Instructions for the Home Cook

Dogen & My Galley Kitchen

According to Dogen, the thirteenth-century Buddhist master who founded the Soto Zen school in Japan, the position of tenzo, or monastery cook, is only suitable for someone who’s highly realized. My condo is no monastery, so hopefully that means only a little bit of realization is required for me to do the family cooking. A little is all I have.

With two children under four and a full-time job, another thing I have little of is time and energy. As a result, my dinner solution is frequently to order pizza or Chinese food. Dogen would not approve. He was very clear: “Do not just leave washing the rice or preparing the vegetables to others but use your own hands, your own eyes, your own sincerity.”

As all the Zen teachers agree, Dogen’s classic text Instructions for the Cook is about more than making meals: it’s a set of instructions for how to live. But I think I need to start small. I decide to see what happens if I bring just a taste of Dogen’s teachings into my modern condo kitchen.

The cleaning side of kitchen work is not a major focus in Instructions for the Cook, but unless it is a major focus for me, I won’t have any space for cooking. The compost has to be dumped. The tabletop is strewn with cracker crumbs and the dried, dark liquid of turtle beans. And the counters are piled with dirty dishes – pots, pans, a jumble of cutlery, a rainbow of sippy cups. Where do I even begin?

According to Dogen, “Put whatever goes to a high place in a high place and whatever goes to a low place in a low place so that, high and low, everything settles in the place appropriate for it.”

This makes cleaning sound easy. “To place” is not the verb of dirty work. Try “to scrub,” or “to scour” – that’s my reality. Frankly, I am suffering from deep kitchen ennui, and it’s been going on for months. Even the thought of making a simple salad makes me feel exhausted, let alone mopping the kitchen floor.

I can almost hear Dogen say, “Get over it already.” What he actually says is, “Day and night, the work for preparing the meals must be done without wasting a moment. If you do this and everything that you do wholeheartedly, this nourishes the seeds of awakening and brings ease and joy.”

I take a breath, and another. Then I unpack and repack the dishwasher. It’s a rare moment when my two kids aren’t home, so working without one of them on my hip is a treat. Normally, during quiet times like this, I do my chores while talking on the phone or listening to stand-up comedy on Netflix. But under Dogen’s tutelage, I now clean the kitchen whole-heartedly, without doing anything else.

Okay, truth be told, there is something else I’m doing simultaneously. I’m ruminating on my situation; I’m making a list of reasons why a monastery cook has it easy compared to me. Sure, a tenzo has to cook for more people, but monastics only eat twice a day, not three times (or more) like my ravenous family. Moreover, tenzos don’t have small children clinging to them, so they have both their hands free for activities such as straining pasta. And tenzos don’t have to listen to crying or referee fights over toys, so they can concentrate on things such as their cookbook instructions.

The cleaning goes on for so long that my useless thoughts of “It’s so hard to be a parent,” and “It would be so much easier to live in a monastery,” simply burn themselves out. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that my condo is all about interbeing: the kitchen is not separate from the rest of the space; it’s connected to the hall and the dining nook. Things that belong in the bedrooms or the TV room have ended up in the kitchen, and things that belong in the kitchen have ended up in the bedrooms or the TV room. In the end, I clean up bits and pieces of every room.

Finally, I find a knife and cutting board to make an Asian-inspired coleslaw. As I get out the ingredients, I think about Dogen’s admonishment to care for them as I would care for the pupils of my own eyes. Since I would never slice or dice my own eyes, I don’t quite know where to start. But Dogen says not to waste time. I need to get at it.

First up is the cabbage, which feels remarkably like a human head, not a pupil. I cut it in half and marvel at the almost perfect circle of a mandala that the cabbage forms. I could meditate on the soft yellow-green hues. A slightly darker shade rings the cabbage edge and then, just a few layers in, it quickly gives way to pale and paler rings.

Next up is the red pepper, with its shiny vermillion skin, light orange membranes, and tight clusters of seeds. The recipe calls for half a cup of sliced pepper. But treating it like my own eye is not just about appreciating its colors and textures. It’s also – maybe more so – about not wasting it. I have a little more than I need, so I mound the measuring cup. I use every red scrap.

When my two toddlers come home, I’m still cooking. They are, as usual, hurricanes of activity, but the quiet time I’ve spent cooking and cleaning has relaxed me and I feel the full fierceness of my love for these pure little beings.

Dogen says, “Care for water and rice as though they were your own children.” I say, one way to care for your children is by showing them your care for water and rice. And of course not just water and rice, but also carrots and onions, sugar and salt, and all the other ingredients in your kitchen.

I hand a whole lemon to my one-year-old son and let him explore the bright beauty of it. I pick up my two-year-old daughter and let her press the buttons on the food processor to grate the carrots, and then I let her taste everything.

Finally, when it’s time to eat, one last Dogen passage plays through my mind: “When preparing the vegetables or ingredients, do not disparage the quantity or quality but instead handle everything with great care. Do not despair or complain.”

I’ve always been lucky to cook with excellent and plentiful ingredients. So, in terms of food quantity or quality, I’ve had nothing to complain about, even if I were so inclined. But, I realize, I have disparaged the ingredients of my life, like my lack of time, my excess of stress.

Given the busyness of having two toddlers and a full-time job, I might need to order pizza tomorrow, but I realize that’s okay. The greatest lesson that Dogen has dished up for me is appreciation.