Wild Fox Zen
That’s the American way as Ed Brown sardonically puts it in his wonderful presentation, Dogen’s Instructions to the Cook (click here for mp3).
Ed light-heartedly and piercingly connects dharma, a social message (often missing or assumed in today’s American dharma world), and the importance of relating with the red pepper we might be selecting at the store, chopping and cooking today.
Opening ourselves to an unknownable and unpredictable outcome, intimately meeting the ingredients of our life, and allowing things to come into our lives, is required for cooking as Zen practice – and this extends, of course, to all the activities of daily life.
Ed does an especially nice job emphasizing the meaning of “dharma” as the way to do things – like cooking – as well as “dharma” as phenomena, teaching, and truth. So how do we clean the spinach for this meal? How do we do it? How can we honor and bring forth the delicious quality of this moment, taking full responsibility for the ingredients at hand?
Practice as on ongoing inquiry into the way – how do we do it? – is the adventure in living each moment freshly.
Ed’s talk linked above (and the movie in which he’s featured, How To Cook Your Life) will be recommended resources for the upcoming practice period, Wholehearted Play: 90 Days of Cooking this Great Life, February 20 – May 22.
If you’d like to participate, please register soon and/or sign up for the introduction to the practice community on Saturday, February 13, 9am – 10am CST -6 UMT). More information is below on the video invitation and on the blog post preceding that. To register or ask questions, email wfzango@gmail.com, attn: registration.
If you’d like to read Irina’s clear blog post, “What did Ango do for me practice?, click here.
And happy Ground Hog’s Day – still one of my favorite dharma movies that we’re going to watch again tonight.
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