eulogy for mr. peet @ the berkeley city club

good afternoon,

i've been asked to say a few words about our founder, mr. peet. this opportunity has been given to me as a result of what i wrote on our website which you may have read--not the part about my simply needing a job but his curiosity and involvement with eastern religions.

i've been practicing zen buddhism for the past 23 years. having begun this path in new york, when i decided to travel to berkeley in '87 to continue my spiritual journey i carried with me my buddhist robe and among other things an olympia manual-pull espresso machine which some of you may remember we used to carry. liz paurel, who was the assistant manager of vine back then must've thought i was worth trying out since i referenced the seriousness of my coffee brewing preferences. this past july i celebrated my 20th anniversary all of which, except for a few months at domingo during our remodel, have been spent at walnut and vine--mr. peet's first store.

although mr. peet had sold the business some years before, he would come in occasionally and engage me in conversation. undoubtedly we would enter into impromptu tastings there at the counter and his focused intensity hadn't abated one iota since letting go of ownership. i felt extremely honored to have these moments with him--to be in the presence of someone who was passionately committed to quality, an attention to detail and the rest you all know so well.

a zen priest friend of mine told me she and her husband had led a couple silent retreats at the unitarian church in the 70's where mr. peet was a congregant. she said he was an enthusiastic participant in the retreats which, being a unitarian, is somewhat surprising given what is commonly thought to be a basic premise in that tradition: when arriving at a crossroads where one road leads to god and another to talk about god, a unitarian will choose the latter! i once presented him with some literature from the zen center where i reside and asked him about these matters of the spirit. however, he chose not to engage me in this way and i dropped the subject. although outspoken in the store, i found out later that he was a very private person. many of you have read his words when asked to recount his life's story. for me, his response speaks to that silence cultivated through reflection in various spiritual traditions. he simply said, "the coffee tells my story." i learned recently that he considered himself a taoist later in life and read from that literature daily with friends and caretakers.

i think about mr. peet establishing his business and the rest of us establishing ours both at work and in our so-called personal life. actually when you look closely there's no difference. it's more about our attitude which divides them. there's a famous zen story of a japanese zen monk who traveled to china looking for an authentic teacher. upon his return to his homeland he was asked, "what did you learn?" his response was, "eyes horizontal; nose vertical." the vertical represents the distinction, the hierarchy of things. certainly mr. peet was at the top and we've inherited his vision at whatever level of responsibility we now hold. the horizontal represents the oneness of all phenomena. in this way we all are of the same piece, interrelated and working together. the matrix of these two vertices is called "our life". my sense now of mr. peet in these later years was one of reflection. having left an indelible mark on the world of coffee and tea he still had to come to terms with his own mortality as we all do. in mr. peet's copy of the book zen mind, beginner's mind, which i was kindly presented, the author suzuki roshi states on a coffee or tea stained page, i'm not sure which, "when you are you, you see things as they are, and you become one with your surroundings." i think mr. peet embodied that. anybody in his presence could feel it as well.

thank you