Enlightenment or realization in Zen is sometimes referred to as "attaining intimacy": it is to actually touch and know through and through, to digest and grow. We cannot be more intimate than we are with food; it becomes us. The so-called spiritual cannot be separated from the so-called material. Spiritual food is right at hand, but we have to pick it up, smell it, and taste it.
— Edward Espe Brown, Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings