Since preparing meals for the household falls to Chao Chou, it is no surprise that the Dogen’s Tenzo Kyokun, Instructions for the Zen Cook, gets a read every now and again. This tasty morsel floated up off the pages:
Even when handling just one leaf of a green, do so in such a way that the leaf manifests the fullness of its potential, which in turn, allows the illumination of buddha to radiate through it. This is a power of functioning whose nature is incapable of being grasped with the rational mind and one which operates without hindrance in a most natural way. At the same time, this power operates in our lives to clarify and settle activities beneficial to all living things. From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life – Dogen and Uchiyama
Reminded of something me-self scrawled after playing tenzo at a sesshin sometime back.
Cooking curry
with cayenne.
Hot! Hot!
Mañjusri
comes-up
out the pot.
Popped him
with a spoon.
“Get out!
We don’t need you!”
Cayenne’s hot, hot. Hot.
These days more like . . . It is almost pleasant here. Weenie-roasting weather.
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