Instructions to the Cook: Zen life lessons

Shambhala.com; CC Liu, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Samu: The Dynamic Expression of Zen Practice (Roshi Joan Halifax's Upaya Zen Center)

The recipe for Zen cooking from Being Magazine (wellbeing.com.au)

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Instructions to the Cook (shambhala.com)

Zen [Japanese, from the Pali word for "meditation" and "meditative absorption" or jhana, Chinese chan] is not just about what we do in the meditation hall, but what we do in the home, the workplace, and the community.

That’s the premise of the book Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life That Matters: how to cook what Zen Buddhists call “the supreme meal” — life.

It has to be nourishing, and it has to be shared. And we can use only the ingredients at hand.

Author Zen Master Bernie Glassman

Inspired by the 13th-century manual of the same title by Zen Master Dogen, the founder of the Japanese Soto Zen school, Instructions to the Cook describes the innovative business model American JuBu Roshi Bernie Glassman developed to revitalize a poverty-stricken section of Yonkers, New York.

Co-author Rick Fields

Using his own story as a base, Roshi Glassman and his co-author Rick Fields (How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America) shows how social engagement can be used as a spiritual practice to promote both personal and societal transformation. More

CO-AUTHORS

• Bernie Glassman (born 1939) is a Zen master and the first dharma successor to Taizan Maezumi Roshi, founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA). He is well known for integrating Zen practice with social, economic, and educational initiatives, author of Bearing Witness: A Zen Master's Lessons in Making Peace and Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen. More
• Rick Fields (1942–1999) is the author of several books, including Chop Wood, Carry Water and The Code of the Warrior. He has served as the editor of The Vajradhatu Sun, an international journal of Buddhism (now called Shambhala Sun), and as the editor-at-large of Tricycle: A Buddhist Review. More

BuddhaFest Los Angeles (May 31-June 2)

Ananda M., Dhr. Seven (Dharma Meditation Initiative); BuddhaFest.org, InsightLA.org

BuddhaFest LA embraces mindfulness and compassion through a unique mix of inspiring films, modern wisdom teachings, meditation, and live music. Individual events and an entire weekend of wisdom, inspiration, and community. Featuring:

• Prof. Robert Thurman (tibethouse.us), Uma Thurman's dad
• Accomplished practitioner Sylvia Boorstein (dharma.org)
• Dawa Tarchin Phillips (Bodhi Path, Santa Barbara)
• Tibetan Dr. Nida Chenagtsang
• Norman Fischer (San Francisco Zen Center)
• Music by Ms. Drukmo Gyal Dakini
• Tribute to Zen Master Bernie Glassman (ZCLA)

• 

  Joan Halifax with the 14th Dalai Lama

  Zen Priestess Joan Halifax (upaya.org)
• Accomplished practitioner Sharon Salzberg (sharonsalzberg.com)
• Zen Priestess Pat O'Hara
• Screening of Buddhist filmmaker Doris Dörrie's classic comedy Enlightenment Guaranteed (a very funny Zen comedy)
• + MORE: BuddhaFest.org/schedule

BuddhaFest LA

It's more fun to attend with friendly meditators (Dharma Meditation Initiative)

• At Writers Guild Theater, Beverly Hills (L.A.)
• and UCLA's Young Hall, West L.A. campus
• Friday, May 31 through Sunday, June 2, 2019
• BuddhaFest.org
  • RSVP FREE to attend with D.M.I.

Losing Zen Buddhist activist Matthiessen (NPR)

Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Weekend Edition Sunday (NPR, April 6, 2014)

Bhumi/Gaia is a precious thing, nurturing and full of intelligence (NASA/colourbox.com)

 

Zen (counterpointpress.com)

Author Peter Muryo Matthiessen has died in New York at the age of 86 from acute myeloid leukemia. He was a novelist and naturalist, who wrote 33 books, among his best-known being The Snow Leopard and the novels Far Tortuga and At Play in the Fields of the Lord, which was made into a Hollywood film.

He is the only writer to ever win the National Book Award in the categories of Fiction (for Shadow Country) and General Nonfiction (for The Snow Leopard, which also won for Contemporary Thought). 

 

He was also a political activist, a Buddhist teacher, co-founder of The Paris Review and, briefly, a spy.

 

In his first nonfiction book, Matthiessen staked out the territory he would revisit the rest of his life -- the destruction of nature and natural peoples at the hands of humankind. Wilderness in America, published in 1959, is a history of the extinction of animal and bird species in North America:

Species appear, and left behind by a changing earth, they disappear forever, and there is a certain solace in the inexorable. But until man, the highest predator, evolved, the process of extinction was a slow one. No species but man, so far as is known, unaided by circumstance or climactic change, has ever extinguished another.

Wilderness in America led to a series of assignments from The New Yorker that in turn led to a series of books....

 

Matthiessen traveled to New Guinea in 1961 with Michael Rockefeller, who disappeared and may have been the victim of headhunters (or so the legend goes). He wrote about trips to Africa, the Himalayas, South America, and Antarctica. 

 

But he said he never intended to write nonfiction. "Fiction is my first love, and that's the way I began," he said. "And frankly, when I began nonfiction, I did it for money."

 

McKay Jenkins, the author of The Peter Matthiessen Reader and several nature books, says that's astonishing. "That's kind of like Babe Ruth wanting to be remembered as a pitcher," Jenkins says. "Matthiessen is held in such high regard as a nonfiction writer by nonfiction writers that they sometimes say, 'How is it possible that this guy can be such a virtuoso fiction writer, and give his equally substantial body of nonfiction work such short shrift?' Because all the rest of us are trying to do what we can to mimic his nonfiction work."

 

Matthiessen was remarkable in a lot of ways. He was born in Manhattan in 1927 to a wealthy family. After a stint in the Navy, he attended Yale, where he began writing short stories -- and where one of his professors recruited him into the CIA [like someone somewhere did Barry Obama, Johnny Kerry, Bush Sr., Karl(yle) Rove, Dick Cheney...and the even the fleeing Dalai Lama. The Company gets around.]

In 1953, Matthiessen co-founded what would become one of the most important literary magazines of the 20th Century, The Paris Review. But he did it as a cover for his CIA activities -- the only adventure in his long life that he said he ever regretted.

 

"I was a spy," he said. "When I went in there, it was the end of the Cold War -- Russia was a great menace out there in the distance. It was considered very patriotic to join the CIA. I didn't know my politics were going to veer leftward, and that I would really come to despise the CIA."

 

Matthiessen's politics led to a lifelong career as an activist. He wrote books about union [American farmworker] organizer Cesar Chavez, the American Indian Movement...

 

After Matthiessen's second wife, Deborah, died of cancer in 1972, he embraced Zen Buddhism and eventually became a priest and teacher. In his 1978 book, The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen wrote about a spiritual journey in the remote mountains of Nepal, and the impossibility of capturing experience in words:

The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind, but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day. LISTEN

Peter Muryo Matthiessen [was] a two-time winner of the National Book Award, a longtime Zen practitioner, and Bernie Glassman’s first Dharma successor. He [was] an active Zen teacher in Sagaponack, New York.

• Unlocking the mysteries of the Earth (BBC)
  The BBC's Nick Higham talks to Dr. James Lovelock, the author of Rough Ride to the Future, which predicts the Earth's future…
• Gaia creator rows back on climate
  …the Earth was like. But in a hundred million years, it sank back to normal." Dr. Lovelock is the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, which posits that…

• The Way of the Knife: Mark Mazzetti on KPFA today
• The Way of the Knife: Life in the CIA (or Why just spy when you can kill like an independent mercenary army for multinational capitalist corporations?)
• AUDIO: A nonbeliever tries to make sense of the visions she had as a teen (Barbara Ehrenreich on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, WWHY/NPR)
• When life gives you raspberries, make pie!

ZEN: The Buddha's Birthday (Sunday, April 6)

Wisdom Quarterly; Jeff Albrizze (PasaDharma.org); Zen Center Los Angeles

ZCLA Gateless Gate entrance, residential area near Wilshire district (Wisdom Quarterly)

 

Boy mesmerized by baby Siddhartha (ZCLA)

Join in celebrating the birth of the Buddha, and all of the baby future buddhas, in the Zen Center garden. A small arbor house decorated with flowers will be erected, and Dokai Dickenson will officiate the special service. Afterwards, the Birth Story of the Buddha and his first steps in the world will be told.

 

Birth of the Bodhisattva

Everyone is invited to bring a small bouquet of flowers as an offering for the service. Children, friends, and family are all welcome. The Sunday schedule will include a chanting service, sitting meditation (zazen), and a celebration of the Buddha’s birthday, followed by a light lunch. Plan on arriving at ZCLA by 8:15 am to get a parking space and be ready for the Sunday schedule:

• 8:30am-9:00am Chanting Service – The Gate of Sweet Nectar (please bring a can of food for the altar offering to help local needy families)
• 9:00-9:35 Zazen (silent seated meditation)
• 9:35-9:45 Kinhin (walking meditation)
• 9:45-10:20 Zazen (silent seated meditation)
• 11:00-12 noon Buddha’s Birthday Celebration in the garden
• 12:15-12:45 Snack

Lunch during sesshin, ZCLA dining hall, main building next to gift shop (zencenter.org)

 

If driving, make sure to arrive at ZCLA early, as parking is at a premium. Attend any or all of the activities, and leave at any of the activity change breaks, or stay until the end (about 12:45 pm) for lunch.

Please wear loose, comfortable clothing, preferably dark in color, with no distracting colors or logos. Please refrain from wearing excessive jewelry, perfume, or cologne. Participation is FREE. Donations at the Center are accepted. The ZCLA bookstore will be open for books, incense, and meditation cushions.

Zen Center of Los Angeles 

Secondary rear meeting room (WQ)

The Center was founded in 1967 by Taizan Maezumi Roshi. ZCLA Buddha Essence Temple has provided the teachings and practice of Zen Buddhism to all who come and go through its temple gate. Its mission is to know the self, maintain the precepts, and serve others. It serves by providing the Dharma, training, and transmission of Soto Zen Buddhism. Its vision is an "enlightened world" in which suffering is transcended, all beings live in harmony, everyone has enough, deep wisdom is realized, and compassion flows unhindered.

The Center affirms its intention to honor diversity and actively welcome all people, regardless of religion, age, ethnicity, gender, physical or mental ability, race, sexual orientation, or socio-economic background.

ZCLA observes a daily schedule of zazen, Buddhist services, and mindful work. The Center's programs include introductory classes, sesshin, workshops, and training periods, as well as face-to-face meetings with Abbot Wendy Egyoku Nakao and other Center teachers. The practice of zazen and koan training is in the Maezumi-Glassman lineage.

ZCLA: Field trip to Zen Center Los Angeles

Roshi Jeff Albrizze (PasaDharma.org), CC Liu, Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; ZCLA video 

The Los Angeles/Mexican Day of the Dead/Japanese Obon Festival, ZCLA, 2012 (filmed and edited by Nicholas Tana and Denise Acosta, posted Oct. 29, 2013).

ZCLA

PasaDharma Zen sitting group will carpool from Pasadena (Del Mar at Hudson) at 7:45 am, Nov. 10, 2013, to the Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA, 923 South Normandie Ave., 90006-1301) in the Miracle Mile district just west of downtown to see the British-born Abbot Charles Tenshin Fletcher Roshi (Yokoji Zen Mountain Center, California).

• 8:30-9:00: Chanting "The Gate of Sweet Nectar" (please bring canned food offerings for hungry ghosts and to benefit needy families in the area)
• 9:00-9:35: Zazen (silent seated meditation)
• 9:35-10:20: Kinhin (walking meditation)
• 10:45-12:00: Dharma Talk by Roshi Fletcher
• 12:15-12:45: Snack (usually bagels and locks)

ZMC

Drive or carpool. Wear dark, loose, comfortable clothing free of distracting colors or logos. Please refrain from wearing excessive perfume, cologne, or jewelry. FREE. No fee for participating but donations to the center are accepted.

(ZMC.org) Year-round Zen Buddhist training center located in SoCal mountains east of LA

Tenshin Roshi (zmc.org)

Zen Center Los Angeles (ZCLA), Buddha Essence Temple, founded 1967 by Taizan Maezumi Roshi, has provided teachings and the opportunity to practice Japanese-style Soto Zen Buddhism in an American context for all who come through the temple's (gateless) gate. The mission of the institution is to know the self, maintain the precepts, and serve others by providing the teaching, training, and transmission of Zen Buddhism with a vision of an enlightened world in which suffering is transcended, all beings live in harmony, everyone has enough, deep wisdom is realized, and compassion flows unhindered. ZCLA honors and actively welcomes diversity with regard to religion, race, gender, age, mental ability, physical ability, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background. ZCLA programs include introductory classes, sesshin (sitting intensives), workshops, training periods, and face to face meetings (dokusan, interviews) with Abbot Wendy Egyoku Nakao and other center teachers. Zazen and koan training in the Maezumi-(Bernie) Glassman lineage is practiced.

(ZMC.org) Short film: "Yokoji Zen Mountain Center" day-to-day life prior to the forest fire and flooding at Yokoji ZMC in the San Jacinto Mountains, Southern California.

Vast Sky (Ken Wilber)

Genpo Merzel Roshi • Bernie Glassman Roshi • Ken Wilber

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