How to Cook Your Life

How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment https://www.amazon.com/dp/1590302915/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_glt_i_8RE9BVY6YZGFPYRDHD9X

I’m currently in a 90 day practice period with the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. It’s a “commit to sit” practice period of daily meditation and contemplation, guided by this amazing zen text called How to Cook Your Life. This is hands down one of the most important, meaningful, and transformative books I have ever read in my life. One absolutely need not be a zen student or practitioner to enjoy and benefit from this text. The book was originally zen master Dogen’s instructions to the tenzo, the cook in a zen monastery. It’s both a literal book with incredibly deep and meaningful symbolism in each and every instruction. For example, in examining and carefully cleaning each grain of rice, Dogen asks us to examine and meticulously care for each aspect of our lives. Are we slow or rushed? What do we discard? Are we mindful and giving of deep attention to our tasks, intentions, and processes? The tenzo has the big job of not just feeding but nourishing the people in the monastery. They must ensure that each person gets the same exact amount of food, presented in the same way. One body, one mind. Careful calculations must be made to ensure that the food is good, healthy, and prepared with loving detail that will support the practice of those whom they are serving. Essentially, the job of the tenzo is to provide immense care. All of this is a teaching for how us lay people “cook” our lives. Each rice grain, for example, symbolizes each individual we encounter. How we care for them, be they our child or a person checking out our groceries. The tenzo’s relationship to those he is serving begins with all the right effort, intention, and action behind the scenes. He is the one to arrange and organize the kitchen lists, the shopping, the purchasing of ingredients, and making sure that the ingredients selected are of good quality and handled with the utmost of care. How he shows reverence towards a carrot or a bean is how he will show reverence towards the person eating. The point is, everything matters. The ingredients in our lives that we don’t like or don’t prefer, the ones we are quick to throw in the garbage, those matter too. Thry are probably the most important. Dogen writes a lot about scraps, or what we perceive to be as such. He says to throw nothing away. It’s all valuable. Of course practically, there is such a thing as garbage, though look how many people use scraps for compost. What goes down my garbage disposal is someone else’s usable material for composting and recycling.

I have been looking at my scraps, the things I tend to want to throw away, as being the precise ingredients I need in order to cook my life. The fears, rejections, the impatience, how I clench, how I shut down, who I turn away from and why, what I choose to not engage with, and the shame that lurks beneath so much of human action, are all the ingredients I am given to create this great, bountiful meal that is life. Where am I starving myself and others? The symbolism is wild, and since I live in my kitchen and am indeed the tenzo in my family, I have been more curious and mindful not only in how I behave in my kitchen, but also in my life. Since I believe wholeheartedly that the dharma/hashem/god/universe/unseen forces gives me exactly what I need to cook and simmer myself, then that belief is meaningless unless I integrate it with action. The details of the meal are enormously important. I know that in preparing my big Rosh Hashanah kickoff meal, I am exceedingly attentive and mindful because I want the meal to be a success. I handle, plan, and prepare the food meticulously. But if I’m impatient on the supermarket line while I’m purchasing the necessary ingredients for that meal, then I have not followed the instructions to the cook. It’s never just about the food. It’s about how that level of care and attention must spill out into each and everything we serve to the world at large. Every single person, act, and situation requires the care and precision of a tenzo in a zen monastery. It doesn’t mean we starve and eat dog food while cooking beautiful and delicious things for others. The tenzo factors himself into the planning, as he is a perfect grain of rice, too. It means we see each ingredient, no matter how smelly or unfavorable, as a necessary, and therefore IMPORTANT, part of our lives.

I highly recommend you check out this wonderful text. I really think about our daily email prompts as part of this Commit to Sit period, and I’m continually knocked over by the symbolism. Think about the restaurants you like to eat in. Imagine watching the cook and learning from him. I certainly know I don’t even think about the kitchen staff when I’m at a restaurant, and yet I’m expecting them to prepare a delicious meal for me. This is how easy it is for me to ignore and not appreciate what’s happening in front of me, even if I wish to gain something from what I’m ignoring. It’s fascinatingly sad. The things we don’t care to notice.
I believe life is delicious. I have learned so much about how to nourish myself and others, and there is so much more to learn. There’s no arrival with this, no end point. No one ever reaches the mountain peak where they just nail it every single time. That’s why we need cookbooks to teach us and inspire us. Looking at my most unfavorable ingredients has been forcing me to find inner wisdom, tremendous lessons, humility, trust, and faith.

Please, Sir, may I have some more?

All are always welcome to join the NYZCCC online courses, practice periods, dharma talks, and meditations. It’s a beautiful, warm, global community of learning. There are numerous offerings, and we are joined daily by people from across the globe. All grains of rice in one magnificent pot. All info is found on the center’s website, zencare.org

Let’s eat!