CHOP WOOD,
CARRY WATER<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you like to cook?\u201d I asked one of my writing
clients a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cThe last time I cooked was in
1975.\u201d<\/p>\n
That didn’t seem to bother her a bit. But it\u00a0bothers me that I don\u2019t enjoy the dicing and chopping it takes to prep for a\u00a0meal. I think I should like it. I\u2019ve seen how people gather in the kitchen when someone is stirring something savory on the stove. But that isn\u2019t me. Sometimes I blame my kitchen avoidance on an incident that occurred half a century ago. I know, I ought to be over it by now. But please indulge me as I tell you the story that I\u2019ve been using for decades as an excuse for seeing Whole Foods, Gelson\u2019s and Bristol Farms as my personal chefs.<\/p>\n
Back in the late sixties, I spent all day with a\u00a0girlfriend, Camilia, in the kitchen of my house in Laurel Canyon, making a Greek dish called Moussaka. The recipe called for two pounds of lean ground
lamb, two large eggplants, russet potatoes, plum tomatoes, red wine, olive oil,\u00a0onion, a few seasonings and the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance \u2013 a Bechamel white sauce that involved whisking melted butter, flour, milk and bay leaves over a low heat\u00a0until it became smooth and thick. I can still see Camilia\u2019s long shiny blonde\u00a0hair that she held behind her neck with one hand and stirred with the other\u00a0one. We kept taking turns, it required split second timing, and we nailed it.
No lumps or bubbles.<\/p>\n
At dinner that night with Camilia\u2019s boyfriend, my \u00a0boyfriend and two other couples, I watched the faces around the table as they
tasted our masterpiece. Everyone oohed and aahed, we felt proud \u2013 until my\u00a0boyfriend put a forkful in his mouth and spit it back onto his plate. I can\u2019t\u00a0imagine why I thought he would like it. All he ever ate was ground beef, mac\u00a0and cheese, Campbell\u2019s cream of mushroom soup and scrambled eggs, the thing\u00a0his mother used to feed him. I avoided the kitchen after that, I like to say it\u00a0was his fault, but the truth is that while I enjoy eating (great chefs need\u00a0great eaters), preparing the food is not in my repertoire.<\/p>\n
The issue here, however, is not about preparing\u00a0food, per se. It\u2019s about judging anything that you think you should want to do but you just don’t. It\u2019s about not comparing what you do to what someone else does. It\u2019s about performing any \u00a0task you find unpleasant and being so present for it, it brings you satisfaction and you begin to enjoy it. I was reading a talk by Pema Chodron about cooking as a spiritual practice. She reminds us that as we aspire to be mindful in our activities, all of our emotions come into play. We burn things or we ace them. We undercook things or we take take them out of the oven at the perfect time. We fail, we succeed, we’re clumsy, we\u2019re adept and most of us don’t like washing dishes. But we do it anyway because it needs to be done.<\/p>\n
The Zen koan, \u201cchop wood, carry water,\u201d means that\u00a0doing anything that requires humility and commitment helps us reach a higher\u00a0level of awareness. There is a Zen story about a young monk in a monastery who\u00a0dreamed of becoming enlightened, of being a great man. But every morning, the\u00a0Abbot directed him to chop wood for the fire and carry water to the kitchen for\u00a0cooking.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I do is chop wood and carry water,\u201d he grumble\u00a0one day. \u201cI want to be great like you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cGreat is not what you imagine,\u201d the Abbot said. \u201cI spend all my time reading scrolls and studying. Just remember this:<\/p>\n
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.<\/p>\n
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.<\/p>\n
Being enlightened doesn\u2019t mean sitting on a silver\u00a0throne, spewing platitudes and having people bring you whatever you want. It\u2019s
about being real, humble, vulnerable and accepting. Being an example of\u00a0compassion when compassion is difficult. As the young monk continued to chop\u00a0wood and carry water, he stopped feeling like a victim. He came to understand\u00a0that while it appeared that nothing was changing on the outside, everything was\u00a0changing on the inside. He learned that being the King, being at the top of the
heap, is impermanent. What goes up always comes down. A wise friend of mine\u00a0once said, \u201cWhen you kneel down to pray, you might as well just stay there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe I should take a job as a sous chef to find a\u00a0higher purpose in the food department. Or maybe I should skip that altogether,
accept that cooking is not my jam and honor the challenging work I already do: writing\u00a0every morning, working on complicated crafts, checking on friends who need it,\u00a0being kind when it\u2019s hard and cleaning up piles of unconsciousness that lie around\u00a0in my home.<\/p>\n
Any task that we do, any time we commit to\u00a0something with determination and humility, we\u2019re taking a step on the ladder to
higher mindfulness and compassion for our fellow human beings. Maybe I’d be\u00a0more popular if I had a pot of chicken soup simmering on the stove, but if I\u00a0continue to face the tasks in front of me with gratitude and dedication, if Icontinue to be kind in tough circumstances, maybe friends will bring me some chicken
soup, just because they like being around me.<\/p>\n
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CHOP WOOD,CARRY WATER \u201cDo you like to cook?\u201d I asked one of my writingclients a couple of months ago. \u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cThe last time I cooked was in1975.\u201d That didn’t seem to bother her a bit. But it\u00a0bothers me that I don\u2019t enjoy the dicing and chopping it takes to prep for a\u00a0meal. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2176,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions\/2176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}