During a tour of our offices, we shared stories about people we knew in common and how each of them had touched our lives. Here was one of America's greatest poets. He was a wise man who was easy to care about. At a small dinner party at Emile's Restaurant, before his talk at San Jose State University, I was asked to give the blessing before we ate. Allen Ginsberg inspired that kind of thing.
All life is one, and everything that lives is holy.
Plants, animals and people all must eat to live and nourish one another. We bless the lives that have died to give us this food, let us eat consciously, resolving by our work, to pay the debt of our existence. It was an invocation I thought appropriate for this Jewish man turned Buddhist. He smiled when I concluded and later told me how much he liked the prayer. He knew it meant a lot to me.