Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life that Matters - Softcover

Glassman, Bernie; Fields, Rick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1611800684 ISBN 13: 9781611800685

Publisher: Shambhala, 2013

Synopsis

Zen is not just about what we do in the meditation hall, but what we do in the home, the workplace, and the community. That's the premise of this book: how to cook what Zen Buddhists call "the supreme meal"—life. It has to be nourishing, and it has to be shared. And we can use only the ingredients at hand. Inspired by the thirteenth-century manual of the same name by Dogen, the founder of the Japanese Soto Zen tradition, this book teaches us how we can "enlarge the family we're feeding" if we just use some imagination.

Bernie Glassman founded Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, in 1982 to employ those whom other companies deem unemployable—the homeless, ex-cons, recovering addicts, low-skill individuals—with the belief that investing in people, and not just products, does pay. He was right. Greyston has evolved into an $8 million-a-year business with clients all over New York City. It is the sole supplier of brownies to Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, and has even sold cakes to the White House.

But financial profit is only one of two bottom lines that Greyston is committed to. The other one is social impact, and this goal is certainly being met. The bakery enterprise has led to the creation of the Greyston Foundation, an integrated network of organizations that provide affordable housing, child care, counseling services, and health care to families in the community. Using entrepreneurship to solve the problems of the inner city, Greyston has become a national model for comprehensive community development. Its giving back is more than just sloughing off a percentage of its profits and donating it to charity; it's about working with the community's needs right from the beginning—bringing them from the margins to the core. As its company motto goes, "We don't hire people to bake brownies. We bake brownies to hire people."

This book is as much a self-manual as a business manual, addressing such concepts as

   · Beginner's mind
   · The Middle Way of Sustainability
   · The "hungry ghosts" of Buddhism as a picture of all humanity
   · Working with our faults
   · Indra's Net and the interconnectedness of life
   · Leaving no trace

About this title

From the Publisher

"This book is written in deceptively simple language and yet gets its points across so well that it has become a perennial favorite with Zen students. Even though some stores initially shelved the book under Cooking and the New York Daily News wrote a full-page article about the book on its food page, its obvious that people are now using the book not just in the kitchen but in other rooms of the house or the office. This was one of the first books connecting Buddhism to social action and, as such, it set a remarkable example."
--Toinette Lippe, editorial director of Bell Tower

From the Inside Flap

tion of Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are, one of America's most provocative and celebrated Buddhist teachers presents a distillation of Zen wisdom that can be used equally well as a manual on business, spiritual practice, or cooking.

Edition details

• Publisher: Shambhala
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1611800684
• ISBN 13: 9781611800685
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192