Zen and the art of vegetarian cooking

It is a quarter to five in the morning and I have been sitting in the lotus position for the past 15 minutes, though it feels like an eternity. And there are six of these 50-minute sessions daily, over three days, to endure.

What has brought me, a lapsed Catholic, to a Zen meditation training course at the Eihei-ji temple (tel: +81 (0)776 63 3640), deep in the remote, snowy Japanese Alps? I want to experience shojin ryori – Buddhist vegetarian cuisine – in the context of daily temple life.

Dogen, the founder of Eihei-ji, was born in 1200 into an aristocratic family in Kyoto and entered the Buddhist priesthood at 14. He set up an ashram where he began preaching and, in 1244, built Eihei-ji temple at an almost inaccessible mountainous site.

Dogen wrote books and sutra – collections of literary aphorisms – covering almost every aspect of the daily life of a Zen monk, even mundane acts such as washing or going to the lavatory. He believed that everyday routine – including food and cooking – was an important part of Zen training. Tenzo Kyoukun (Kitchen Instructions) was the first of six rulebooks he produced.

At half past five, we hear monks reciting sutra in unison. The rhythmic accompaniment of a giant wooden gong and a deep bass drum echoes around the vast, freezing prayer hall, muffling the rumblings of my stomach. It is only after more than an hour of morning prayer, and the walk down chilly corridors to the kitchen for more prayers to the kitchen god, that we collect our breakfast in lacquer vessels.

Nineteen of us voluntary inmates sit in lotus position at a raised tatami mat platform, our eating implement bundles before us. Each bundle is wrapped in navy linen, which doubles as a placemat, and contains a white linen tea towel, a grey napkin, four different-sized black lacquer bowls stacked like Russian matryoshka dolls, a pair of chopsticks, a spoon and a cloth-tipped black lacquer cleaning pallet.

Zen breakfast is frugal: a soupy plain rice congee, one sour red pickled plum, a few slices of pickled white radish and a spoonful of ground black sesame seeds mixed with salt. Trainee monks serve the dishes. We chant the Zen equivalent of grace, put our hands together at eye-level and bow deeply, before being allowed to eat the (by now lukewarm) congee. At the end of the meal we clean our bowls with tea and hot water, put away the implements according to the rules and recite more prayers. This simple breakfast has taken us nearly an hour and half from start to finish.

By the middle of the second day we are still struggling to cope with mealtime protocols. So the head of missionary section, monk Nishida Shobou, decides to talk us through Dogen’s Tenzo Kyoukun, in which both the practical and philosophical elements of shojin ryori are spelt out.

He begins by explaining the five-verse prayer that asks you to receive food with gratitude for all the human endeavours involved in its preparation: not just cooks but also farmers, delivery drivers, the makers of farm tools and even supermarket cashiers. The food should be accepted in order to sustain body and soul for attaining spiritual enlightenment.

The “kitchen instructions” list three spirits for cooks. Ki shin (“joyful spirit”) emphasises cooking with joy and gratitude for receiving the task. Rou shin (“old spirit”) instructs cooks to think of those who will eat and to make the food tasty and easy to handle. Tai shin (“big heart”) asks cooks to approach the task with pure, uncluttered minds.

Nishida recalls an occasion when he was nearly derobed and expelled from the temple. For a big tea party lunch in honour of a high priest, he had carved carrots into plum flowers. The head of the kitchen summoned him and declared that the carrot flowers “reeked of vanity and were inedible”. He narrowly escaped disgrace by explaining that he had used carrot leftovers – the kitchen instructions say cooks must use every edible part of a vegetable. The spirit of wasting nothing extends even to water. The bowl of tea and the hot water that is used to clean eating implements should be drunk, and the little that remains used to water trees.

Nishida’s talk seems to have the desired effect, as the length of mealtimes begins to shorten and I am able to enjoy each mouthful. At one meal I find the rice to have a nostalgia-inducing sweetness; a simmered dish of mizuna, shiitake, carrot and burdock is refined; and a block of deep-fried tofu is crispy and succulent.

Back in England, friends asked if I have attained Zen enlightenment. Perhaps not quite yet. But of one thing I am sure: Dogen’s 760-year-old doctrine seems fresh and modern in its sustainability and relevant for today’s often wasteful kitchens.

Kimiko Barber is author of ‘The Chopsticks Diet’ (Kyle Cathie)