Season 3 Episode 1
This is a great show with beautiful cinematography... Here we learn of Jeong Kwan a buddhist with a passion for cooking. She talks about temple food and focuses on a vegetarian diet. I think the foods here are interesting to study as well as the benefits to meditation...
Example,
Kwan explains the big difference between temple cuisine and everything else: “Secular food is focused on creating dynamic energy. But temple food keeps a person’s mind calm and static.” To keep that balance, Kwan does not cook with garlic, onions, scallions, chives, or leeks. She notes: “Those five spices are sources of spiritual energy, but too much of that energy will prevent a monk’s spirit from achieving a state of calmness. This is a distraction to meditation.”
Kwan believes that soy sauce is an essential ingredient, for many reasons:
Soy sauce makes me exited just thinking about it. Every food is recreated by soy sauce. Soy beans, salt and water, in harmony, through time. It is the basis of seasonings, the foundation. There are sauces aged five years, ten years, aged for one hundred years. These kinds of soy sauces are passed down for generations. They are heirlooms.
If you look into yourself, you see past, present, and future. You see that time revolves endlessly. You can see past from the present. By looking into myself, I see my grandmother, my mother, the elders in the temple, and me. As a result, by making soy sauce, I am reliving the wisdom of my ancestors. I am reliving them. It’s not important who or when. What is important is that I’m doing it in the present.
I use soy sauce, and I acknowledge its importance. It is no longer just me that’s doing things. It’s me in the past, in the present, and even in the future. Soy sauce is eternal. It is life itself.
She also mentions something here about creativity and ego that struck a chord...
Creativity and ego cannot go together. If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly. Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment. You must not be your own obstacle. You must not be owned by the environment you are in. You must own the environment, the phenomenal world around you. You must be able to freely move in and out of your mind. This is being free. There is no way you can’t open up your creativity. There is no ego to speak of. That is my belief.
If you have Netflix or access to the show, check it out! It's certainly worth while...