I HAVE BEEN FASCINATED BY WRITING ABOUT FOOD EVER SINCE I started reading M. F. K. Fisher, who Bennett Cerf said, “writes about food as others write about love, only better.” I was ten or eleven years old, home sick with the flu. The Gastronomical Me, How to Cook a Wolf: the titles alone had always attracted me, though I had no idea what “gastronomical” was or even how to pronounce it. And I could not understand why anyone would write a whole book about cooking wolves when their meat was not available in the supermarket. I read about a world in which food and cooking were integral to the fabric of daily life, not something to take time out for, to get out of the way, or just to fuel up on. Food was life. Life was food. Eating peaches could remind you of your father’s love and humanity. M. F. K. Fisher spoke to me.
Still, I was mostly intimidated at the prospect of cooking—until I started having dinner parties. Entering what appeared to be the mysterious, foreign, secret, complex, and demanding world of cooking, I soon realized that a cook just applies heat over time. Things cook. You go along for the ride, sharing the driving.
I followed recipes and discovered that cooking was fun: the colors, shapes, aromas—an ever-changing canvas unfolding in the kitchen that only the cook can appreciate. And I enjoyed the companionship and conviviality. After a while, I looked in books less and started imagining more, daydreaming in flavors.
In 1967 I became the head cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. I wanted to be famous, loved, and venerated. People mostly liked the food, but their liking did not seem to carry over to me. They said I was arrogant, bossy, short tempered, and a know-it-all. It took some convincing, but I finally had to admit I needed to work on myself, to work on how I worked and how I lived.
Over the years, when I have asked cooks at Zen Center what is the most difficult part about cooking, almost invariably the answer is: the people, having to work with others, having to work with yourself. The food takes care of itself.
So I remain convinced that the best cooking does not depend on anything more special than the willingness to do the work of putting yourself on the line, on the table. You get to know the ingredients, within and without, and how changeable they are, and put them together for everyone to see and, even more revealing, to taste.
At the Zen Center in San Francisco, I have been guest manager, head of the meditation hall, head resident teacher, president, chairman of the board. I find it a great irony: going to the mountains to attain true realization and becoming an executive officer in a huge “corporation.” At Greens, our restaurant in San Francisco, I was busboy, dishwasher, waiter, host, cashier, floor manager, wine buyer, manager.
But none of this explains the real work. “My job,” I’ve said in response to people’s queries, “is to be happy. Others may be more naturally happy, but I have to work at it.” It’s good work and always available. Though the pay is not always so great, you are rewarded with friends and food and places to stay.
I want people to be happy. I want all beings to be happy. Not the happy of getting what you imagined wanting, but the happy of kind mind, joyful mind, big mind; the happy of a day focused and absorbed in the vastness, a day of tending, of attending—“You have to be present to win!” Jack Kornfield reminds us—the happy of being with, not being boss, of greeting, meeting, receiving . . . and resonating.
I am still visiting Tassajara for a month or so each summer, leading workshops on Zen and Cooking and Zen and Baking. To have someone cook for me is always a blessing and a joy, so especially when I sit down to eat at Tassajara I feel welcomed and cared for. There’s a place for me at the table, and miraculously (I’m not in the kitchen) food appears.
I wish our world was not so busy, that more people would make or find the time to cook, to touch and taste, sense and breathe. “Make or find the time” already reminds me that time is choice, and that we find time to cook when we choose to cook. This choosing to be present in the midst of our life nourishes the fundamental well-being of ourselves and others.
I can be reached through my Web site, www.peacefulseasangha.com, or by writing to me c/o Shambhala Publications, 300 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115.