The Middle Way

Life has been described like rice, and the process of cooking it. The rice needs to go into the pressure cooker, it needs to sit and process for a while. Take it out too early and you’ve got nothing usable, leave it in too long and you’ve got mush. In the middle, is rice just, sitting. How to Cook Your Life is a new Zen influenced movie, told from the perspective of the Tenzo, or head chef, Edward Brown of Tassajara Zen Center.

The Movie is an investigation of and on life, through the vehicle of life in the kitchen. Edward weaves a magical tapestry showing the interconnectedness of everything, the joy and excitement of being alive, being able to our hands and body to nourish life. The movie flows through working with people, and there’s a beautiful quote about how the food takes care of itself, when the people are looked after. How when we cook, we place our current state into the food.

Nirvana in the Kitchen
If we are peaceful, we carefully cut and cook the food, using the bet bits, at the right size, investing love into the food. And as Ed says, you can taste food that’s been cooked with Love. It tastes like passion was placed into the preparation. The portions are just right. When we are reckless, the results don’t look or taste as good.

Awakening to Taste
Then we need to know how to taste the food. To taste the flavors, to enjoy it for what it is. Ed was baking biscuits traditionally, and couldn’t get them to taste any good. He tried and tried, played with all the variables, but still couldn’t get them to taste any good. So eventually he decided to taste the biscuits he was reference; the pack mix his mum used to make. He realised what he was referencing was basically sugar. Going back he made another batch, this time, without the references, being in the biscuit itself. Heavens opened up for him, angels sang, and they were the most amazing biscuits of his life, the first time he tasted biscuits.Really tasting food, riding life, accepting human-ness.

Entering the Human in us
I also enjoyed his human qualities, which is something I continue to appreciate on this Dharma Tour. Ed’ a very human guy, and he kept reminding us to be human. Not to make excuses or to deny who we are, but to accept this and enter into it. Embrace yourself, not as an image, but who we are with all out faults, as these are what makes us human, and in that way they are unique, and strengths. I know I’m really bad with directions, but am slowly accepting that’s part of me, and no longer get frustrated about getting lost, I see it and smile at myself for another mistake, lovingly knowing that it’s me manifesting.

Inside, Outside, Same
Suzuki Roshi is also captured various times in the movie, looking radient, playful, and engaging, as always. He speaks of the Blue Jay, and it’s chirping. If we see the Blue Jay as outside, and hear his chirping as something else, we hear noise, we get upset with the Blue Jay. If we open our hearts, we feel the Blue Jay, we become the Blue Jay in our hearts, and we chirp with him, and he becomes us.

The Little Duck Towards the end of the movie is a poem written by Ed’s mother the week before she died when he was 3 years old. It was a very beautiful and memorial way to conclude the movie. The poem is written by Donald C. Babcock, called The Little Duck

Now we are ready to look at something pretty special.

    It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf, and he cuddles in the swells.
    There is a big heaving in the Atlantic.
    And he is part of it.
    He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.
    Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.
    And neither do you.
    But he realises it.
    And what does he do, I ask you.
    He sits down in it.
    He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity – which it is.
    That is religion, and the duck has it.

    I like the little duck.
    He doesn’t know much.
    But he has religion.   

I hope to be able to get it on DVD, both for my parents and grand parents for Christmas. It’s a really beautiful look at food and cooking, well shot, all while in the process peacefully examining the truths of our lives. If you get a chance to see this movie, highly recommended. There’s a beautiful short trailer for you to watch on the How To Cook Your Life website.

Kitchen Haiku
My kitchen island Haiku:  Trash cans overturned.  Wasabi, steam and fried rice.  Kitchen sinks a mess.

Tags: Buddhism, human, indras net, Tassajara, zen.
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