COOKING AND BEING COOKED

A FELLOW DHARMA student bowed her head while reaching for the paprika. “What is it?” I asked her. “Nothing” she said, sniffling subtly, but then she turned around. “I just got emotional about some strawberries,” she confessed. No further explanation was needed. Being moved is commonplace in a Zen kitchen.

For the past fifty years, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in Carmel Valley, California, has been a pilgrimage destination for Zen students. In the summer of 2018, I found myself there, cooking. At Tassajara, we aspire to cook Zen, to cook mindfully. We fail. We succeed. We burn things. Our