How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment

by Dogen, Kosho Uchiyama Roshi

Overview

This modern-day commentary on Dogen’s Instructions for a Zen Cook reveals how everyday activities—like cooking—can be incorporated into our spiritual practice

In the thirteenth century, Zen master Dogen—perhaps the most significant of all Japanese philosophers, and the founder of the Japanese Soto Zen sect—wrote a practical manual of Instructions for the Zen Cook. In drawing parallels between preparing meals for the Zen monastery and spiritual training, he reveals far more than simply the rules and manners of the Zen kitchen; he teaches us how to "cook," or refine our lives.

In this volume Kosho Uchiyama Roshi undertakes the task of elucidating Dogen's text for the benefit of modern-day readers of Zen. Taken together, his translation and commentary truly constitute a "cookbook for life," one that shows us how to live with an unbiased mind in the midst of our workaday world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780834824324
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	11/08/2005
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	136
Sales rank:	604,028
File size:	990 KB

About the Author

Dogen (1200–1253) is known as the founder of the Japanese Soto Zen sect.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 2: Concerning the Religious Life

Nowadays, the public has become familiar with the Shobo-genzo of Dogen Zenji. However, another important text also written by Dogen, the Eihei Shingi, is for the most part yet unknown. Both Nishiari Zenji and my own teacher, the late Kodo Sawaki Roshi, have said repeatedly that monks of the Soto tradition must treasure the Eihei Shingi more than the Shobo-genzo. One thing I shall always remember is the time Sawaki Roshi cautioned me to carry the Eihei Shingi with me whenever I traveled to different temples. He even showed me precisely how to wrap it in the pack that monks carry with them when they travel.

The reason we should value the Eihei Shingi so highly is because in it, Dogen Zenji takes his disciples by the hand and teaches them about everyday religious life. In contrast to the Shobo-genzo, which is a profound philosophical teaching, the Eihei Shingi is more of an oral teaching that guides the disciples in a more practical way.

Because of that, it may appear on the surface that it was written strictly with practicing monks in a monastic situation in mind, and that it has no bearing on the daily lives of most people. However, if we get under the surface to touch its deeper meaning, there can be no doubt that a vibrant and practical teaching has been set down; a teaching relevant to all of us, regardless of where we might be living.

The Tenzo Kyokun is the first section of the Eihei Shingi. Tenzo refers to the office in charge of preparing meals for the community, while kyokun means teaching, so literally, Tenzo Kyokun means instructions or teachings for the cook. As a book concerned with the duties of cooking, it is, in a sense, a cookbook, though it is not the type that might be used by prospective brides, for it is a profound religious work. I feel it is one of the most valuable religious texts of all time, since it deals not only with the handling of food, but also with our attitude toward all matters and people we encounter in our day-to-day lives. Even more basically, it is a text that shows us concretely how to prepare and manage our personal lives. In this commentary I have selected those passages from the text that I feel are of special importance. From them I hope we can discover together a truth beyond relativities, and can learn how to work seeing the true value of our lives.

The Tenzo Kyokun is a cookbook on life, but what is the basic ingredient with which we prepare this life? For Dogen Zenji, it was nothing other than zazen. Religious life comes into existence by our asking how we can live with zazen as the standard for our lives, while in turn being protected by zazen. Looking at it from a slightly different angle, religious life becomes vital when zazen begins to function in our everyday activities. Just how zazen functions and guides us in a down-to-earth way is what this text is about.

In this respect, the zazen of Dogen Zenji is religious in the very deepest sense. It differs from that of any number of books on Zen flooding the market today which depict zazen simply as a method to train hara (equated by some with the solar plexus, or with the manipura chakra), or as some sort of health plan, or as a method for cultivating the mind.

Table of Contents

Translator's Introduction vii

Instructions for the Zen Cook Tenzo Kyokun 3
By Zen Master Dogen

How to Cook Your Life Jinsei Ryori no Hon 23
By Kosho Uchiyama Roshi

1. The Tenzo Kyokun and Shikan-taza 23
2. Concerning the Religious Life 31
3. The True Form of the Self 35
4. Everything You Encounter Is Your Life 39
5. Seeing the World Without Holding Worldly Values 46
6. On Parental Mind 51
7. Having a Passion for Life 56
8. Direction and Goal 61
9. Making Life Calculations 65
10. Working with Clear Vision 70
11. Living Through the Life of the Self 77
12. On Life Force and Life Activity 82
13. The Function of a Settled Life 87
14. Throwing Your Life into the Abode of the Buddha 92

Notes 99
Glossary 113

Editorial Reviews

"This is a book that should grace the shelves of any practitioner, not only because of Dogen's classic text but also for the unequivocal way in which the commentary amplifies the text and makes the very important point that a Buddhist practice, if it is to mean anything, must touch every area of life and not just the confines of the meditation cushion."—The Middle Way

"I am glad to see Uchiyama Roshi's classic commentary to Instructions for the Zen Cook back in print. Dogen's original text (here in Thomas Wright's lucid translation) is particularly applicable to everyday spirituality in the world, and Roshi's commentary, full of gritty, funny stories about his early days as a monk in pre- and post-war Japan, and charming tales from Buddhist and Japanese folklore, evidence a plain-speaking, shoot-from-the hip approach to Zen that is as refreshing now (possibly more so!) as it was when the book first came out. Zen masters of this full-bodied tasty vintage are hard to find these days!"—Zoketsu Norman Fischer, former abbot, San Francisco Zen Center; founder and teacher, Everyday Zen Foundation; author of Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

From the Publisher