Serving as Cooks in the IRC Kitchen by Gil Fronsdal
Cooking in a Dharma center offers a uniquely multi-dimensional opportunity to practice. More aspects of ourselves and life can be encountered in the kitchen than in the meditation hall. For this reason, we call it “kitchen training” to honor the many dimensions of practice it involves.
Kitchen training is inherently relational. Cooks work with food to prepare nourishing meals for the bodies and hearts of fellow retreatants. They are touching, holding, and caring for kitchen implements as extensions of themselves. They collaborate with other cooks as a mutually supportive team. They remain mindful of fellow retreatants doing work meditation alongside them. In work that directly impacts everyone on retreat, they become conduits for respect, care, and love.
As their kitchen work puts them at the nexus of many relationships, the cooks’ mindfulness and intention have many, often simultaneous facets. In navigating this rich field of relationships, four primary Dharma tasks lay at the foundation of a cook’s practice.
The first task of a cook is being undistracted in their work. Simple, direct attention to the matter at hand is the basis for Dharma cooking. It makes it possible for the Dharma to appear in the midst of the kitchen activity.
The second task is to let go of any conceit, anxiety, and rumination that might interfere with the work. While these may occur, a wise cook gives them no authority or priority. To identify with conceit, anxiety, and rumination is to block a direct connection to the practice and the Dharma. And it also limits the joy of cooking.
The third task is cooking with love. This flows through feelings of care, kindness, compassion, generosity, respect, and appreciation for everyone on the retreat. Even rudimentary seeds of love—or simply the wish to love—can germinate and grow when trusted and valued.
The fourth task is working in beauty. Dharma beauty combines goodness, big-heartedness, generosity, happiness, and gratitude. It can appear when awareness is clear and easeful.  When awareness feels beautiful, everything we encounter—sight, touch, smell, sound—may be permeated with this quality, even things conventionally considered mundane. Keeping a workspace reasonably clean and orderly supports this possibility. Presenting meals with attention to beauty can extend this quality to retreatants.
Working in beauty includes meeting the unexpected with equanimity. When, despite best efforts, a meal runs late or a dish burns, cooks respond not with alarm but with presence. They do not take cooking accidents as personal mistakes. Instead, they assess the situation and move forward wholeheartedly. In this way, cooks become teachers—demonstrating non-clinging, devotion, and the joy of service without reservation.
The Insight Retreat Center has two hearts: the meditation hall and the kitchen. These hearts join at each meal when retreatants come down from the hall and cooks emerge from the kitchen to bow to each other—a bow representing the meeting of Dharma practice and Dharma service. May these two hearts remain well connected and coordinated during every IRC retreat.
This essay was originally written as a guide for those who serve as cooks at IRC. Cooking with these instructions in mind, the dharma can come alive in each moment in the kitchen.