Zen Master Bernie Glassman passed away yesterday. What a loss.
Zen master Bernie Glassman, "Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons to Living a Life That Matters"
PROLOGUE PREPARING THE MENU
When I first began to study Zen, my teacher gave me a koan, a Zen
question, to answer: “How do you go further from the top of a
hundred-foot pole?”
You can’t use your rational mind to answer this koan—or any Zen question—in a logical way.
You might meditate a long time and come back to the Zen master and say, “The answer is to live fully.”
That’s a good beginning. But it’s only the rational, logical part of
the answer. You have to go further. You have to demonstrate the answer.
You have to embody the answer. You have to show the Zen master how you
live fully in the moment. You have to manifest the answer in your
life—in your everyday relationships, in the marketplace, at work, as
well as in the temple or meditation hall.
When we live our life fully, our life becomes what Zen Buddhists call “the supreme meal.”
We make this supreme meal by using the ingredients at hand to make the best meal possible, and then by offering it.
This book is about how to cook the supreme meal of your life.
This book is about how to step off the hundred-foot pole.
This book is about how to live fully in the marketplace.
And in every other sphere of your life.
Most people come to see me in my capacity as a Zen teacher because they
feel that something is missing in their lives. You might even say that
most people come to Zen because they are hungry in some way.
Maybe they are successful in business but feel that they have neglected
the deeper, more “spiritual” aspects of life. These people come to Zen
to find meaning. Other people have devoted so much time to their own
spiritual search that they end up having neglected their livelihoods.
These people come to Zen to “get their life together.”
Then there
are people who want to practice Zen for health reasons. They find the
posture and breathing that accompany Zen meditation especially helpful.
The regular practice of Zen meditation, for example, lowers blood
pressure and improves circulation. The lungs function better, so that
you can breathe more deeply and powerfully.
Other people are
drawn to Zen for “self-improvement.” They come to Zen because they want
to accomplish more or become “better” people.
Finally, of
course, there are people who practice Zen for spiritual reasons. These
people want to experience satori or kensho. “Satori” literally means
awakening, and “kensho” literally means seeing into our true nature.
This seeing is done not with our eyes but with our whole body and mind.
All these reasons are valid. Zen can help you restore balance to your
life. Zen can be beneficial for your health. Zen can help you sift
through your own priorities, so you can get more done.
Zen can
also improve your psychological health. The practice of Zen doesn’t
eliminate conflict and strife, but it does help put our problems in
perspective. Zen practice gives stability, so that when we get knocked
over, when something unexpected sends us reeling, we bounce back and
recover our balance faster.
The practice of Zen can help us in
many other ways as well. It can give us an experience of inner peace; it
can strengthen our concentration. It can help us learn how to let go of
our preconceptions and biases. It can teach us ways to work more. These
are all beneficial effects—but in a sense, they are still all “side
effects.”
At its deepest, most basic level, Zen—or any spiritual
path, for that matter—is much more than a list of what we can get from
it. In fact, Zen is the realization of the oneness of life in all its
aspects. It’s not just the pure or “spiritual” part of life: it’s the
whole thing. It’s flowers, mountains, rivers, streams, and the inner
city and homeless children on Forty-second Street. It’s the empty sky
and the cloudy sky and the smoggy sky, too. It’s the pigeon flying in
the empty sky, the pigeon shitting in the empty sky, and walking through
the pigeon droppings on the sidewalk. It’s the rose growing in the
garden, the cut rose shining in the vase in the living room, the garbage
where we throw away the rose, and the compost where we throw away the
garbage.
Zen is life—our life. It’s coming to the realization
that all things are nothing but expressions of myself. And myself is
nothing but the full expression of all things. It’s a life without
limits.
There are many different metaphors for such a life. But
the one that I have found the most useful, and the most meaningful,
comes from the kitchen. Zen masters call a life that is lived fully and
completely, with nothing held back, “the supreme meal.” And a person who
lives such a life—a person who knows how to plan, cook, appreciate,
serve, and offer the supreme meal of life, is called a Zen cook.
The position of the cook is one of the highest and most important in
the Zen monastery. During the thirteenth century, Dogen, the founder of
the largest Zen Buddhist school in Japan, wrote a famous manual called
“Instructions to the Cook.” In this book, he recounted how he had taken
the perilous sea voyage to China to find a true master. When he finally
reached his destination, having survived typhoons and pirates, he was
forced to wait aboard his ship while the Chinese officials examined his
papers.
One day, an elderly Chinese monk came to the ship. He
was the tenzo, or head cook, of his monastery, he told Dogen, and
because the next day was a holiday, the first day of spring, he wanted
to offer the monks something special. He had walked twelve miles to see
if he could buy some of the renowned shiitake mushrooms Dogen had
brought from Japan to add to the noodle soup he was planning to serve
the next morning.
Dogen was very impressed with this monk, and
he asked him to stay for dinner and spend the night. But the monk
insisted he had to return to the monastery immediately.
"But surely,” said Dogen, “there are other monks who could prepare the meal in your absence.”
"I have been put in charge of this work,” replied the monk. “How can I leave it to others?”
“But why does a venerable elder such as yourself waste time doing the
hard work of a head cook?” Dogen persisted. “Why don’t you spend your
time practicing meditation or studying the words of the masters?”
The Zen cook burst out laughing, as if Dogen had said something very
funny. “My dear foreign friend,” he said, “it’s clear you do not yet
understand what Zen practice is all about. When you get the chance,
please come and visit me at my monastery so we can discuss these matters
more fully.”
And with that, he gathered up his mushrooms and began the long journey back to his monastery.
Dogen did eventually visit and study with the Zen cook in his
monastery, as well as with many other masters. When he finally returned
to Japan, Dogen became a celebrated Zen master. But he never forgot the
lessons he learned from the Zen cook in China. It was the Zen cook’s
duty, Dogen wrote, to make the best and most sumptuous meal possible out
of whatever ingredients were available—even if he had only rice and
water. The Zen cook used what he had rather than complaining or making
excuses about what he didn’t have.
On one level, Dogen’s
“Instructions to the Cook” is about the proper way to prepare and serve
meals for the monks. But on another level it is about the supreme
meal—our own life—which is both the greatest gift we can receive and the
greatest offering we can make.
I practiced Zen and studied
Dogen’s instructions for many years to learn how to become a Zen cook
who can prepare this supreme meal. I got up early, around five-thirty
every morning, and sat in zazen, or Zen meditation, for many hours. With
my teacher I studied koans—paradoxical Zen sayings such as “What is the
sound of one hand clapping.” Eventually I received transmission to
teach in the Zen school Dogen had founded.
The principles I
learned from my study of Zen—the principles of the Zen cook—can be used
by anyone as a guide to living a full life, in the marketplace, in the
home, and in the community.
A master chef spends many years
serving an apprenticeship, preparing and serving thousands of meals.
Some chefs keep their recipes and methods secret. But other chefs are
willing to distill their years of experience—including failures,
mistakes, and successes—into recipes that everyone can use to cook their
own meals. In this book I have distilled my years of experience as a
Zen cook and included in it my principles and recipes for the supreme
meal of life.
Zen is based on the teachings of the Buddha. The
Buddha was not God, or another name for God, or even a god. The Buddha
was a human being who had an experience of awakening through his own
effort. The Buddha’s awakening or enlightenment came about through the
practice of meditation.
What did the Buddha discover? There are
many different answers to this question. But the Zen tradition I studied
says simply that when the Buddha attained realization, he opened his
eyes to see the morning star shining in the sky and exclaimed, “How
wonderful, how wonderful! Everything is enlightened. All beings and all
things are enlightened just as they are.”
So the first principle
of the Zen cook is that we already have everything we need. If we look
closely at our lives, we will find that we have all the ingredients we
need to prepare the supreme meal. At every moment, we simply take the
ingredients at hand and make the best meal we can. It doesn’t matter how
much or how little we have. The Zen cook just looks at what is
available and starts with that.
The supreme meal of my life has
taken many surprising forms. I have been an aeronautical engineer and a
Zen student and teacher. I have also been an entrepreneur who founded a
successful bakery and a social activist who founded the Greyston Family
Inn, providing permanent housing and training in self-sufficiency for
homeless families. I’m also involved in starting an AIDS hospice and an
interfaith center.
Of course, the supreme meal is very different
for each of us. But according to the principles of the Zen cook, it
always consists of five main “courses” or aspects of life. The first
course involves spirituality; the second course is composed of study and
learning; the third course deals with livelihood; the fourth course is
made out of social action or change, and the last course consists of
relationship and community.
All these courses are an essential
part of the supreme meal. Just as we all need certain kinds of food to
make a complete meal that will sustain and nourish us, we need all five
of these courses to live a full life.
It’s not enough to simply
include all these courses in our meal. We have to prepare the five
courses at the right time and in the right order.
The first
course, spirituality, helps us to realize the oneness of life and
provides a still point at the center of all our activities. This course
consists of certain spiritual practices. This practice could be prayer
or listening to music or dance or taking walks or spending time
alone—anything that helps us realize or reminds us of the oneness of
life—of what Buddha meant when he said, “How wonderful, how wonderful.”
The second course is study or learning. Study provides sharpness and
intelligence. People usually study before they begin something, but I
like my study of things, be they livelihood, social action, or
spirituality, to be simultaneous with my practice of livelihood, social
action, or spirituality. In this way, study is never merely abstract.
Once we have established the clarity that comes from stillness and
study, we can begin to see how to prepare the third course, which is
livelihood. This is the course that sustains us in the physical world.
It is the course of work and business—the meat and potatoes. Taking care
of ourselves and making a living in the world are necessary and
important for all of us, no matter how “spiritual” we may think we are.
The course of social action grows naturally out of the courses of
spirituality and livelihood. Once we begin to take care of our own basic
needs, we become more aware of the needs of the people around us.
Recognizing the oneness of life, we naturally reach out to other people
because we realize that we are not separate from them.
The last
course is the course of relationship and community. This is the course
that brings all the seemingly separate parts of our life together into a
harmonious whole. It’s the course that turns all the other
courses—spirituality, livelihood, social action, and study—into a joyous
feast.
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Jundo Cohen:
CNN has a beautiful article on Bernie Glassman ...
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An American Zen Master has died: An oral history of Roshi Bernie Glassman
By Daniel Burke, CNN R
eligion Editor
Glassman, who died November 4 at age 79, was a Brooklyn-born Jew, a
recognized Zen master, a Buddhist trailblazer, a restless mensch and a
serial plunger.
Glassman plunged into aeronautical engineering, into
Zen, into leading a Buddhist community, into running a bakery, into
growing that bakery into a constellation of social services, into
holding spiritual retreats among the homeless and at Holocaust-haunted
concentration camps, into writing a book of koans with a Hollywood star,
into mourning when his second wife died and into learning to walk and
talk again two years ago after a stroke.
The plunges, as Glassman
called them, served a spiritual purpose: to uproot preconditioned
ideas, bear witness to what's going on and serve those most in need. At a
time when many American Buddhists preferred self-development to social
engagement, Glassman dismissed "mannequin meditation" and carried his
Zen practice from clean-aired monasteries to chaotic city streets, where
he led weeklong retreats on sidewalks and in crowded parks.
"Bernie was very clear that meditation was not a refuge from life," said
Roshi Eve Myonen Marko, Glassman's third wife. "For him, meditation was
total engagement."
...
Full article:
https://us.cnn.com/2018/11/30/us/bernie-glassman-american-zen-master/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2uEqWng2B7Nii15blfEaSd_sOycrwDqs6x8CdIzynuPd4mapX5h_sncz4