Tenzo Note 6: The Transformative Effect of Cooking Together

Living in a collective, with common activities as practised in monasteries or intentional communities, made me understand the miracle of my human nature. The spaciousness of no longer paying attention to who I thought I was, but of reinventing myself at every moment. The miracle of feeling an inner movement that gets me up every morning.

For years that was not the case as I always believed I had to do it all by myself! Well, I almost died with this narrative with years of not being able to get off from my bed in the morning completely crushed by a burden I could not even name. But today I know that it was because I was disconnected, separate. I just did not know! We have to scream it, every day, very loud: to live apart is just simply unnatural! It is a fiction invented by modernity.

With food, when we consider the practice of cooking together, it brings out something that touches the mystery of our very nature. By connecting differently during the preparation of a meal, by doing only what we are asked to do to make a dish, by being each in his/her place, in his/her role, whether as a peeler or as a dessert maker, we allow ourselves to be in the experience of what is being lived without reflection, without representation of ourselves or of the other. The intellectual we admire becomes a simply attentive man, the brilliant writer finds himself powerless in front of an oven, the one we didn't hear reveals himself to be a master of pasta, the skills turn, the movements harmonize in the shared space, the words get agitated or calm down and it is all the dignity and the beauty of our humanity that is activated to erase all our fictions and to enter into the full life that is not separated from the activated moment. The joy of living simply, without romanticism, without crescendo, just there together preparing a meal and eating together. Simply, the ordinary of a realized life.

In Zen practice, the roles are the cells of a dynamic system at the heart of the practice. The Tenzo is as much the name given to the one who activates the elements (the cook of the community), but also the physical and conceptual space of the practice of cooking. In a monastery, the necessary interactions between the individuals in the kitchen, people with the ingredients, the utensils, the noise, the air, etc. manifest the embodiment of the "being witness" ( interbeing). This is happening beyond the personalities but each benefit from it, not being able to name it.

We can talk about the concept of inter-being but it is a slippery road because language will freeze a concept that can only be lived. It is when we allow ourselves to be porous to all those interactions through our activity ( function) that without even thinking of it a deconstruction of self happens. we don’t think about it. we are in it. This is the strength of the mystery of collective conscious cooking.

At the Bergerac Hub, I am exploring a Praxis Food Design inspired by monasteries to offer to participants who decide to engage radically in “ forgetting themselves” to be moved from this “being a witness”.

This space cannot be found alone because we are all conditioned (including and in the first place the one who writes), and only the sangha (the community) can give us the passage towards deep personal freedom (in the sense of the space liberated from our identity filters whether they are of the order of a cultural or experiential causality).

But this space is not always easy to step into because we often oscillate between being efficient in preparing a specific meal (an objective to be reached) or being completely focused on our carrot. The embodiment of the Self is neither one nor the other but all at once. It simply cannot be expressed in any other way than in the committed experience of giving oneself the possibility of believing that being in one's function in this "space" together will manifest one's deepest being. This is true for cooking but of course, for all the activities of our life and the question is to find how can we craft this experience.

Here is some extract from the practice of food in the hub which explores the different angles of conscious food practices including the harmony of functions.

Food is not about food but about interbeing. Cooking is not about cooking but about relationships.

We often have a tendency when we think about food, including in communities to think mostly of ingredients and recipes. This is part of it but not the main one. Cooking in a community means mostly creating a system of roles and functions to get fluidity which leads to efficiency and different ways to relate to each other. More importantly, it is a place of practice and like meditation, it offers people to connect to themselves and others through the spaciousness of an open presence

So at the hub, we want to support participants to take food within the transformative process by suggesting a collective frame of practice. The framework we proposed is a proposition to include food complexity in the bigger picture of collective transformation and to implement this vision in conscious communities.

It is an ecosystem: To be able to create the container for both relaxation and for letting the food teach us who we are as Self, an effective organization is necessary. It involves an ecosystem of roles and functions to address the difficult equation of time and menu balance.

• A Praxis Food guardian to support the general system
• A food steward during residencies
• one head cook per meal
• various helpers (peeling and cleaning) per meal
• a system of measurements that allows the shopping to be done according to the number of people
• a menu system based on 3 basic elements (cereals, mixed dishes with legumes, and raw vegetables)
• specific measures for each of these 3 bases
• systematic attention to leftovers
• a variety of flavours, textures and colours and a neutral cereal that promotes satiety
• a list of key menus to support the cooks
• a list of simple desserts and cookies to accompany the meals
• A cooking team organization to match 20 meals in one hour and 15 mn
• Renewing menu choices from one meal to the next
• The clarity in the kitchen while cooking

and most important to activate the collective body of Self, the engagement for each person to be fully abandoned to the activities one will be doing during this time. This is a fundamental necessity for the offering of the practice to flourish. “

In Buddhism, we speak of the three jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, which could be articulated as the interrelation between: Our true nature as a realized being (awakened in the heart of illusions) the reality as it is the community And if there is a jewel it is because these three aspects cannot be dissociated. The Buddha invented the systemic theory already 2500 years ago! The more the context is collective, the more the deconstruction of what we believe to be and what we believe in (in connection with the denial) manifests itself and allows us to live in a freer way (in the realization of our illusions).

The community is here a systemic accelerator of what is already true individually: when we cook in consciousness when we clean in the presence or contemplate our food, it is possible to overcome the illusion of separation and to find a space allowing us to react more adequately. But in a group, the effect is exponential, synergetic and naturally produces the emergence of appropriate action. Community allows us to move out of paralyzing consideration into active compassion. We begin to receive sensitive information. We become human again.