On the last morning we burnt all the paper and the cardboard boxes on a big bonfire. Only a small pile of fruit was left from all our provisions: we offered it to the retreatants, for their journey home. The gradual emptying of the kitchen echoed my own sense of leaving my past stories behind. After that retreat, John and Pam judged me ready for the challenge of cooking a retreat on my own; my journey took on a different tone.
Chapter Five
Tara
Tara and I never had a proper introduction. On my first ever retreat, Miche asked me if I would like to take the offering to Tara. She handed me a metal tray with small stainless steel bowls containing the first servings of each dish, and an incense stick, and said:
“Take the tray through the kitchen, light the incense, wave it, blow out the candle on the windowsill and leave the offering on the steps outside doing your own ritual.”
I was clueless about what I was doing. I had no ritual, no idea of what or who Tara was, but I enjoyed being asked, and going out and looking at the trees.
It was the same during the two retreats when I was training with other cooks. Each cook has their own practice and way of making offerings, so the basic ceremonial was explained more and less as yet one more task to add to the endless list of things to do.
I had decided, when I started training, to opt out of reading books about Zen. I wanted to dive into the practice without knowing what I was diving into. I wanted to approach the path without expectation.
So I didn’t read anything about methods of practice, nor about Tara, although I did ask people about their experience of her.
To begin with, I resented the time spent taking the offering. It was yet another thing to juggle: having to collect the dishes from the previous meal’s offering, whilst preparing the next. Yet at the same time, I was hearing from others about Tara being the guardian of the cooks, the helper, the active compassionate Buddha who came to aid the cooks in despair. I heard of floods of tears being shed on her steps, and of the strength she provided to others during the arduous hours of Tenzo practice.
The statue in the garden is emerald green and wears a crown. She has permanent, pen-painted eyes that look or stare, and she gets retouched each year as she sheds her skin, as the chalky Farrow and Ball paint starts to flake off. She is the Buddha of intuitive wisdom, and her aim is to bestow the highest happiness. Her left hand has the thumb and ring finger touching and holding the stem of a lotus flower, and her elbow is bent, so that her hand reaches up to her left shoulder. Her right hand is stretched out over the right knee with the palm facing down, which is the gesture of utmost generosity. She has a graceful posture: her right leg is outstretched and her left leg is pulled slightly towards her. This is what makes Green Tara active and agile, as she is sitting but not quite, ready to get up to help, prepared for swift action.
My Christian (protestant) upbringing made it difficult for me to connect to a statue, to ask something from a deity, and perhaps that is how I saw Tara for a while, as a statue that I felt I had to be grateful for, without knowing why. At first I felt very sceptical about it all, kneeling and asking, rubbing her knee as others had told me they did, but for some reason I continued to do it.
I began to cherish my Tara moments when I became aware that my way of looking at things shifted each time I went to the steps with my offering. There were simple things that happened whilst I was with Tara: face-to-face encounters with insects and animals; sudden glimpses of majestic red kites flying low, courting. Sometimes it was a rainbow, or the light at dusk over the house, making the garden glow, or the first rays of sunshine at dawn, as I stood with a little dish of porridge, the day breaking, the mountain waking. Or the touch of a sycamore branch on my face whenever I was feeling unloved and lonely. Nature kept speaking to me, in metaphors, in moments of connection with everything.
I began to investigate the offerings themselves. What was I doing? Who was I offering to? What did Tara represent? What happened at those steps that made my heart beat fast, and made me feel so connected to the fairy-like insects? What made me leave orchids or flowers for the black ravenous slugs that came to feed off the food? I began to care for slugs in the same way as I was caring for people. By looking after the slugs, I was also caring for myself: immersing myself in the practice, abandoning preconceptions, and allowing something else to arise as my fixation on the small self became weaker. I was mending my heart, and learning about love in a different way, with Tara as the facilitator.
I began to see Tara as a goddess, as an archetype of me, of myself as the goddess-woman who came out to play in the Maenllwyd kitchen. Tara’s practice of active generosity and help was what I had come to the mountain for, not for the actual love of cooking. Through Tara, I invoked the wild woman in me, with her dormant, goddess heart. She came and danced in the kitchen, cooked, worked, sat and meditated. At first, the encounter with this part of myself was a complete surprise. It was a side of my personality that was sensual, free and playful; it was safe for it to come out in that sacred space.
This awakening led to creativity and artfulness. Whenever I felt connected to the wild of the mountain, I connected to the wild in me, and the magic in the kitchen roared, and could be tasted in the food.
One summer, I was cooking on a retreat with far too many men. The Guestmaster Fi and I were the only women participants. One of my favourite things on retreats is the presence of men. I like male company, love the charisma of male energy. I usually find it beautiful, safe, but on this particular retreat I was not comfortable, and I felt uneasy with the group’s dynamics. There were several men who constantly whinged about not being given coffee: one participant spent the entire retreat waiting for me to make mistakes so he could “inform” the Guestmaster about “the cook’s wrong-doings”. The male energy was a strange one. I didn’t like it, and the usual magic in the kitchen was not happening. Things got burnt, flavours did not develop to my satisfaction. I was really struggling with being there and I wanted to go home. Despite some delicious Thai orchids being offered to the slugs to feast on, despite the warm weather, this time they were nowhere to be seen. Tara seemed dormant too, as if her eyes were closed, mirroring how I felt, mirroring the fact that I felt deflated, low and uninspired.
Halfway through the retreat, Fi came to the kitchen for a chat. I told her I wasn’t feeling at ease, that my inner goddess did not feel safe to come out to play. I said that I was unhappy with the food that I was serving, with the lack of inspiration I felt in the kitchen. She reassured me that everything was fine, but offered to come back later so that we could do a Tara awakening ceremony together. She told me to get a candle, some water, a piece of fruit, a flower and an incense stick. Whilst everybody else was meditating, we went outside and stood on the steps in the early afternoon with our offerings. She taught me the Tara mantra, Om tāre tuttāre ture svāhā. Mantra is a collection of words or sounds that act as a focal point for certain types of meditation, an aid to achieving spiritual transformation. Most Buddhist deities have their own particular mantra. Previously, Fi had shared her own experiences with Tara whilst practising as a Tenzo at the Maenllwyd. She reminded me that Tara represents compassion in action, and that I should ask her for help. I was a bit taken aback; did she mean asking aloud like in prayer? It felt weird. We knelt down, lit the candle and the incense, and offered the flowers and fruit. We also rang one of the rusty bells that hang from the beams in the house, which are usually used to summon the participants to the refectory for meals. We chanted the mantra until the words faded. Fi then guided me into asking Tara for help. I mumbled, felt self-conscious, but I truly wanted to shift the energy and I had not been able to do it alone. I asked for help, asked her about the lack of slugs - had the birds eaten them? We stood there, both talking to Tara, and the longer we stayed, the easier it became for me to open up to her. When we had finished talking, we each placed a hand on her knee and bowed. It was time to make the tea for the retreatants, and I went back to the kitchen.
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What happened next was one of those moments which are difficult to describe: words detract from the depth and feeling of what actually happened. I suddenly felt that the kitchen was glowing and the Rayburn was roaring. People came and drank tea, munched on the cake, sat by the fire, went back to the Chan Hall. I joined everyone for the afternoon mantra, where we all chant the universal mantra, Om, in unison. When I returned to prepare dinner, the kitchen felt different. The light was purple, the kettles were jumping and spitting on top of the Rayburn, hoarily hot. The tiny space had suddenly become warm, active and inviting. I placed the supper ingredients on the wooden surface by the window, marvelling at how the sun made the vegetables shine. As I approached the windowsill to light the big, red candle that sits by the Buddha statue that I bring with me from home, I noticed a trail of slugs climbing up the window. It was as if they were trying to get in, to join me. A powerful compassion for the difficult participants arose in me; by dropping my concern with the energy of the group, I was once again allowing my practice to encompass everything, whether it was pleasant or unpleasant to me. I felt elated and grateful. The slugs must have returned to the steps because the following morning I could only see filaments of flowers left on the grass.
Chapter Six
Retreat Three: Dancing with Death
I was asked to cook a five-day Chan retreat at Bala Brook, a retreat centre on Dartmoor. I knew it would be a long drive, so I cut the journey in half and stayed overnight with my friends, Alec and Denise, in Gloucestershire.
The following morning, Alec wanted to take me to Stroud Farmers’ Market. We wandered around and between stalls selling artisan cheese and rustic bread I spotted a woman selling cottage garden flowers from her farm. It was the best flower stall I have ever seen; it offered me a choice of all my favourites. I decided to buy some for the altar at Bala Brook, so I picked blue and burgundy cornflowers, delphiniums in several different shades, silvery-blue alliums and clumps of borage. Also, a little bunch of sweet peas wrapped in hessian.
I set off with my carload of food and flowers and, after collecting the organic produce I had ordered from the local farm shop, I left the main road and, accompanied by insect-chasing swallows, arrived at the house without getting lost. There is always so much to do when the cook arrives for a retreat: unloading, putting things away, gauging where the basic implements are and how they work. There are tables to set, preserves and condiments to sort out. On this retreat I also had to serve supper on the first night.
The house felt warm and embracing. The meditation room was light and airy, with polished wooden floors and lilac walls. As I explored, I found it was full of interesting artefacts: wall hangings, beautiful relics and Buddha statues. The kitchen was ample, with long, tiled worktops, large windows and plenty of light. A blue Aga surrounded by pretty majolica tiles splashed with scattered butterflies stood proud, the heart of this special new workspace.
I had heard that the house had no teapots to cater for large groups of people, so I brought three big ones with me. The Guestmaster said that a teapot is the English embodiment of Kwan Yin, the Chinese bodhisattva of compassion. I had to agree: a cup of tea warms the heart and offers comfort to people who are struggling with difficult issues on retreats.
I rummaged through the cupboards, looking for pretty serving dishes. It is important for me to serve meals in aesthetically pleasing crockery, and I found some in the pantry.
I baked a cake every day; I had to make do without scales, as there were none to be found. It was refreshing to experiment with cakes using my instincts. Cakes happened. I had only one mishap: an orange and walnut flapjack that didn’t bind, and instead turned into a golden, delicious granola for the breakfast table. Nothing is lost in the Zen kitchen; even the food that we sometimes have to throw away is turned into compost which nurtures the ground.
We are not usually encouraged to write whilst on retreat, but this time I felt like it. With the luxury of electricity, I was able to scribble down a few notes before bedtime. I sketched out the basics of a dish I had created, made observations on my process, wrote a little poetry. Not speaking for days means that language does not flow easily: it is full of silences, gaps.
The house honours the small stream running alongside it with its name, Bala Brook. I couldn’t quite see the stream from the kitchen window, but the sound of its flowing was a constant companion as I cooked. Knotted oak trees surround the banks, and granite boulders create some lovely pools as you walk up the garden.
Apparently the house’s owner likes to take a dip in the pools. Although it was June, I was still wearing woolly socks and boots, so I was hesitant to follow his example, yet I felt tempted, called. I remember swimming outside in cold water as a child, fearless, beyond concern with cold or discomfort. I suddenly felt sad at the loss of that adventurous child spirit. As I grew up, I became fixated on what I thought of as comfortable. Since moving to this island, keeping warm has almost become an obsession; when I became a mother, I felt a powerful need to shelter myself and my children and keep us all safe. The girl that used to swim in cold mountain streams and jump into pools for the mere fun of it now spends her summers on an English beach, wrapped in blankets, merely looking at the sea, finding a book more tempting than swimming in the immensity of the ocean.
Yet I felt a yearning. I found myself thinking about bathing and flowing in the stream, screened by the gully of earth and ferns. I imagined the noise of my body in the water, the feel of my toes sinking in the mucky silt, my buttocks shrinking from the cold that stings the skin, then numbs it. I wanted to submerge myself, perhaps then loosing the grip of the frightened self in the steely moor water, like a river mermaid who had spent too long out of the water. I felt the flow of water resonating with the flow of the kitchen, of cooking. There was a sense of a freeing space to flow and float. Yet I remained standing by the pool, yearning rather than swimming.
I made leek, lemon and spring greens soup, a Nigel Slater recipe that had appeared in the paper the weekend before I came, and which I have adapted. It was vibrant, crunchy, tangy and full of heart.
The vegetables from the local farm were fresh and full of vigour. I opened each leaf of the lush spring greens to slice them, cherishing the texture and colour, taking my time. As I tore them off the stalk, they made a rubbery noise; they crunched as they came into contact with the knife. I sliced each leaf carefully, tenderly, looking and listening. I removed several caterpillars, taking them out into the garden with tender cupped hands, putting my heart and quiet attention into every second. When you look at something, even the humblest vegetable, with eyes of wonder, it is possible to witness the radiance of it, the “it” of a vegetable, a pulse, a grain.
Leek, lemon and spring greens soup
Serves 6
3 or 4 medium leeks
1 tbsp olive oil
2 carrots, chopped into small, bite-sized cubes
2 celery sticks, chopped into small, bite-sized cubes
1½ litres homemade vegetable stock
2 bunches of spring greens
1 lemon
Cut the leeks in half along their length, wash them and slice them thinly at a slant. Heat the oil in a pan, add the leeks along with some sea salt and black pepper. Lower the heat and cover them, so they can so they can sweat and cook but not caramelise. Don’t overcook: always make sure that vegetables retain their colours.
Add the chopped carrot and celery, stir and cook for a few minutes, so that they seal. Add the stock, and simmer for five or ten minutes. Check seasoning. You can add a few squirts of tamari sauce as this enhances the natural flavour of the vegetables and adds body. Colour is key to this soup so don’t add too much.
Wash the spring greens and cut each leaf along the stalk, following its natural line, then slice into medium strips.
Using a zester, remove the zest of the lemon and add it to the soup. Squeeze the juice of half of the lemon and put it to one side. Add the spring greens, and immediately remove t
he soup from the heat. Cover for a few minutes and check the seasoning. Stir in the lemon juice just before serving.
As the cook, I am often seen as someone who is not really taking part in the retreat. However, although I am not sitting all the time with everyone else, and I follow a slightly different schedule, it does not mean that I am not practising. In the silence of the kitchen I am on solitary retreat. I have learned to listen to silence, to relish it, marvelling as I first start to notice the noise of my mind, the voices in my head, echoing, murmuring. I am sometimes horrified by what I hear; the noise can be deafening and the thoughts disturbing.
Meditation is self-confrontation, and quieting one’s mind is like obtaining a ticket to a forgotten yet familiar place, like walking towards an encounter with a long-lost loved one.
The path is often painful and on this particular retreat I was faced with a lot of sorrow. The question of death, of impermanence, kept arising. The recent and sudden loss of a dear friend that still felt raw, separation from my family in Argentina, a miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy a long time ago: they all appeared like ghouls in my mind. Retreats are the perfect place to exorcise ghosts, yet on this retreat the ghosts were staying put. They wanted me to look at them, to give them attention. The rain that had not stopped for days made me feel as if I was walking around with the curtains shut. I was stuck on autopilot, performing my duties as cook, whilst trying very hard not to show that I felt as if I was falling apart. This, also, was part of the flow, part of the process and of the practice.
Bala Brook has no statue of Green Tara, as the Maenllwyd has, no steps to visit for solace, for a caress of a sycamore branch, or a glimpse of a gliding red kite above me. No black slugs feasting on orchids on the offering tray.
Tales From a Zen Kitchen Page 5