The most delicious dish.

If you cook with friends, you would learn that cooking is not about the end result but the time spent together. There is no agenda behind a laugh that spontaneously arises. You simply delight in decoding a recipe together with almost a childlike curiosity. Such joy intensifies your alertness to life and that crispness of each moment deepens the vertical dimension of your friendship. In the company of friends, it is easy to let go of any fixation on the future outcome. You have a general idea what a croissant would turn out, but who cares if salt was misplaced with sugar? What's the point if the bread is overbaked? Missteps will become delightful stories that are proof to a well-aged camaraderie.

If we could take the metaphor of cooking with friends and apply such kindly attitude to each present moment, we learn to touch the deep being-ness that is free from any surface-level happenings. In the periphery of our consciousness, there is the past and future. We know our history and plans, but dwelling in them only obscures our ability to live so we are vigilant to free ourselves from the mind's grip on imagination to meet life where it is now.