The words from the grace kept resonating as I savoured the food. I was moved by the solemnity of the silent, contemplative nature of the meal.
After breakfast came a work period, but first we washed our crockery and cutlery whilst sitting at the table, passing hot kettles from person to person, pouring hot water into our bowl and mug and washing the smudges of leftover food with our cutlery. We then dried each item with a piece of kitchen towel. I immediately loved the ceremonial silence and the clanking sounds of the dishes. People looked tired, apprehensive, self-conscious. When everyone had finished and total silence had fallen again, Simon knocked the two stones together and we recited the end of meal grace:
The universe is as the boundless sky.
As lotus blossoms above unclean water,
Pure and beyond the world is the mind of the trainee.
Oh silence of nature
We take refuge in thee.
We vow to deliver innumerable sentient beings.
We vow to cut off endless vexations.
We vow to master limitless approaches to Dharma.
We vow to attain supreme Buddhahood.
The teacher gave instructions for the work period and allocated each person a job. As I was hoping, I was going to work in the kitchen.
The kitchen has a primitive, powerful and enchanting presence. The anteroom with an external door forms a rough-hewn, whitewashed cavern of a pantry in which boxes and sacks of produce lie waiting for use. As there is no electric lighting everything dances in light and shadow thrown by the kerosene lamps. Just inside the door between pantry and kitchen is the glowing heart of the house, a white Rayburn stove that feeds on lumps of coal and produces vast amounts of ash, which I watch being emptied and carried through the pantry and outside in a metal bucket. The Rayburn exudes heat and comfort in the kitchen, but is temperamental unless you treat her right. At that moment I had no idea how close and intimate she and I would become, and how reflective of one another’s inner workings.
The cook, Miche, showed me how to prepare the cheese plates for lunch. This was to be my daily job. The cheese was kept in a 1950s metal larder box, with mesh to keep out the flies. I went into the garden at the back to pick some nasturtiums to decorate the plates. The back garden, flanked by a tumbling mountain stream, leads onto the steep edge of the mountain. Just outside the door is a clump of three ancient-looking sycamores, with knotted bark faces like mountain trolls, and just beyond them on a small mound is a statue of Green Tara, the goddess of compassion. This was my first ever encounter with Tara.
The cheese was not my only task. We chopped and stirred onions in a giant wok, we helped to mix the cake. Miche was giving instruction after instruction, and it felt a bit frantic. We missed our break, as we didn’t hear the wooden clappers announcing the end of the work period. I felt so tired I could weep.
I found it hard to stay awake for Simon’s daily dharma talk, which usually follows the morning’s rest period, at around nine o’clock. I had had no rest following the extended work period. I kept telling myself: “Wake Up! You are always asleep, wake up!” He talked about what to do when thoughts arise in our mind: “Let them through, let them be, let them go”.
I started to look forward to the clongs and clangs of the different bells and bowls, and to the knocking of the wooden fish, a percussion instrument used to keep the rhythm during the chanting of sutras, or Buddhist verses. They were beginning to awaken a part of me that had been dormant for a lifetime. I was struggling with my sitting meditation position. I was aching everywhere. I asked the Guestmaster for help. One of the participants happened to be a chiropractor, and quickly sorted my back. I felt brand new, and immensely grateful.
Slowly, I began to enjoy the reflective silence creating a space into which things generally obscured by the bustle of thought and conversation slowly emerged. Mostly though, what emerged was the chaos and confusion of my thoughts. Lots of images came into my mind, relating to my past. Thousands of other thoughts and images arose, mostly uninvited, in an agitated stream of consciousness. I was shocked at how fuzzy my mind was. All I heard was noise, nothing made sense.
Silence was beginning to force me to see my habitual responses to the world around me, to reflect on my instinctual reactions. I was beginning to feel exposed and vulnerable with all these strangers around me, without being able to tell them who I am, what I do, where I come from. Instead, I just had to be with me, whatever “me” was. “Tell me who you are.”
Every afternoon before tea, we went for a walk. I walked up the hill, although I noticed that what I really wanted was to go down the hill and sit in a small copse of pine trees by the side of the road. I had noticed this wood as we drove up the track and felt a gentle nudge inside, a reminder of something from my childhood in Argentina perhaps. As I pushed on, up the steep slope, panting, I began to wonder why I didn’t turn back around and go to the copse. I sensed a tingle of fear.
Halfway up the hill, I sat on the edge of the road to look at the view. I picked the wrong spot, and sat down right in front of a big sycamore tree, which meant I couldn’t see the view. I looked at the bark of the tree. It was worn, brown and cracked into patterns born from its life experience. It would not have been much of an effort to move, to shift my body in order to see the valley below, the patchwork of fields and farms, the wind turbines far to my left, but I didn’t. I just sat and gazed through the trunk. I recalled past events that haunted me. Nothing new, because I had seen them before, dealt with them in therapy, believed I had laid them to rest, but they keep coming back to me. I realised that I had been unable to let go of them because I had become used to them being there. I had made them too comfortable. What would I be without them? I realised that the ghosts in my mind were not ethereal; they were like the tree, so real. I kept asking myself the question: “Tell me who you are.” The answer: “I am quite comfortable with not being able to see who I am, and instead I see through the tree ghosts in me, and focus on them, analyze their bark patterns, meanwhile I am missing out on the view, the big picture.”
The valley was breathtakingly beautiful. If only I could be bothered to shift my body away from the tree to get the view at its best.
As I walked down the road, I saw a bunch of red berries in front of me, by my feet. I picked it up as if I was holding my burden, recalling the feelings, one by one. I told myself that I needed to throw the feelings away, so I hurled the berries with all my might. I kept walking, but there were the berries again. I have never been very good at throwing.
I picked up the berries once more, went through the gate into the farmyard and heard the stream. The sound of water soothed me. It occurred to me that I actually needed to see the berries floating away. So I set them free, one by one, each symbolizing a sorrow, and I watched them disappear downstream, with the gentle soundtrack of the stream in my ears.
The following work period I was back in the kitchen. Miche reminded me of a hummingbird, moving around the house carrying pots and dishes, serving meals with graceful confidence. I sat opposite her at the table, and watched her eat, laughing as she added things to her plate. When she ate, it was as if she was dancing with the food.
I enjoyed learning the principles behind the chopping of each different vegetable. She told us about “the yin and yang of an onion”, how to slice it following the natural lines of each half, according to macrobiotic principles. How thick should it be? Did you know that you can keep tears to a minimum by leaving the root untouched until the very end? The pantry was piled with stacks of blue mushroom crates filled with seasonal, organic vegetables, with metal bins and tubs full of grains and nuts and flours. I found that I moved in the kitchen with great ease. I was already a confident cook but I was here to put my head down, to do what I was told. Secretly I was watching what everyone was doing, which is the way I learn best: watching.
I loved the sense of community when we were all at work: people washing up, making bread, topping up the coal, chopping wood, clean
ing the house, filling paraffin lamps. The silence made it peculiarly compelling, indeed beautiful: each person paying full attention to their task.
During the rest period, I sat by the window on my bed. There was a warm summery breeze, an autumnal feel of burning wood and melancholic Sunday afternoons in Argentina. My mind turned to my migraines and the way I have always used food against myself, as a punishment rather than as nourishment. I had always thought that I cooked with love, yet I suddenly realised that I was unable to love myself through food. I asked Simon if I could have an interview with Miche. I assured him it was relevant to my question. I didn’t want to ask about recipes, or anything specific. It felt more of a call, a call to the kitchen, a deep fascination with the tiny, quaint space, as if the space itself was guarding a secret I wanted to know.
The interview went well. She too grew up in warmer climates, with lighter food. We talked about the importance of relearning that food can be a healer. We discussed intuition and nurturing, how to listen to our body’s needs before we prepare our food.
Afterwards I felt happy. Something had shifted in me. Perhaps I had begun to connect in a deeper way with my body as I had always connected with my mind. How could I be kinder to myself, mind and body? Could I learn to use food as a communion, a form of connection? Could cooking become a creative process that would allow this to happen?
It was time to walk again. I wanted to go to the wood, but instead I turned into a field on my left and sat there for a while. Although I looked, I could not see the wood. I wanted to ask someone to come with me, but I had taken a vow of silence. Perhaps I could ask Simon.
We did a session of moving meditation, where we shook and danced to music, followed by half an hour lying or sitting on the floor. Although I managed to let my body go with the music, I didn’t feel sensual. I felt unconnected to myself, a long-held habit, I suddenly realised. I longed for connection, and cried throughout the dance.
During the next dharma talk, Simon spoke about living a lie. This resonated deeply with me, and in our next interview, I told him how I yearned to find HOME, that I felt split and uncomfortable everywhere, ill at ease with myself. Together we explored my need to find a home within me, so that I could be happy anywhere. I needed to stop looking for the ideal place. Like the snail, I needed to learn to love my home, to be home, to carry it with me wherever I go.
After a communication exercise, where we worked in pairs with our questions, I went outside for a break and ate an apple. It tasted so good that I ate it all: core, seeds, the lot. I felt sensual as I ate it; so did the apple. Eating the apple, including the chewy bits and the seeds, felt like accepting and loving all of me, including all the things I dislike. Like the forbidden fruit that hides a secret, each bite led into a profound awareness, like biting a chunk of self-knowledge.
Things were beginning to make sense. I began to feel more open to shifts and changes. I caught the copse in the corner of my eye and I felt scared, why can’t I go there? Later, while meditating, it occurred to me that the copse merely represented somewhere I would like to go to, something I would like to do, that I feel that I can’t. I recognised a destructive pattern, the one that made me feel constantly unfulfilled. The only thing stopping me from going to the woods was myself.
I was enjoying the communication exercises but each time, when it came to choosing a partner, I feared that no one would pick me. Why would someone pick me?
The retreat was halfway through, and I was still avoiding the woods. I told Simon and he suggested that I go to the woods instead of going to meditation.
And so I went. As I went through the gate into the small copse I felt immediately transported, playful. I saw an image of me as a little girl, and sensed a time when I used to feel lovely and nice, when nothing was wrong, a time when I was happy and connected to everything and everyone around me. I must have been seven or eight.
As if watching a film, I moved to a forgotten scene of my childhood. I was in Hosteria Las Vertientes, a beautiful old place in my grandma’s village. It had a big pool surrounded by pine trees and picnic tables. You could pay for the day to use the pool and we used to take picnics. We used to go with my extended family, who spent their summers in the village. Perhaps the smell of pine needles and lichen awakened the memory in me. I am with a crew of cousins playing by the side of the pool. We swim, we play games, we read comics. One of my cousins, the one I feel closest to, says:
“I’m thirsty, let’s go and buy coke!”
We all loved the alluring little glass bottles of Coca-Cola, chilled to perfection, which came with a stripy straw.
“Yes, let’s go,” I said.
His response came into my memory like a blow. “You are not coming,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked, curious at his sudden rejection. After all, he almost feels like my brother.
“Because you are ugly, fat, poor and you don’t belong with us.”
Nobody disagreed with him. Instead they giggled. I can remember standing there, taking the blow, believing what he had just said. I can recall the shock, seeing them all run to their parents to raid their purses.
Sitting, now, in the wood, I am wrapped in the same pain I felt then. The pain sunk me down into the concrete surrounding the pool. I told no-one about it.
I had completely forgotten this incident. Sitting there in the wood, I realised that the girl who was told that she didn’t belong, that she was ugly, fat and poor, still lives inside me. The memory arose from the sense of place, from the smell of pine needles, from the touch of bark while sitting on a fallen tree. As in the episode of the madeleine, described by Proust in In Search of Lost Time, involuntary memories of things long forgotten and buried are awakened by sensory experiences that transport us to specific moments of our past. Perhaps this explained why I was struggling to answer my question: “Tell me who you are.” In order to answer the question fully I needed to peel away the layers of events that shaped the person that I am today.
As I sat in the little forest I realised there was nothing dark or sinister about the place. I listened to the wind and felt the moist air in my face. Why had it taken me so long to get here? The gates were easy to open; there was a tiny creek to cross, but I had wellies so it wasn’t a big deal. The little girl in me was pleading with me to bring her, she needed me to remember the damaging words, change the context, help her heal, change the mirror. I saw myself in the woods of Ongamira, another wild playground of my childhood, a younger me, smiling, surrounded by friends and family. I was beginning to understand what needs to be healed. I needed to start with the girl, place her in a meadow of flowers, in the magic woods. I needed to let the woman in me be.
I continued to feel vulnerable. Every time we had to choose a partner, every time I sat at the table, I noticed the same thought, that nobody liked me, why would they like me? I told Simon about the moment in the woods, about the memories of what my cousin had said to me that sunny afternoon, and how it became the only truth that defined me. Simon worked very hard at guiding me on the right path. It was hard to go back to painful places but when I did I was so happy and relieved. What I encountered was a cute eight year old Flor with honey coloured hair who believed she was beautiful and smart and happy, a Flor who was good at most things, Flor the artistic one, Flor the writer.
I needed to feel beautiful, I needed to open up.
On the fourth day, as I ate my lunch in silence surrounded by strangers, I bit into a chunky soup and in that moment, the second between chewing and the food moving upwards towards my palate, something imploded, as if I was tasting food for the first time. For a second, that carrot was everything. Although I have eaten carrots nearly every day of my life, this was about something completely different, this was about being at one with the food we eat, like in the grace. Something happened during that bite, like an implosion of knowledge that connected me with everything, like a flicker of a moment that lasted an eternity. The carrot tasted like nothing I have ever tasted becaus
e I don’t think I had ever truly tasted food before that moment. Everything I needed to know was in that bite and as I swallowed it, I felt like weeping, knowing that the next chunk of carrot was not going to have the same effect.
It was a wake-up call, an awakening of something that was in me, dormant, hiding underneath all the self preoccupation. I looked for that experience in each mouthful of food afterwards.
I made this drawing in my notebook. At the end of the retreat, I felt more Flower, I felt like the Flor I used to know (Flor means flower in Spanish, and was always my pet name before I came to England).
It felt like moving from a haunted house to an airy and light place with ample rooms and big windows. Some of my pictures were still on the walls, but they were scattered and well placed.
In the last dance, I danced with that eight year old me, the one that believed she could do anything, the one that felt beautiful. I danced with my friend Mandeep, who always sees that little girl in me. I was struck by how beautiful everyone looked. Had my face gone through that transformation? Their exuberant radiance, so different from the faces of the first day, reflected just how I was feeling inside.
I needed to return to this place, and the call was from the kitchen. Somehow I knew, in a very instinctual, wild sense, that the kitchen, the practice in it, the sacredness of the space could help me to reveal some more memories, to reconnect me with this “me” that I had lost on the way. The kitchen had heart, and its simplicity held a promise to connect me with all things.
Before I left I told Simon that I wanted to train as a cook. He said he would be in touch. Miche gave me a card that I framed, and hung above the white Rayburn at home. It is a saying from the Upanishads: “First know food. From food all things are born, by food they live, toward food they move, into food they return.”
Tales From a Zen Kitchen Page 3
