My lady and I were having breakfast this morning, and we got onto the subject of bananas. But, I think it’s probably best if I get to that matter in just a moment…
 
Anyway, we were having breakfast... As the story goes, this restaurant always served waffles. But, the way they presented them was very bland. You know, just some butter and syrup and stuff.  But, they also offered this very nice presentation of French Toast. The French Toast had all of these great fruits on the top, including bananas. Personally, I’m not a fan of French Toast. …Way too much sugar. But, I had this idea one morning. Why don’t I ask them to put all of those fruits and stuff on my waffle. I asked the server if it could be done. She said she would ask the chef. It could and they did. Their waffles became great!
 
A few times of my asking went by, and their checking if it could be done. The answer was always, “Yes.” Some time passed and I began to ask for that concoction and the servers no longer had to ask it if could be done, they just knew that it could. A little bit more time went on, and I heard other people asking for their waffles to be made, as it became known, “French Toast Style.”
 
I always joking tell my lady, when this occurs, they should have named that waffle, Scott’s Waffle. You know how some restaurants do; name a dish they serve after a specific person. But nope, they did not do that.
 
Whenever I hear someone ordering a waffle that style, at this restaurant, I always feel a bit jipped, as I was the one who invented the concept. No credit where credit is due… Kind of the story of my life, I guess.
 
Okay, that’s that part of the story. On to the next…
 
While we were speaking this AM. …And, talking about bananas. We got to discussing how bananas turn brown so quickly and you never want to eat them like that. …All mushy and stuff.
 
With that, a funny memory popped into my brain. A story which I relayed to my lady…
 
Way back in the way back when, my guru, Swami Satchidananda was coming to town. The mother of the L.A. IYI, (Integral Yoga Institute), Sister Maji, asked me to go and get some bananas for Gurudev at Erewhon, which was, back then, one of the only health food markets in existence. Now, it has become a cultural and tourist hot stop with a few locations. But, this was at its original location.
 
The thing was, Gurudev only liked to eat very browning bananas. He would not eat the very fresh, yellow kind like most people desire. So, there I was. I go into Erewhon and all the bananas they were offering were very fresh/very yellow. No brown ones. I ask one of the staff members if they had any browning bananas and you can imagine the look in their eyes and what they exclaimed, “Why would you want old bananas?” I tried to explain it was for Swami Satchidananda, who was a very well-known spiritual teacher of that era, but no luck all they had/all they would sell me were fresh bananas.
 
…I did the best I could to pick out the oldest of the bunch.
 
So, all this becomes/became one of those weird Zen paradoxes in life—a Zen koan. What do you do when all someone/something offers are the freshest of fresh, but all that other person wants is the older and the brown?

Tell me what answer you come up with?