A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practice in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo as inspiration
'From Ancient Times'
' From ancient times, in communities practicing the Buddha's Way, there have been six offices established to oversee the affairs of the community...... Among these is the tenzo, who carries the responsibility of preparing the community's meals.' *
Whilst I am a Buddhist praticioner, I'm also an artist/craftsman. Endeavouring to keep in daily contact with Dogen's ideas about work as a spiritual practice. Applying these to my own eveyday life experience. Remaining creative within this is not without its challenges. It also requires a degree of translation and contextual reimagining to ensure its usefulness within 21st Century conditions.
A tenzo is the head cook in a Zen monastery, they have a practical yet life enhancing role. Cooking for them becomes entirely a selfless act of other regarding service. To place your culinary talents before everyone to either savour or reject, is a testing practice. When it comes to what they eat, people can become picky and complain about the smallest thing. Food is rarely able to please everyone. Seeking praise or appreciation is a lottery with the potential to build or crush anyone's ego. Likewise, in the world of art and craft, its perilous to be too closely attached to what you do. Its rare for any aesthetic endeavour to be universally appreciated, people either love or loath it in equal measure. This is just how it is.
Dogen emphasises how important it is to not over invest in the end result of your effort, particularly if you desire it to be appreciated, or worse still want it to be perfect. However, your ego still grasps for every crumb of praise it can, because your self esteem has a perpetually hungry bottomless pit of a stomach. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do your best. Instead try doing your best, but without those limpet like expectations. Perceive your work through the broader perspective of how what you are doing can be of benefit to others, not only through the myopic view of your selfish needs.
At first glance the similarities between cooking and the artistic process are unclear. Art appears to have no
immediate tangible benefit in quite the way that cooking has. Cooking sustains life, it helps us survive. Any creative process, whilst it may sustain the spirit and feed the soul, from a practical viewpoint its an activity devoid of use. However, looked at from a spiritual viewpoint impracticality can be transformed into a virtue, the more useless it is the better. That aesthetics is largely divorced from utility is part of its purpose and raison d'etre.
Arts purpose, if well executed, isn't a panacea to make existence tolerable, nor intoxicate you like a drug. It deals mostly in those fuzzyheaded intangibles, not clearly comprehensible, pointing towards something out of reach and quite 'other' than terre firme. The sole purpose of the artistic process and its result, is to cultivate our individual and collective receptivity to this.
'From ancient times' Art has performed a distinctive function for humanity, introducing us, at to best, to awe and an elevated spirit. Cathedrals or Buddhist Temples if they are working correctly should take our breath away almost from the moment we enter. This may only be for a split second of uplift, a fleeting experience of exaltation, vanishing before we even consciously notice it. Yet to imagine trying to achieve that through one's cooking, or through your everyday life and experience, can seem an overwhelming, if not impossible, thing to attempt.
Yet Dogen insists later on in the Instructions For The Tenzo that we should aim to build 'great temples out of ordinary greens', meaning out of the humdrum ordinary things of life. To endeavour to create something beautiful out of unpromising material, out of nothing, out of nowhere, out of this imperfect world. This reaches to the core of human creativity. We embellish and beautify pretty much everything we make. Machines, from a practical point of view don't require painting at all, it contributes nothing towards their better functioning. That we paint tractors bright colours appeals to us aesthetically, it makes us feel better about the cold lifelessness of this useful tool we are using. To apply extra effort into cutlery to make it pleasing to hold, lifts it from utility into an aesthetic experience. Utility can only be elevated spiritually by cultivating our altruistic impulses. To do everything for the benefit of others.
Lets make no bones about it, no one has ever died from a lack of Art or aesthetics in their lives. But despite this, it remains the quintessence of our dreams. Humankind as a species has been propelled forward by the supposed 'madness' of its dreamers. To deprive life of Art, and the spiritual intent embroidered beneath it, would render our existance arid and cold. 'From ancient times' from the instant our ancestors began painting magic animals onto walls in the deepest recesses of caves. But even when their religious significance or purpose has dwindled we still return to caves, temples and cathedrals because of what they represent. They reconnect us with what we've lost touch with. This lies outside and beyond our understanding of a universe based on scientific rationalism.
Whilst cooking feeds our stomachs, broader creative impulses feed our spirit, raise up our hearts to ease the troubles of our restless minds. Art has performed this role 'from ancient times'. Communicating through artists, visionaries and shamans, the values and intuitions, not just of what we have become, but more importantly what we can become. We are the lucky inheritors of this vast evolutionery and creative legacy. Nothing new or unique ever emerges into our world, that isn't indebted in someway to things learnt, passed on and influencing us 'from ancient times'.
* Extracts from Thomas Wright's translation - From The Zen Kitchen To Enlightenment, First Published by Weatherhill in 1983.
'From Ancient Times'
' From ancient times, in communities practicing the Buddha's Way, there have been six offices established to oversee the affairs of the community...... Among these is the tenzo, who carries the responsibility of preparing the community's meals.' *
Whilst I am a Buddhist praticioner, I'm also an artist/craftsman. Endeavouring to keep in daily contact with Dogen's ideas about work as a spiritual practice. Applying these to my own eveyday life experience. Remaining creative within this is not without its challenges. It also requires a degree of translation and contextual reimagining to ensure its usefulness within 21st Century conditions.
A tenzo is the head cook in a Zen monastery, they have a practical yet life enhancing role. Cooking for them becomes entirely a selfless act of other regarding service. To place your culinary talents before everyone to either savour or reject, is a testing practice. When it comes to what they eat, people can become picky and complain about the smallest thing. Food is rarely able to please everyone. Seeking praise or appreciation is a lottery with the potential to build or crush anyone's ego. Likewise, in the world of art and craft, its perilous to be too closely attached to what you do. Its rare for any aesthetic endeavour to be universally appreciated, people either love or loath it in equal measure. This is just how it is.
Dogen emphasises how important it is to not over invest in the end result of your effort, particularly if you desire it to be appreciated, or worse still want it to be perfect. However, your ego still grasps for every crumb of praise it can, because your self esteem has a perpetually hungry bottomless pit of a stomach. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do your best. Instead try doing your best, but without those limpet like expectations. Perceive your work through the broader perspective of how what you are doing can be of benefit to others, not only through the myopic view of your selfish needs.
At first glance the similarities between cooking and the artistic process are unclear. Art appears to have no
immediate tangible benefit in quite the way that cooking has. Cooking sustains life, it helps us survive. Any creative process, whilst it may sustain the spirit and feed the soul, from a practical viewpoint its an activity devoid of use. However, looked at from a spiritual viewpoint impracticality can be transformed into a virtue, the more useless it is the better. That aesthetics is largely divorced from utility is part of its purpose and raison d'etre.
Arts purpose, if well executed, isn't a panacea to make existence tolerable, nor intoxicate you like a drug. It deals mostly in those fuzzyheaded intangibles, not clearly comprehensible, pointing towards something out of reach and quite 'other' than terre firme. The sole purpose of the artistic process and its result, is to cultivate our individual and collective receptivity to this.
Yet Dogen insists later on in the Instructions For The Tenzo that we should aim to build 'great temples out of ordinary greens', meaning out of the humdrum ordinary things of life. To endeavour to create something beautiful out of unpromising material, out of nothing, out of nowhere, out of this imperfect world. This reaches to the core of human creativity. We embellish and beautify pretty much everything we make. Machines, from a practical point of view don't require painting at all, it contributes nothing towards their better functioning. That we paint tractors bright colours appeals to us aesthetically, it makes us feel better about the cold lifelessness of this useful tool we are using. To apply extra effort into cutlery to make it pleasing to hold, lifts it from utility into an aesthetic experience. Utility can only be elevated spiritually by cultivating our altruistic impulses. To do everything for the benefit of others.
Lets make no bones about it, no one has ever died from a lack of Art or aesthetics in their lives. But despite this, it remains the quintessence of our dreams. Humankind as a species has been propelled forward by the supposed 'madness' of its dreamers. To deprive life of Art, and the spiritual intent embroidered beneath it, would render our existance arid and cold. 'From ancient times' from the instant our ancestors began painting magic animals onto walls in the deepest recesses of caves. But even when their religious significance or purpose has dwindled we still return to caves, temples and cathedrals because of what they represent. They reconnect us with what we've lost touch with. This lies outside and beyond our understanding of a universe based on scientific rationalism.
Whilst cooking feeds our stomachs, broader creative impulses feed our spirit, raise up our hearts to ease the troubles of our restless minds. Art has performed this role 'from ancient times'. Communicating through artists, visionaries and shamans, the values and intuitions, not just of what we have become, but more importantly what we can become. We are the lucky inheritors of this vast evolutionery and creative legacy. Nothing new or unique ever emerges into our world, that isn't indebted in someway to things learnt, passed on and influencing us 'from ancient times'.
* Extracts from Thomas Wright's translation - From The Zen Kitchen To Enlightenment, First Published by Weatherhill in 1983.
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