Reading group: Dōgen’s Instructions for the Cook, in two sittings

Of everything Dōgen wrote, the short Instructions for the Cook (Tenzo kyōkun, 1237) is the one I go back to most. It is about running a monastery kitchen, and it is the clearest thing I know on work as practice.

Sitting 1: the instructions themselves. How to plan the meals, wash the rice, handle each vegetable carefully, and the attitude the cook should bring.

Sitting 2: the two cooks and the three minds. Dōgen tells of two old monastery cooks he met in China. The first came to his ship to buy mushrooms and would not stay to talk about Buddhism, because the next day's meal was waiting. The second, at Tiantong, was drying mushrooms in the heat of the day with no hat. Dōgen asked why he did not have an assistant do it. "Others are not me." Then why not wait until it is cooler? "If not now, when?" The text ends with the three minds a cook needs: a joyful mind, a nurturing mind like a parent's, and a magnanimous mind.

There are several English translations; one appears in Leighton and Okumura's Dōgen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community.

Question to bring: "Others are not me." Is that a refusal to delegate, which any manager would correct, or the recognition that some work can no more be handed over than eating can?

We'll meet in this thread.