Zenbananas is a collection of my personal reflections, stories and poetry that I have found helpful and interesting in my personal spiritual journey. Not all stories are serious and intellectual. Some are there just for laughs. A journey of the spirit shouldn’t be all that somber after all but should be punctuated with joy and delight at every step.

Some of the stories are traditional tales that I have taken the liberty of retelling in my own words and in my own style. I take no credit for the originality of the recipes. But I have here and there added a dash of my own spices and served them to you in my own way.

If you read a story and don’t understand it, that’s ok. Perhaps in a later time, you will.

If a story offends you, well, it offends you. You chose to be offended. Deal with it.

Life, and zen, is a banana. Which brings to mind a story…

A man and his wife were in the bar. The woman was having a drink while the man was munching a banana. After a few minutes, the man put the empty banana peel on the table. He closed his eyes as he swallowed the last of the banana and sighed.

“Ah, my dear, life is just like a banana,” he remarked.

His wife stared at him for a while, waiting for him to continue. But the other man seemed content to be silent. After a few minutes, the wife could bear it no longer and asked, “What do you mean? What do you mean that life is just like a banana?”

The man looked at her in surprise and said, “How should I know? I’m not a philosopher.”

Have fun.

Andy Uyboco