I was once fortunate to stay for about 10 days at a fine hotel in Phnom Penh, which incorporated an international school for chefs. The student chef’s training included preparing meals for our large group of vegetarians. It seemed that at least one dish at each meal had to be prepared from potatoes, and that no dish could be repeated over the course of our stay. Alongside a superb array of other courses, we marveled at the inexhaustible panoply of potato presentations.
We had potato curry, potato casserole, baked potato, roasted potato, mashed potato, buttered baby potatoes, stuffed potatoes, diced, sliced and scalloped potatoes, potatoes au gratin, potato pancakes, potato wedges, potato soup, potato bread, potato cakes, French fries, home fries, hash browns, potato salad, caramelised potato.
Many dishes were seemingly utterly unrelated to each other, yet all were expressions of the one subterranean tuber.
Like Truth or God, the source was one, its forms endless.
The potato is a fine example of the principle of oneness in diversity. Each of us may have our own favourite form of potatoes. Again, we may prefer one potato dish at breakfast and another for lunch. Some may be happy eating only boiled potatoes from morn to eve, while a true potato afficionado will of course love and appreciate potato in all its multifarious forms, always.
Meditation brings us to the source of our being, the central still point from which all our attributes and aspirations arise. We discover this same central silence as the source of not only our being but of all being. By entering into our own meditation heart, we see and appreciate all reality as expressions and manifestations of one Light, one Truth, one Being.
Like myriad dishes of potato, we are one.