Cooking is not a mystery.
The more heart we put out
the more heart we put in.
To bring cooking alive
we give our life. Giving
our life willingly we don't
get put out.
Washing cutting cooking cleaning,
exploring ways to give life to our life.
Not knowing already how and what to do,
practice feeling it
out of what is not known
through the warmth and anxiety,
not sticking to a particular way,
insisting it is the only way
even though it is quite good;
open to feeling the various possibilities,
the tentative ways of giving life to our life.
To feel out our left hand, our back, our toes,
to feel out our breathing, our movements, our stance,
this is our freedom, this is our wisdom.
The mystery is that it is possible to do
what we don't know how to do.
A poem by Edward Espe Brown, as printed in Tassajara Cooking, 1973, a Shambhala/ZenCenter book