"It's there to be done so we do it"

A recent conversation with a friend got me thinking about the practice of zen-cuisine from an interesting perspective. Her curiosity about mindfulness in the kitchen made me ponder: “What do we get out of practicing zen-cuisine? What is different about preparing and eating food mindfully? What does awareness bring to our cooking?”  So, I stand in the kitchen, and breathe slowly, aware of what is happening in the present moment.  I notice the wonder of what is unfolding: the kettle steams  and whistles; the blender pulses and hums; the hands holding the paring knife move deftly among the vegetables; breath fills the lungs and enlivens the blood and the body; the heart beats --life flows moment to moment into endless experience… arising, and falling away.  We interpenetrate this flow of experience, this miracle of becoming –and yet, we often miss what is happening. We get caught up in t thought, and confuse our thinking about experience with the experience itself.  We’re inside a self-created illusion. 

Do we understand how this illusion touches our experience in the kitchen, colouring what we do with past worries or future concerns? Suppose we are planning to make “cauliflower popcorn”, a recipe that takes a little bit of manual labour to prepare. We need to break the giant snowy-white head into individual bite-size pieces. Can we, as zen-cuisine suggests, ground ourselves in the present moment and really experience the act of preparing the vegetable and our identity as the prep-cook as one? A false sense of what’s real causes us to see ourselves as a separate entity. We become an “I” trapped in repetitive, habitual patterns of thought about our situation. Underlying this confusion is an uneasy discomfort, a constant stream of opinion and judgment about us and other s. We try to manipulate the present moment, and we begin to feel as if “I” and the activity are separate things. We pick up the cauliflower and begin to carefully separate it into pieces. But unless we are mindful of our awareness, our discursive thinking offers endless possibilities for moving away from the present moment into a dream-world of conjecture: “I ‘m not doing this right. I may not impress my guests with the cauliflower dish the way I did last week with the avocado salad. I’m too busy and too important to waste all this time separating cauliflower into a million little pieces. Who likes cauliflower anyway?”  We allow these thought-patterns to run through the mind, and in turn they shape the way we look at, and evaluate, our time in the kitchen.

Underlying this ‘value system’ we've created is a subtle fear of opening to what is actually happening in the present moment. We sense dissatisfaction with the ordinariness of our experience.  Surrendering our self-centeredness to the process of meal preparation makes us nervous. We feel vulnerable, and distressed to not be in control. We try to protect our sense of being special, of being this important “I” by moving away from our immediate experience. In holding on to this illusory identity, we try to manipulate reality into our idea of how things should be. But it never works.  In our confusion, we easily get lost in our illusion of separateness.  Zen-cuisine offers us the opportunity to wake up out of this dream.

First, we open ourselves to the present moment, embracing an awareness of our illusion. We pay attention to the workings of our mind, and experience thoughts for what they are…thoughts about reality, not reality itself. As we center ourselves in the present moment, we ‘become’ the separating of the cauliflower into florets, the mixing of the oil and spices for a marinade, the bubbling of the caramelizing sugars in the roasting pan.  We touch each moment of experience with bare attention. We feel it with all our sense, and appreciate and savour the flow of experience. We participate wholly in life’s surge of energies. This attentiveness allows us to see through the false dream of isolated, ego-centered separation from ‘what is’. The true nature of reality, the interconnectedness of all that exists, penetrates us and our activities with the joy of being alive. Zen-cuisine practice opens us to living fully in the present moment. We separate the cauliflower florets joyfully, aware of the intricate beauty and wonder of each floret. We cook without judgments or opinions for no reason other than to prepare the vegetable recipe with mindfulness.  As Joko Beck wrote in Everyday Zen, “The joy of our life is in totally doing what has to be done. It’s not even what has to be done; it’s there to be done so we do it.” Happy cooking!

For the recipe for delicious "Cauliflower Popcorn" pop into Juicy Foods the tasty cooking blog.