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How do you go further from the top of a
hundred-foot pole? The answer to this Zen koan, given on the opening page of Instructions
to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life that Matters (Bell Tower Harmony
Books) is simply, "Live life more fully."
The Zen "cook" writing this book is
Bernard Glassman, abbot of the Zen Community of New York and the Zen Center of Los
Angeles, with assistance from Rick Fields, editor of Yoga Journal and co-author of the Zen
book, Chop Wood, Carry Water. When Dr. Glassman (with a Ph.D. in mathematics from
U.C.L.A.) was an aeronautical engineer working on manned missions to Mars at
McDonnell-Douglas in the 1970s, he felt a hunger for "something more." He began
his practice of Zen and soon became a teacher himself.
Glassman vowed to serve the "supreme
meal" to the world's hungry. The supreme meal for a Zen cook is life lived to the
fullest. By the time he wrote his cookbook, he had created a Zen community in New York,
complete with uniquely profitable means of livelihood for its members, as well as several
not-for-profit social action enterprises.
How did he come to serve up such a full meal? He
began by gathering the ingredients at hand at started cooking. Along the way, he didn't
worry so much about doing the "right thing" as simply doing the "next
thing," which usually proved to be correct. His cookbook, which is also an
autobiography of his work, shows that a meal concocted from spirituality, livelihood and
service is quite fulfilling. His story, and the teaching he makes from it, has provided me
with some of the most inspiring reading I've encountered in a long time. I want to pass
along some of his recipes here for each of five courses which make up the complete meal.
The first course is spiritual practice, such as
meditation (or use other methods at hand), to develop the awareness of the oneness of all
things. Spirituality also helps us to realize the stillness in the center of all our
activities. We need to clear our minds just as a cook cleans the kitchen prior to cooking.
We don't meditate to become enlightened, however, but because we are enlightened, we
meditate to keep our stillness in the endless cycle of cooking, serving, cleaning.
The second course is study or learning. We need
our education to develop intelligence and skills. Rabbi Glassman--of course I should call
him Roshi, not Rabbi, but he was born Jewish and his practical, down to earth approach has
a Jewish flavor--teaches that we learn by doing. No need to wait until you know everything
before you do anything, but you learn like a baby learns to walk, by getting up over and
over again until you get going. Then you become more polished with practice. He teaches
you to cook with all available ingredients, including your own faults and problems, which
are always in plentiful supply. When a series of burglaries into the housing complex for
the homeless, for example, began to anger the residents, he used the situation to teach
them how much they cared about and wanted to protect their dwelling place. He used this
problem to get them more involved in its management, and they learned valuable skills in
the process.
The third course is livelihood, which requires
practical skills put to good use. Although we don't live to eat, we have to eat to live.
No matter how spiritual we may be, finding a way to sustain ourselves in the world is a
common necessity. He calls it the meat and potatoes of the meal. Denying donations,
Glassman created a self-sustaining business_a bakery_because good food would nourish
others and because it could be quite profitable. His tales of creating that business
(becoming the official supplier of baked goods to the Rain Forest brand of cookies and for
Ben and Jerry's ice cream sandwiches) is an instructional manual itself in practical
spirituality. He saw to it that the employees not only earned a living, but also found
spiritual nourishment in their work. He had a double bottom line that he sees as really
one: profit and service to all concerned.
He didn't aim merely for profit that served, but
also profit that transformed, because the forth course is social action. Creating
economically self-sustaining structures that nourished the community and transformed its
social landscape, he hired and trained the homeless so they could earn money to own their
own shelter. Have a big vision, he counsels, but pay attention to the details. He
developed, for example, an 800 number voice mail network for the homeless to communicate
with each other and with potential employers.
The final course is relationship and community. He
and his students lived among the homeless and learned from them in designing their
programs. He also engaged local business and government to participate as be began a
program of refurbishing abandoned buildings.
Glassman has had his critics, people who miss the
traditional zendo. They ask, "But is it Zen?" He treats the question as a koan,
and replies, "Three pounds of fudge!"
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