Learning to be a Zen Cook

Driving home from the January Mahamudra retreat I thought obsessively about taking up the opportunity to cook. Finally, decided to drop it, not think about it for a few days and just see if the situation clarified.

Next morning, the postman knocked and handed over a parcel. It turned out to contain a Christmas present from my brother - a teapot and a book on vegetarian cooking! I decided the direction was clear enough!

The retreat falls into two halves. The first three days. Lots and lots to learn. Forgetting things. Being exhausted. It seemed that there were hundreds of scattered bits of information, hundreds of little tasks that ALL had to be performed to bring a meal together: not just cooking, but all the organising and lighting of lamps and placing of things like ladles, milk bottles etc in the right places at the right time so the right person would grab them.

Tim asked me if I wanted to cook any recipes of my own. I didn't feel any great need to carve my culinary identity onto the retreat. I felt there would be so much to do in the way of learning how things worked - and I was right.

Meditation and absorbing the teachings, I thought, would just have to fit in where they could. Learning about the kitchen was the most important. A lot of the time on my cushion was spent either in exhaustion or twitching mentally with endless lists running through my head.

Tim had planned out a rough programme: First day (or two) we cook all the meals together. Second (or third) day, you cook lunch by yourself. Third (or fourth) day you cook supper by yourself. Fifth day, I leave you in charge of everything, so that you can get a good idea of a full day's work in the kitchen.

It worked out roughly like that. I began by following Tim around while he told or showed me things, or gave me a specific task to do. The next stage was where I nearly knew what to do, but it wasn't safe to leave me alone for too long. I could cook a dish, but not pull the whole meal together. The first few times I would muddle through, Tim would come in an hour or half hour before the meal was due to be served and then race around doing all the things I had forgotten about, or not got around to.

Day 2 or 3 there was a mini-crisis: we both forgot something (putting out milk? juice?) both of us thinking the other was doing it. I could tell Tim was exasperated by that, because on his own he would not have forgotten it. It was a sort of uneasy time - I didn't know enough to be left alone but I was nearly ready. On the other hand, there are not many jobs two people can do, so we had a day of sort of nearly tripping over one another. Also, I think that was the day I was most tired.

We decided I should do breakfast on my own. We went through all the jobs to be done and I made a list. I did OK but burnt the bottom of the porridge pan. Felt very bad to see Jake scraping away at it later. (Extremely relieved when he said at the end session how glad he was to be doing washing up because it got him out of chopping veg!)

Then a really wonderful and strange thing began to happen. I was lighting the oil lamps on the refectory altar and I thought, "I'm losing touch with the sacred". From that moment it started to change. I started to fly. Cooking became meditation.

I requested an interview with Simon. I wanted to talk over with him how you could keep in touch with the meditative mind, while learning lots of things, being very organised, very efficient and with a hundred tasks all pressing for space. We talked about the previous Mahamudra retreat and I told him about the Chenresig sadhana. From that developed the notion of being Chenresig cutting the carrots.

Courgettes and carrots with avgolemono and bulgar wheat salad: I was in the kitchen preparing supper. The house was quiet. I knew how I wanted the vegetables to be - even though I had never made this sauce before. I knew how I wanted the salad to be. There were bowls of prepared veg, chopped garlic. I chose and chopped the herbs I wanted to use. I knew where the oils and other things I needed were. I got them down from the shelves. I was Chenresig preparing supper.

It would be possible to cook for a retreat without any understanding of what people might be going through. Yet it could not mean anything like as much if you didn't have some idea of the powerful feelings people experience on retreat. I found it very moving to see this glum, silent crew shuffle into the refectory and hope from the bottom of my heart that they would find the food as satisfying and comforting as I always had.

Just as the cook cannot know what is going on for the glum and silent crew who shuffle into the refectory, I suppose no one else can know just what is going on for the cook as grace is said, the offering made and food begins to be served.

The little ritual associated with this developed in strength and potency as the week progressed. Lighting incense in front of Guru Rinpoche's picture became a prayer of thankfulness that the meal was prepared and ready, and a prayer that it would nourish and comfort everybody in the way that they most needed.

Taking the offering out to the Tara statue in the garden became a heartfelt offering of the best that I can be. A private offering of all that had brought the meal to be, while behind me there's the bustle and clatter of everyone being served. It was lovely to walk back into the refectory to all the purposeful bustle and see everyone beginning to eat. For all but one meditation session I just had to endure a racing mind and endless lists - jobs and ingredients and recipes that simply refused to be corralled. It was a learning process and I accepted it philosophically because the kitchen became a deeper and deeper meditation.

I really began to see that it is possible to work with incredible intensity, yet be in a meditative state. This took me by surprise, and I am very grateful that it happened, because it was wonderful. Despite needing to do a lot of talking to Tim, the pervasive atmosphere of the group meditation carried me along with it.

It was strange being on the other side of the retreat. Tim had to tell me that I had to look around and notice things, not keep eyes down. I loved the few times I joined in with the morning exercises - I missed doing them every day and realised how much I have always enjoyed them, and the little thought for the day that John gives at the end.

In the talk session at the end someone mentioned chanting and I thought "What! You all chanted without me!"

I was thankful that I am confident in my cooking, because things didn't always work out. In some instances, after Tim had told me his way of doing things, I then had to work out my own method before things felt right. Like making bread - I'm not tall enough or strong enough to mix the dough with a spoon, but if I stand on the wooden block and use my hand to mix the dough, it works fine. If I hadn't felt confident of my breadmaking, I might have struggled longer with an unsuitable method.