Tales From a Zen Kitchen Read online

  So it is perhaps no surprise that I fell in love with an Englishman, Simon, during a gap year in the US, when I was in my early twenties - especially after I checked his music collection and his cooking skills - and that we both chose Britain as a place to settle down and raise our children, as a place to build our own home.

  My first British visit was to the Isle of Wight, to meet my in-laws. I remember the weather. I felt cold, a cold I had never experienced before: damp, trenchant. Not even sitting next to the coal fire in their charming cottage warmed me up. Yet I felt an uncanny familiarity with the place, although the social norms of Simon’s family felt alien to me. I suspect that my ancestors had soaked up the spontaneity and warmth of the South American way of life, and had renounced the composed approach of the British to relationships. It was, however, a very special time. My mother-in-law, Lucy, was perhaps the best cook I have ever met, and I relished the dishes she prepared. We feasted on three or four Christmas dinners in just one week’s visit. I can still taste her treacle sponge pudding!

  We moved to York. It took me a considerable time to settle down, although on the surface I probably seemed to assimilate without much effort. I was eager to lay down some roots, but the internal struggle was intense. There was a complicated social code that I needed to adhere to if I was going to integrate, and it felt, at times, like putting on a straitjacket. Although I felt more at home in England than I did in the US, my Latin essence was suddenly more visible and it was screaming “let me out”.

  Now, after nearly two decades in the UK, the word home describes different spaces. Home is the house I inhabit with my family, in Yorkshire: the quirky abode I created with my husband and my children; the walls and objects that surround me; the cherry tree in the back garden; my friends; the neighbourhood. But on Sundays and at Christmas and during the winter in particular, I miss Argentina and my family and friends desperately. It is like missing home, from home. There is the home of my everyday life: the sound of Radio 4 when I walk into the kitchen; the morning walks I take with Pirate, my dog; my visits to London, or to the moors. But another home also permeates, as Piazzola plays in my living room, spinning me back to a round of maté tea underneath the china-berry trees in my grandmother’s garden. I savour memories of quick espressos in a Buenos Aires pavement cafe, of a natter with my siblings, of the drive from Cordoba to La Granja with the obligatory stop at the bakery in El Pueblito for little squares of flaky pastry and dulce de leche. A picnic by the river, a barbecue with friends, Christmas day spent eating leftovers and swimming outdoors, the social gatherings with the extended family, sitting outside late into the night, a sky so laden with stars it feels it might drop on you.

  A few years ago, I still felt as if I lived my life with one foot in Argentina and another in England. When I was here I wanted to be there, and vice versa. Life was difficult for me and for those around me. I knew I needed to settle, somewhere, but I could not find the tools with which to do it. Living with constant yearning left me feeling split; two personas inhabiting different worlds, swapping longings.

  An encounter with a farmhouse in Wales, on the mountain where the path ends, and where I could see the lush terrain going upwards from the kitchen window, came as a much-needed catalyst for change. It was here that I began, and where I continue, my journey of Zen practice, cooking and healing.

  Chapter One

  A Welsh Farmhouse

  No guru, no church, no dependency.

  Beyond the farmyard the wind in the trees.

  The fool by the signless signpost

  Stands pointing out the way.

  ~ John Crook

  The Maenllwyd (“Grey Stone” in Welsh) is a retreat house in mid-Wales, set in a beautiful valley. It is an old farmhouse, linked to the main road by a mile of rough track, punctuated by several gates, each of which need to be opened and closed again as you drive up.

  The Maenllwyd is a refuge, a house of rough-cut stones shaped to fit. Some parts are hundreds of years old. It is assembled from a mish-mash of local stone and wood, anchored by the stones of the mountain beneath the soil. It is woven into the landscape by ancient tracks and the tumbling stream to the dreamy rolling valleys below, and the heather-clad windswept peaks above.

  It is a farm, but it remains a wild and natural place, a place that is air, time, water, and fire. The landscape has been shaped by erosion and weather and farmers and dwellers, by hermits and worshippers, by the rain and the wind. Sheep cohabit with kites, and people with the spirits of the mountain.

  The Maenllwyd was bought by my Buddhist teacher John Crook in 1975, as a place to hold Buddhist retreats. It has been serving as a retreat centre ever since, and is also used by his family for holidays. People who went on early retreats with John talk with nostalgia about how, in the early days, everything took place in the small, cottagey house. People washed themselves in the stream, and the sleeping quarters became the meditation room during the day. The morning boards were struck to wake them up at 4 am instead of today’s 5. Even today there is no electricity; it is heated by wood fires and lit by candles and paraffin lamps. Sleeping accommodation is basic, and retreatants sleep on simple futons in dormitories. It isn’t a large place; it accommodates barely twenty people.

  It melts each person that visits. It hooks them, it changes them. That is why John insisted on leaving the house in a basic state. The lack of electricity gives room to a different power to be active in the place. The inside is as noble and wild as the outside. The Maenllwyd has grown over time. Several years ago, one of the old farm buildings, just across the yard from the main house, was converted into a Chan Hall, where the main part of the retreats now takes place: silent meditation, chanting, talks and mindful communication exercises. There is an altar at one end, and a wood-burning stove at the other. In the winter, the Chan Hall is the warmest place.

  John had spent the late sixties in California, where he had attended “Enlightenment Intensives”; a process invented by Charles Berner. It was based on Zen principles, but adapted to a secular, non-Buddhist context. John “re-consecrated” this approach, integrating it back into a traditional Zen Buddhist format and adding meditation, thereby creating the “Western Zen Retreat”, which was first offered at the Maenllwyd in the mid 1970s. In these retreats, participants sit across from each other, asking one another a question such as “Tell me who you are” or “Tell me what love is” and listening in silence as their companion shares their inner world of thoughts and feelings, gradually unpacking fixed beliefs and stories, and letting them go. Many of the stories that I share in these pages come from these retreats.

  John later met and became a student of Chan Master Sheng Yen, the Abbot of Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Monastery in Taiwan. Chan is the Chinese ancestor of Zen Buddhism. Chan, like Zen, means dhyana, or meditation, and the words Chan and Zen can, at least for the purposes of this book, be used interchangeably. In time, John became Sheng Yen’s first lay (which means non-monastic) Dharma Heir, authorised to teach Chan in the West, and in 1997, he and others founded the Western Chan Fellowship (WCF)1, an organisation dedicated to furthering the practice of Chan Buddhism. John continued to lead retreats at the Maenllwyd, and at other retreat centres, until his death in 2011, through both the original Western Zen Retreats and more traditional Chan retreats. Now Simon Child, who also received transmission from Master Sheng Yen and is a Dharma Heir, has succeeded John as the Teacher of the WCF. The retreats continue at the Maenllwyd and at other venues, under the guidance and teaching of Simon, and of the other retreat leaders trained by him and John.

  John was a knowledgeable and enthusiastic bird watcher and ethologist. He studied bird and primate behaviour and made several expeditions to the Ladhaki and Tibetan mountains, researching the hermits and yogins who retreat in the caves and hermitages of the Himalayas. It was here that he received permission to teach the Tibetan Mahamudra practice, which I write about in Chapter 16. When I first met him he used to intimidate me; there was a sever
ity in his gaze, a “nowhere to hide” feeling around him. Over the years I came to love him. He was an inspiring, charismatic teacher with deep warmth and compassion. He was a shaman, a man of science and of Zen, who also had room for the more esoteric elements of Tibetan Buddhism. It was through his stories, his rituals and his openness that I began to connect with the wild of the place, to the wild in myself.

  On retreats, the teacher offers instruction and one-to-one interviews to all the retreatants, but he or she is not the only important person. Hospitality and taking care are paramount, and this is where the Guestmaster comes in. He or she is responsible for the day-to-day well-being of the retreatants, and for the management of the work periods: twice a day, everyone takes on their share of work, in the garden, the Chan Hall, or in the kitchen. The Guestmaster is the timekeeper, waking everyone at 5am and marking the end of each work period with a pair of wooden clappers. He or she also keeps order in the Chan Hall and acts as stage manager for any events. The Guestmaster works closely with the cook and each uses their role as Zen practice.

  The tradition of the Zen cook, or Tenzo, is an ancient one. The thirteenth century Zen Master, Dogen, wrote his Instructions to a Zen Cook in 1237. Zen cooking is the meditative practice of preparing food for others, with focus, awareness and above all, with heart, creating meals that nourish and comfort people who are taking part in Buddhist retreats. The cook lies at the heart of the community. In Zen Buddhism, preparing and eating food are a very important part of training, of spiritual practice. You cultivate awareness and gratitude towards the efforts of everybody and everything that has contributed to the growing and the cooking of the meal.

  Zen cooking is as much a state of being as of doing. It is intuitive. The cook’s practice is entirely aligned to the needs of others. The cook works towards losing the small self within the flow of the moment, towards becoming one with the space and the ingredients, the elements and the environment.

  The kitchen has been modernised since I began to cook in the Maenllwyd, but it remains rustic, almost precarious, given the amount of cooking that needs to be done on a retreat. No electricity means no fridge and no food processors; to me, that is the best part. The Maenllwyd kitchen is an organic space that enables the creative and artistic process of cooking to take place.

  There is a well-stocked pantry or back kitchen, which leads out onto a back yard; a short walk up the garden takes you to Green Tara, a statue of a Tibetan Buddhist deity, who represents compassion in action. One of the traditional stories claims that she was formed from a single teardrop, shed by another Buddhist deity, Avalokiteshvara, when he saw the enormous scale of pain and suffering of the world and realised that he could not possibly appease it. Tara has an important place in this story; it is by her statue that I, in accordance with Buddhist tradition, leave a food offering, or puja, taken from every meal we eat. In Buddhism a puja is a ritual, an offering ceremony performed as an act of honour, worship or gratitude.

  After the mealtime grace with which we start every meal, the teacher serves Tara first, with a small portion of each dish served in tiny stainless steel bowls on a tray which is then taken out into the garden and offered at the feet of her statue.

  Three times a day, animals feast on these little dishes of food. Tiny, winged bugs and black, shiny slugs, ladybirds, crawling creatures. Over time, I began to notice their beauty and made sure I checked the bowls when I collected them from Tara. The bowl of soup often had drowning casualties, mostly slugs. This saddened me. How could I protect them? On one of my earliest retreats, I took with me a bunch of Thai orchids, which I placed on the windowsill in the kitchen, picking one flower to adorn the tray of offerings from each meal. The orchids left on Tara’s steps were devoured by the slugs; I felt sure that feasting on the orchids distracted the slugs from falling into the liquid. So flowers began to accompany the food, as a part of each offering, and the slugs loved them. Without making a conscious decision to do so, I had begun to care for the slugs, and feeding them flowers was a way of loving them. It was also a good way to look after love itself, something I had failed at so many times.

  A friend who worked with me in the kitchen and who observed this ritual said that if I ever wrote a book, I should call it Feeding Orchids to the Slugs. Slugs have played a pivotal role in the restoration of my relationship with things around me; I have learned to notice the splendour of life even in the slimiest of creatures. I have found beauty in what I used to perceive as ugly. Slowly I have learned to love that which is difficult to love, both in myself and in others.

  Some people have responded negatively when I have mentioned the title: “How disgusting.” “I really don’t like slugs.” “You can’t publish a book about food and cooking, with slugs in the title!” Yet I felt very strongly that the title had to remain. Zen is expansive and all encompassing, and sometimes we may have to experience discomfort in order to get to the beauty of being itself.

  1www.westernchanfellowship.org

  Chapter Two

  Retreat One: The Little Girl

  Notice how the truth tends to manifest

  Unexpectedly

  In the small things we are often too drowsy to see

  In constant whispers we are often too busy to hear…

  I was thirty-five when I went on my first retreat. My husband Simon booked me a place, as a birthday present. He had gone on retreat whilst I was away in Argentina with our children, and came back ecstatic, full of stories, having had a powerful experience.

  I was in two minds whether I wanted to go. Simon had been a practising Buddhist for years, and I often resented his practice. I felt like it separated us. I wasn’t looking for a religion and the idea of spending nearly a week in silence, meditating, seemed like a daunting task rather than something to look forward to. Why didn’t he buy me a spa day? I had two young children; going away for five days felt impossibly self-indulgent.

  The date approached and although I was too shy to cancel it, I felt anxious, grumpy, exceedingly nervous and quite unwilling to go. I felt resentful, as if I was being sent away to be indoctrinated in a practice I had little interest in. In spite of this I borrowed some wellington boots and packed a small bag with comfortable clothes, warm vests and a torch. Along with all the negative feelings, I was aware that life had been difficult during the past few years, and that I needed a break. I wanted to get to the bottom of a deep-rooted unhappiness in my life, a void that seemed to suck me in, a dark whirlpool of sadness, homesickness and longing.

  I arrived at the Maenllwyd a tired, battered, sad person, my back and fists tensed to a knot, feeling unprepared, unready, reluctant, my overcrowded mind holding on to threads. We were met by the Guestmaster, a kind, tall man who carried my bag all the way up a narrow metal staircase, to the mezzanine communal bedroom above the Chan Hall. A converted barn with exposed beams and limewashed walls, the room was warm and welcoming.

  I crossed the yard to the house where I poured myself a cup of tea and found a place on one of the sitting room’s sofas. The blazing fire embraced a group of strangers. Simon Child, the teacher, welcomed us. The house was rudimentary, bucolic and drafty, it had no electricity, but paraffin lamps and candles made the room glow.

  When I went to bed I made a commitment to work hard at making this retreat work for me. In the morning we were to be allocated our jobs for the two daily work periods that form a component of the retreats: there is an old Zen adage that says “no work, no food”. For some reason I had a strong desire to work in the kitchen. Something was calling me there to learn something new, something about myself.

  Five o’clock the following morning, I was up and dressed. We gathered in the yard to do some simple physical exercises - I enjoyed them, I felt so much beauty in the air. Yet I could hardly bend over; every muscle in my body was rigid. We had tea and then did a thirty minute meditation sitting; I struggled with this sitting, having no idea what to do, but I persisted and it eventually came to an end.

  It was
still early in the morning when I had my first interview with Simon. He told me that the desire to find out who I am put me on the right track. I felt slightly defensive but I trusted him. I told him I was prepared to dig deep, as I felt I was destroying myself with the negative, habitual patterns that I didn’t seem able to escape. He gave me my question which I was to work with on this retreat: “Tell me who you are.” I told him that I was prepared to cry; that I had brought lots of tissues. He seemed happy with my approach. For once, I didn’t attempt to trick him. I didn’t try and show him that actually I thought I had it all sussed out.

  Breakfast was at seven. The silence was maintained at all times, even during meals. To mark the start of each meal, Simon knocked two stones together three times, and we recited a grace from a laminated card in front of us.

  At one with the food we eat,

  We identify with the universe.

  At one with the universe,

  We taste the food.

  The universe and the food we eat

  Partake of the same nature.

  We share the merits of this food with all.

  The first bite is to discard evil.

  The second bite is to train in perfection.

  The third bite is to help all beings.

  We pray that all may be enlightened.

  I was captivated by the grace, but had been awake for hours and was ready for sleep. I could hear all sorts of noises coming from people’s bodies, and from my own. Someone slurped his tea quite loudly. I drank green tea and ate the porridge and a piece of bread with a thick layer of honey. I was the only one not finishing the porridge. I didn’t like it.