It is a cooking class with Zen priest and chef. This is a film about Zen chef Edward Espe Brown who has penned many Tassajara cookbooks. It is quite a fun film that talks about food as a way of life. There is a bit of zen advice too. He talks about how long it took him to finally understand the Buddhist ritual of offering food to Buddha, when you know for sure it is not going to be consumed. You make your effort and then you offer it. You say this is my offering and then you leave.

According to Ed Espe Brown, if you cook and make an effort at it, a lot of problems can be sorted out. For when you cook, you are not just working on the food, you are working on yourself and the people who eat it. When the cook is joyful, everyone is relaxed. When the cook is anxious, it gets passed around. When you work on food, you are using a lot of acupressure points. You feel connected to the source when you cook. When you don’t cook, you have just lost that important connection. For food and nourishment should not come from a box.

One of the chapters talks about anger- western culture likes to control things, when the object does not do what you want it to do, you just whip it to submission. If the object/people/countries don’t respond, you destroy them. He explains how this is not a sustainable solution from the point of view of Zen.

Another chapter deals with affluence. There is so much food everywhere. Food is not precious, it is just commodity, a thing that gives you energy to move. It has become too much effort to cook. Encountering a potato makes people nervous. I could totally relate to the affluence and waste.  It is too much effort to cut down waste. Even after dozen years of living in the west, it does not cease to shock me every single time I see so much food being offered at restaurants. Except at fancier places where the meal costs half my paycheck. Then I come out being really hungry. That was the main course? I thought it was the appetizer.

I also got to know there are people who use the food that the supermarkets have left out as they are past “Use by” date. This does not mean the food is bad, but the super markets cannot sell them. To stop going it to waste, there are people who use them.

This is what Ed B says about cooking (and maybe living in general).

Make sincere effort, this means the blemishes show. Make your best effort, it is not perfect. It’s not like there are no mistakes or faults, it is not like you are working on a masterpiece. You don’t have to produce a masterpiece. Just take care of something. Make a sincere, honest effort, you will have something to eat.

In short, if you cook and understand the food, you can understand way more of  life. It definitely gave me a lot to chew on.

Faith is the source of authentic action. From the core of man comes faith, and from that, meaningful existence. I found this article in Hinduism Today, which quotes from the Vedas.

]]> http://www.yogzilla.com/2009/12/11/faith-source-of-authentic-action/feed/ 0 http://www.yogzilla.com/2009/11/06/amreeka/ http://www.yogzilla.com/2009/11/06/amreeka/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:12:38 +0000 Sraddhā http://www.yogzilla.com/?p=1330 Amreeka is one of my favorite films that I watched at viff. I did not expect myself to be among hundreds of 12 and 13 year old kids. Then I got to know schools had made special arrangements for the students to watch this film.

It is one of the immigrant stories which was fresh, light, funny and sad. Life in Palestine seems like being in a prison and the move to America is not without issues. The confusion between Jews and Arabs cannot be quite explained to the Americans.  It is a well made film and has a sense of humor.

I also learnt that checkmate is an Arabic phrase. Shah mate in Arabic means the king is dead, which is borrowed in English as checkmate.

And then I read an article in the magazine Hinduism today, that some nut case has patented this sequence as “Superbrain Yoga”. I could not believe the nuttiness involved in patenting something that is followed in a religion for hundreds of years.

The nut who patented Thoppu karanam goes by the name ‘dates of life’. Click on the piture to read the article.

More Ganeshas …

The people who are making the statues are very talented. Each one of them is a masterpiece. They have to be so careful while making these, there cannot be any flaws. Gods must be perfect. I even saw one Ganesha in a perfect padmasana. The fingers, the toes, the face are all so beautiful. As of now, most of the Ganeshas are white. I like them like this. I was told by the people who work there, that they will start painting next week. I will visit the place again to see the difference.

The immersion of Ganeshas in the water have created a lot of environment problems, as the paint and some materials like plaster of Paris cause many issues. I do not know how green the process is in 2009. I have to find this out next time I visit this place. In the olden days, these statues were made from clay and they would be immersed in water with no issues.  This would represent the cycle of life and death.

Checkout the slide show for various Ganeshas in the making.

Thanks Papi, for the link.

It is about faith and says that if you have faith you can see divinity in a stone sculpture. But, if you don’t, all you see is a stone. The god featured in this song is Vishnu on the Yogic snake Ananta.

I remember reading about Sri Krishnamacharya where he asks his son TKV Desikachar, if he sees tears flowing from a statue of Vishnu after a deep meditation. TKV Desikachar says no. This song reminded me of Sri Krishnamacharya and his faith in Vedas, Yoga and Narayana.