Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124267 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 136 pages

Customer Reviews

Just about the best Buddhist book I've read
It's not a cookbook; at least not in the traditional sense.

The first chapter is Dogen's "Instructions for the Zen Cook", a 13th century text giving instructions on how to be head cook, or tenzo, in a Zen monastery. That may sound a little dry but don't let it put you off.

Uchiyama Roshi takes this text as his starting point, and his gentle exploration of Dogen's writing and his own life experiences unfolds into a beautiful treatise on the way to handle food -- and also, the way to handle life. Our attitude to food is our attitude to life writ small. The way you respond to the quality of the ingredients that you have, good or bad. The care and attention you pay to what needs doing. The fact that what you do needs to nourish and sustain you, today and tomorrow.


This is a wonderful, wonderful book, written by someone who is truly alive to the meaning of what he is writing. I keep coming back to it.