There is something in your mouth right now, even if you have not eaten anything.
The taste of your own mouth. Faint. Familiar. You stopped noticing it years ago.
Notice it.
There is no word for what your mouth tastes like when it is just being a mouth. The dictionaries do not cover it. The word neutral is not the taste. The word clean is not the taste. The taste is whatever is there, before the word for it.
This is what every taste is, underneath.
The coffee, the apple, the bread, the salt. Before the mind names them, they are something arriving on the tongue, undivided.
The naming comes a moment later. The naming is the reason you stopped tasting.
The Zen teacher Joshu, asked for instruction, told the student to drink their tea.
He was not being cute.
He was pointing at the only place the student had ever actually been.