for the right analogy and coming up short. But as so often happens in these situations, the next thing out of my mouth surprised us both, “it’s like …eating pizza in Siberia.”"

What if you will be(come) enlightened only up to the point to which you are willing to relinquish attachments, including pizza or breathing or whatever?

Sounds about right to me