Excerpt from In Buddha's Kitchen by Kimberley Snow

Retreat Doing ?

Three volunteer workers and I were fixing lunch, standing on either side of the long prep table which dominated the room. Huge pots and frying pans hung from the wrought iron rack over the table.

"Whoever put tile floors in this kitchen should be shot," a woman named Celie complained.

"Or be made to stand on them for hours and hours." I sighed, looked around for the thick rubber "fatigue mat." Someone had taken it out back to use as a doormat. Someone was always doing something like that.

Chop, chop, chop.

We worked in silence for a few minutes, then talked about the girl from L.A. who had come in that morning to say she only ate range-free chicken and fresh melon. She hoped that wasn't going to be a problem for the kitchen.
Learning at last to watch my mouth, I hadn't said out loud that it might be a problem for her, but not for the kitchen. Just pretended I hadn't heard. But the more I sub-vocalized my negative thoughts, the darker my mood became. I remembered yesterday's teaching by Lama Longtalk—not his real name, but it came close—about the man who placed a black stone on a pile for every negative thought, a white one for every positive thought he had. At first, he produced a mountain of black stones, a tiny heap of white ones. At the end of ten years, he had only white stones in front of him. A happy man.

How can anyone watch their thoughts for a single day, much less years and years, I wondered glumly. Am I supposed to be doing that?

The talk in the kitchen turned to the dressing for the beet and apple salad we were having for lunch. Belinda, from New Mexico, slipped the cooked beets out of their skins, then wiped her hands on a new white apron. I knew the red stains would never come out, but I didn't say a word. With another sigh, a deeper one this time, I remembered the good old days when I’d been able to fire someone on the spot, scream at them to get out of my kitchen and never, ever come back. Back in the days when I’d been able to control every aspect of kitchen life like a monarch. Back when they'd called me God.

I'd had a large staff then, especially when we hosted the horse sales and I fed around eight hundred people in one afternoon. I had to run a tight ship. I'd hire every reliable person I had ever worked with for the event. Semi-reliables (a much larger group) were also on call. I remembered a staff meeting we'd had the week before D-Day where I explained everything in detail. The bulk food would be brought in the day of the sales: the bread stored in the closet behind the bar, the rest to be taken upstairs, assembled and garnished, then carried downstairs as needed. One person would act as a gopher, nothing else, just a gopher, always available at the wink of an eye to leave and get whatever we needed. Susie in charge of tea and coffee, nothing else. Keep the coffee maker going, use the gallon jugs of iced tea to fill the pitchers. Make sure the glasses are full of ice, get it from behind the bar. Pete to see that the buffet table stays fully stocked. When something looks like it's getting low, not when it's already gone, but before that, when it begins to wane, come upstairs and get another platter full of whatever. We'll have the backup platters all ready in the kitchen.

"Any questions?" I asked the assembled group.

A bored silence, then one hand went up. "Anybody got any speed?"

Can't say that I missed the old days although it was nice to be able to fire people. Somehow it is easier to be God than Buddha, easier to control rather than cooperate. At least at first it seems that way.
 
The retreat center occupies over two hundred acres of hills and forest dotted with buildings, statues, reflecting pools, a woodworking shop, small canteen, and numerous cabins snuggled into the bushes. Lines and lines of colorful prayer flags hang from poles or trees behind a row of seven stupas.

When I went down to the garden to pick parsley for the soup, I saw, along with regular American people in sweats or tattered jeans, red-robed Asian monks, women with embroidered Tibetan aprons over long wrap-around dresses called chubas . Several children ran through the grass chasing a ball. A blonde stocky little boy, with a plastic machine gun in one hand and a Tibetan prayer wheel in the other, seemed to be the leader. Peacocks, in their own large cage, let out raucous screams at odd intervals. Large dogs drowsed in the sun. Hammering could be heard in the background.

A golf cart flying a red prayer flag was always parked near the side entrance of the main building, that three story cream-colored stucco structure I’d gazed at so often in the photo on my bulletin board back in Kentucky. Dark red trim on the tall windows flared wide at the bottom, then narrowed toward the top, emphasizing the soaring aspect. The Tibetan style roof with upturned gables was decorated with hand-painted designs of dragons and clouds.
The building—just like the Bluegrass Horse Center where I’d once been executive chef—grew more private the further up one went. The main shrine room, dining rooms, meeting room and kitchen took up the first floor, while the monks, lamas, and important visitors lived on the second. The acting head of the retreat center, a Tibetan named Lama Tashi, lived on the third floor with all of the painted dragons and clouds.

"Tibetans like noise," one of the older students from Denmark had told me as we washed up after lunch the first day of the retreat, "and company. If you have a dozen Danes and a dozen tables, you'll get one at each table, eating alone. If you have a dozen Tibetans, they'll all crowd together at one table."

"I somehow thought that retreats were silent." Unlike a Vipassana retreat I’d attended, this one was constant noise. In the shrine room bells cymbals, drums, long horns were all part of the ritual. Rather than traveling inward toward a personal still point, here the focus seemed to be on group activity.

"You won't get silence here. Hold on to your ear plugs."

I had heard all about Zen kitchens. The sense of order, focus. Everyone silent, bowing respectfully to each other, to the food, mindful of every minute detail. Zen Master Dogen's idea that only senior students should be allowed to cook.

But Japanese Zen Buddhism was very different from Tibetan Vajrayana, and the kitchens of the two differed in the extreme. Forget the bowing, the silence, the respect. Add color, noise and chaos. Add a kitchen full of people: construction workers looking for a snack, children playing hide and seek in the pantry, visitors using the only phone on the first floor, monks making statues out of butter and oatmeal, senior students melting coconut oil for butter lamps—fit these in the spaces around the kitchen workers and the food and you’ve got the sort of kitchen I now worked in.

A high level of energy seemed to sweep through everything at Dorje Ling. Everyone was charged, pumped up with life-force, buzzing with activity. And I was right out there in front like a race horse stamping, pawing the ground, ready to break out of the chute and go .

. . .

The idea of a food fair comes to me during the middle of the morning meditation. I hardly notice the pain in my knees that day as I contemplate a variety of booths: a salad bar, a soup station, potatoes with toppings, rice with…. But maybe we shouldn’t have rice and potatoes the same day, better on alternate days. When the lunch bell sounds, I’m surprised at how short the session has been.

As always, we end a session by dedicating the merit generated by our practice to the welfare of all sentient beings, and I realize that I’ve hardly done any real practice. But doesn't helping to feed real people count? And who's doing the counting?

There are five Buddha families representing different directions, different types of energy. Gold or yellow, for instance, symbolizes the Ratna family's involvement with wealth, enrichment and generosity. In one of the many ceremonies at Dorje Ling, a specially marked tray is passed around and each person throws a flower onto it. The flower will land to north or east or wherever, indicating the particular Buddha family with which the individual has the strongest connection. My flower always fell to the north, on the green area of the Karma family, the one involved in activity. In fact, the person representing this family is usually shown in profile since she doesn’t have the time to turn around fully to face you. No matter how hard I try to make my flower hit somewhere else on the tray, it always, always, lands on the Karma Buddha family.

During the afternoon session, I develop the idea of food booths in more detail. Soups, salads, breads blossom into Soups and Stews, Salads & Fruit; Breads & Sweets. During lunch, I’d found some large plastic bins that fit into even larger tubs that I could pack with ice and use for the salad bar. A trip to the shop reveals cans of spray paint to use on some rusty metal shelves that I’d unearthed. My hope of relaxing into emptiness recedes with each detail, each list.

Fortunately, I’ve brought my laptop, so at the break, I go back to my cabin and start converting some of the recipes to feed a large group. I’ve just worked out a few step-by-step work lists when I hear the dinner gong. I’d forgotten to go back after the break! Maybe tomorrow, I tell myself (my face in profile, working away) I can return to sitting.

That night, I don’t go into the shrine room at all, but into the kitchen, empty and quiet at last. I settle in the store room, checking supplies and making lists. More than anything, I want to serve simple, wholesome food that doesn't distract from everyone’s retreat, and to create a workable system that gives me time away from the kitchen. I’d forgotten just how much I enjoyed the administrative part of being a chef. The more planning I could do, the better.
"What doing?" Lama Tashi catches me by surprise as I'm sitting on the floor of the pantry surrounded by my laptop and portable printer, by written over lists and schedules, books, banners of material that say "POTATOES" "SALADS" and such. Born and raised in Tibet, Lama Tashi has a funny way of speaking English which the students both imitate and use as pith instructions. "What doing, do!" is a favorite kitchen slogan to shout at distracted helpers. "Why so much attachment having?" is taped up near the prep table.

"Meditating not?" he asks. I shake my head and try to get up, but he motions for me not to. The laptop is indeed on top of my lap. He just stands there, interested, present. I tell him that I am planning the food for the retreat.
"In Tibet. One pot. Big spoon." He picks up a plastic pail from the corner and mimes dishing out a spoonful of food to waiting bowls. Does he really expect me to use a pail and a big spoon?

"Lama Tashi, I used to be a professional chef," it comes in a rush, "and I thought if I just planned enough that we could have sort of like a food fair with different booths. One for salads, one for soups, another station for sandwiches and so on." I’d actually planned to have the shop make small booths and the sewing group to run up signs in the colors of the Buddha families and to string prayer flags between, but I suddenly see all this as the sheerest folly, excessively elaborate in a way that only Southern women can manage. Lama Tashi doesn't say a word, just stands there in silence as the contents of my mind open to me in a new and not very flattering light. My plans are not exactly pointless or silly, but I’m so invested in my concept of a dazzling, original food fair that I can barely think of anything else. Not for the last time in the presence of a Tibetan lama, I feel as if I am operating on several planes at once, one of which allows me to see the full extent of my grasping and ignorance. My attachment is truly staggering. But I take it in without guilt or recrimination, simply with unprecedented clarity. Simultaneously, I can also see that my motivation is good, that I do want to help.

"You good worker," Lama Tashi says, nodding approvingly. "But you so busy being you!" He flashes a big smile, and is gone.

In Buddha's Kitchen Companion Site Snowlight.com

Quietspaces.com: Resources for Inner & Outer Peace