Are You Cooking Well in Life?

I saw a zen movie last Sunday entitled ‘How to Cook Your Life’. It was the closing movie for the Asian Buddhist Film Festival, held in Singapore for the first time. Nine movies were screened in the festival but I saw only one. Actually I had already seen two of the other movies ‘The Cup’ and ‘Shower’ during the Singapore International Film Festival a number of years back. Anyway, whether old or new movies, all the shows were sold out. Good to hear the festival was a success because that means I will get to enjoy more of such film festivals in the future.

The movie was screened at Lido 1, the biggest theatre in that cineplex. It didn’t come as a surprise to me that all the seats were filled up because it had an added attraction. The ever-popular globetrotting monk, Ajahn Brahm was also at the screening and gave a talk right after the show.

‘How to Cook Your Life’ is a documentary revolving around Zen Master Edward Espe Brown, a student of Suzuki Roshi, the revered Zen Master. In the movie, Edward explains how he practises and teaches zen in his kitchen. But what has cooking got to do with zen? Well, everything in life is zen. So how do we practise zen in the kitchen? When you’re cutting your carrots, just cut the carrots. When you’re kneading the dough, just knead the dough. When peeling potatoes, just peel the potatoes.

Don’t we often find our hands working on one thing but our mind subconsciously drifting away to some other thoughts after a while? Not just in cooking but in almost everything we do in life. Why is that so? That’s what we’re supposed to discover through the practise of mindfulness.

According to the teachers, when we cook, we are not just cooking, not just working on the ingredients and the cooking process, we are also working on ourselves. As what Ajahn Brahm said, “It’s not what you cook but how you cook it that matters.” Having the best ingredients in life does not necessarily mean we will bake the best cake. It’s the attitude that will bring about the best cake in the world.

Edward Espe Brown has been a zen practitioner for 40 years but tells us he still gets angry and experiences other kinds of feelings like impatience and frustrations in the kitchen. Why? He too is also only a human. The importance is in seeing why those feelings arise and how we manage them.

One scene in the movie that left quite a deep impression was when Edward started to tear as he was reflecting about seeing himself as the worn-out teapot in the kitchen. Like the teapots, we get scratches and hard knocks all the time in life but despite all the dents, tarnished surface and imperfections, the teapot is still a useful teapot that will continue to hold and serve tea to all.

We must practise mindfulness and learn to cook our life and not allow it to cook us. I’ve been provided with some of the best ingredients in life but somehow, I just don’t seem to be able to bake a decent cake as yet. At this present moment, I think I’m being cooked by my mind and thoughts…again. >_<