CARROT CAKE REVIEW 17 ~ I'm Not Saying Fuck Off To Gluten Free, OK

Hunstanton, West Norfolk.

This cafe overlooks the main green that slopes down towards the promenade, where everything that Hunstanton can throw at you as a childish diversion resides. The cafe's interior, sits uncomfortably between spacious and sparse. I'd like to say it was a symphony in grey, but that would require much more effort than the uniform pale grey tone here can make. Bare of much to ornament its walls without the satisfaction of achieving minimalism, it is, in short, characterless - with very sticky tabletops.

It was a bit late in the day for a Flat White so I toned down the caffeine to a Latte. Not that I needed to let such cosmopolitan worries about caffeine intake get the better of me. The Latte came in a mug, yes, a generic white ceramic mug straight from the local cash and carry. The contents looked disconcertingly like used dishwater. Beneath its feeble frothy surface lay what was in fact just an ordinary milky cup of coffee. Inoffensive were it not for its blandness. Thank god I didn't order a Flat White or my disappointment level would have gone much further than peeved.

And so, to the Carrot Cake. Oh, how I wish I could really let go and explode into rhapsodic language, about how the cake turned my impressions around, that any place which could serve such a superlative carrot cake could be forgiven a minor slip with the quality of the coffee. But, alas, it was not to be so - it was more than slightly dry for starters. Its texture actually wasn't that bad, so there might be a slight possibility a carrot was once waved in its vicinity. However, the more it stayed tumbling up and down around the region of my taste buds I could sense something else was awry on an ingredient level.

It was Hubby who put his finger on it. Not only was this cake Gluten Free, without informing you it was, the flavouring was the mixed spice equivalent of a cheap men's after shave. I've nothing against cakes being gluten free so long as they steer clear of me and I of them. But there is a growing tendency to assume there's no difference between a Gluten Inclusive and a Gluten Free version, which is just not true. A Gluten Free Carrot Cake will always be for me a Fake Carrot Cake. There are currently  increasing  numbers  of, undoubtedly well meaning ,cafes and cake shops who serve you nothing but the buggers.

Where does this leave those of us with a robust digestive system? Are we forced forever into an inclusive world where Carrot Cakes are pale imitations of the traditional? If I were not so liberal minded  and fearful of triggering the sensitivities of social media, I'd say fuck off to Gluten Free. So, just to be clear I haven't actually said that,OK, I'm  declining to endorse the content of my private internal unvocalised vitriol online.

All this was disguised, or do I mean relieved, by the sweetness of its frosting. Boy was the sucrose high. Sugar hit coming up!

CARROT CAKE SCORE  2/8

 

A SPIRITUAL BASTING ~ Carry Out The Activities Of A Buddha

A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practice in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo.

Carry Out The Activities Of A Buddha

'The monks holding each office are all disciples of the Buddha and all carry out the activities of a Buddha through their respective offices.'

In these few opening sentences The Instructions For The Tenzo lays out a simple context and purpose for monastic office holders and their work. Though applicants should be able to keep the monastic community healthy and running smoothly on a very pragmatic level, its their spiritual qualifications for taking office that are considered the most important - to 'carry out the activities of a buddha' through their daily work.

What would this mean, not just for the cook, but for anyone performing any task?  The linear notes to this statement inform us its 'to live constantly settling one's life'. 'Settling' is an interesting word choice. In English we can refer to people as 'having settled down' which can have a slightly derogatory inference. The subtext being 'they're lives have become quite traditional and predictable, if not boring - just like the rest of us' . The unconventional has become conventional, once perhaps a risk taker but now perceived as playing it safe.

From the viewpoint of traditional Buddhism to 'have settled down' would be tantamount to the death of their spiritual practise, a lifestyle thats too comfortable, taking shelter in domesticity, trying to sidestep the tricky devil of dukkha, and the raw underbelly of unsatisfactoriness in life.

There is, however, another meaning to 'settling', which is ' to sort out', to have 'come to terms with things'. So ' to live constantly settling one's life' is really a description of the whole purpose of Buddhist practise; to constantly strive to come to terms with how things really are, and to become so settled to be able to abide in that insightful state.

Returning again to those linear notes, they couch 'carry out the activities of a buddha' as 'to actually put your life to work...to make it function in a way that things become most settlied'  To grasp your ordinary life and give it spiritual purpose - to make our ordinary life function as the means to fully seeing the way things really are. Any day, any task, however humble, non-descript or apparently useless ought to be able to work as a means of truly seeing how reality is. Requiring us to remain alert, open and on the case with where our lives and practise are currently at. For what can seem a workable effective approach one week, can feel absolutely dead in the water the next. Nothing stays the same forever, conditions change, things move on as the impermanent nature of reality shape shifts, yet again.

The tasks themselves, however, alter only slghtly, cooking remains cooking, artistry remains artistry. Both are things that human beings choose to do. It is 'why' and 'how' we do them that is susceptible to change.  What would it mean to make work a means of self-transformation, a means to Enlightenment, work enabling you to seeing things as they really are? What does 'seeing things as they really are' mean anyway? It implies our present human way of seeing and being, is one that is obscuring or deluding us. We certainly are inconsistent as practitioners, one minute conscious of what we're doing, the next off with the fairies.

According to the Buddha there are four false perceptions of reality obscuring our vision; that the world can be perfected; that worldly things can make you consistently happy; that the world is permanent; that your self's existance within that world is as a fixed entity. These false perceptions restrict and cloud our imaginations. So traditionally speaking, to see through these four false perceptions would be like lifting a fog, creating the conditions to perceive reality as it really is.

Note your mental state as you are working; the moments when you're irritated or frustrated are the best, to spot whats going on in the background. These are moments when you are not getting what you want, so what you want becomes double underlined, with an exclamation mark for added emphasis!. So you feel very cogently, when you are in pursuit of perfection; what it is you are seeking consistent happiness from?; how much of your behaviour is based on a model of how reality is,one that has a permanent world view underlying it? These three form the foundations for the fourth false perception, of the steady state view of your self, that you  can be free of suffering, that you can be perfect, you can be happy all the time, that you have a spirit, soul or consciousness that is eternal and will survive your physical bodies death.

To the extent we all act according to these four false perception, we will not be fully ready to 'carry out the activities of a Buddha.' When this does happen it would instigate a fundamental shift in how we carry out our life and work. Once we are no longer striving for permanent worldly perfection, for permanent happiness for ourselves from the world, then our fixed sense of reality and of our self as an unchanging entity ruling within it, takes on a more fluid nature, more at ease with the flux of our changing substance. A truer perception of the world will have arrived, most likely, so we are told, unnanounced by any fanfare.  Living our lives and work on the basis of how reality is, not how we'd like it to be, that would be the activity of a Buddha. .


* Extracts from Thomas Wright's translation - From The Zen Kitchen To Enlightenment, First Published by Weatherhill in 1983.

FEATURE ~ Anglo-Catholic Bling

OK, I've been to Walsingham again. But I came back with a camera full of these precious beautys. I just can't get enough of daggers through the heart, bleeding hearts and fey hands placed on the chest in an 'I feel for you' gesture.