Cooking With Love

In this article, LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE ignites our sense of wonder with his personal experiences of a deepening relationship with food over the course of his life. He also offers us some valuable tips in “The Practice of Cooking with Love.”

- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

When I was in my teens and began to practice meditation, I also learned to cook. I have an instinctual belief that to prepare and cook one’s food with attention is an essential part of spiritual life that provides a necessary ingredient for the journey. When Dogen, the founder of the Soto Zen school, went to China to rediscover the roots of Zen, his most instructive meeting was with an old monk who was the chief cook of the monastery, who rebuked him for not understanding that cooking was a spiritual practice.

Maybe it was this ancient tradition that returned when, along with meditation, I learned to chop vegetables and bake stoneground bread. I had been brought up without any consciousness of food, in the English style of cooking, in which cabbage is boiled for twenty minutes until all the goodness has long gone. With my chopping board, knives and wok, I learned to bring attention to cooking and eating. It was also an excellent silent rebellion against my middle-class family background. While everyone was eating their Sunday lunch of roast beef and roast potatoes, I was sitting at the same table eating a bowl of rice and vegetables with chopsticks!