Untangling My Chopsticks (33 page)

There was one vital component of tea kaiseki that I had not explored, however: its origins in Kyoto's Zen temples. Buddhist monks had first practiced the tea ritual in Japan and their vegetarian temple food, called shojin ryori, had inspired tea kaiseki. The two characters that form the word shojin mean “spirit” and “to progress.” The idea is that by preparing and consuming simple, seasonal, unadulterated foods, a Buddhist monk can better progress along the path to salvation. The process of cooking offers a way to learn self-discipline, humility, and focus, much like meditation. The frugal dishes help the monks break their bonds with the fleshy pleasures of the material world.

Having never tasted Zen temple food, I made arrangements
to do so. I would return to Kyoto to close the
enso,
the Zen term for the circle of infinity, simplicity, beginnings, and endings.

The cherry-red Fiat chugged and strained up Mount Hiei in the heavy August afternoon heat, then dropped down to a shady shelter of cedar trees surrounding a sleek concrete building. I got out, thanked the driver, then dragged my rolling red suitcase toward a sliding glass door.

I had arrived at Enryaku-ji Temple, one of the major centers of Japanese Buddhism, founded by the priest Saicho (767–822) in 788. Overlooking the city of Kyoto, the temple was built at the request of Emperor Kammu to protect the city from evil forces. Enryaku-ji eventually became a threat to the capital itself when it became a wealthy complex of more than 3,000 sub-temples with a growing clan of warrior monks, ready to fight anyone who challenged their power and authority. Angry at the temple's impertinence, Japan's leader at the time, Oda Nobunaga (1534–82), sent his army to burn the entire complex and slaughter every monk. Over time, the complex was rebuilt to its present form of 125 sub-temples.

“Konnichiwa,” said the gentleman at the front desk as I stepped inside the temple's guest quarters. No sooner had I finished checking in than I started to worry. Aside from not knowing the rules, I had never “sat.” Buddhists meditate for several hours at a time as a way to still the body and mind. The purpose is to clear your head of all of life's niggling details (like, should I have grilled salmon for supper or chicken Caesar salad?), so you can be in the moment. For only when you are balanced internally and externally can you possibly reach enlightenment.

What's more, posture matters. Ideally, you pretzel your legs into a full lotus and sit with your spine erect and your head held straight. And this is where the scary part comes in: If you slump or fall asleep, the head monk could whack you on the back with a stick! It's all part of the discipline. What if I got hit? Would I yell “shit!” like I sometimes did at home when I bumped my leg on a table? Would they kick me out? And what about meals? I had heard monks eat very little and very fast. Would I take too much food, or hold up the whole temple if I lingered over my pickles and rice? And how about sleeping? Would I have my own room? Or would I be sent to my futon before sunset in a great hall filled with chanting monks?

I should have known better. Finding salvation is serious business in Japan, particularly at Enryaku-ji, where the monks live in quiet separation from potentially curious visitors like me. Hence, the guest quarters.

A maid led me up to my room on the fourth floor, which easily rivaled the finest Japanese inn. Twelve tatami lined the floor, upon which sat a low wooden table surrounded by six large rasp-berry-and-gray-flowered floor pillows. A private toilet and shower stood to the right of the door, to the left was a cupboard that held my rolled up futon. A decorative alcove in the far right corner hid a telephone and small safe.

The walls were bare, save for a cream paper and wood screen along the room's back wall that when opened revealed a small balcony overlooking the sage peaks of Mount Hiei and nearby Lake Biwa. The Japanese love to take advantage of what's called a “borrowed view.” And for good reason: If Mother Nature can be your artist, why pay for Picasso?

Equally as lovely as my bedroom was the private tatami room on the first floor that I had been assigned for dinner. It had
an airy lightness accentuated by a large window overlooking a garden of bonsai. There must have been at least ten similar rooms situated next to mine, all set aside for the same purpose.

At 6:00, I slid open the screen. A polished sepia wood table sat in the middle of the room holding a black lacquer tray set with over a dozen bowls and plates filled with shojin ryori. There was no written menu. The kitchen prepared and served two meals a day, breakfast and dinner, and guests ate what the kitchen determined was freshest. All the dishes were vegetarian because of the religion's “no killing” tenet. But unlike the Chinese-style version of Japanese Buddhist temple food called
fucha ryori,
showcasing mock versions of the forbidden seafood, meat, poultry, and game, the food on my tray tasted just the way it looked, tantalizingly natural.

Evening meals at a Zen temple, I came to learn, still carry the name yakuseki and, like the “medicinal” sustenance that they once were, consist of simple vegetarian fare, such as some mixed cooked vegetables, miso soup, rice, and pickles. A more generous spread, like the one that lay before me, was saved for feast days or special occasions.

Clearly, the kitchen had considered my visit a special occasion. And it was. In front of me lay the origins of tea kaiseki, simply prepared vegetarian dishes using peak seasonal ingredients from the temple. And like tea kaiseki, the foods perfectly suited the oppressive heat of August, suggesting coolness through their color, temperature, texture, and flavor.

Because monks eat their meals from five nesting red lacquer bowls, my tray held five red lacquer bowls of food, plus several more dishes. The reason temples use red lacquer, not black, is the vestigial belief that the red pigment helps protect against food poisoning. The practice apparently stems from Taoist beliefs, in
which cinnabar, the pigment originally used for red lacquer, was used as one of the ingredients in potions for immortality. The ancient Chinese also used cinnabar to embalm the bodies of the aristocracy.

My largest red lacquer bowl held a rainbow-colored mix of cold simmered vegetables. Shojin ryori features the five essential colors of blue/green, yellow, red, white, and purple/black. This concept evolved as a way to add visual interest to a cuisine that avoids meat.

The vegetable bowl proved to be not only a visual feast but a culinary one as well. In addition to two sticky steamed white field yams, there were several bright green stalks of a plant called coltsfoot, which tasted like parsley. There was also a succulent blackish shiitake mushroom cap, a sweet wedge of red-orange pumpkin, and a custardy square of tofu wrapped with soymilk skin. An edible peppery yellow chrysanthemum, the size of a button, added the fifth hue.

Another bowl held tempura because shojin ryori meals always include something that is deep-fried as well as grilled, steamed, boiled, and raw to add five different kinds of textural excitement to the meal. Beneath the crunchy batter crust lay a wedge of summer pumpkin, an okra pod, a tiny sweet plum, and several soft slices of sugar-preserved yuzu, the yellow citrus with the exotic pine-lemon flavor. But the dipping sauce was not the traditional mix of dashi and grated daikon radish that is eaten in restaurants and at home. Due to shojin ryori's taboo against eating animal flesh, the kitchen had omitted the fish flakes from the dashi in order to make it vegetarian. To beef up the flavor of the kelp and water, they had added dried mushrooms.

Because of the heat, the temple had also prepared a traditional summer dish of somen in a cold kelp broth. The slender
snow-white noodles sat twisted in their bowl like a chignon with a “hair pin” of soy-marinated eggplant topped with spicy
myoga
shreds (Japanese ginger-like buds). The slithery noodles had a pleasing saltiness that accented the sweet gingery flavor of the slippery cool eggplant. I tried to imagine what the monks were eating on the other side of the compound and hoped it was something equally as flavorful and refreshing.

In lieu of meat, there were several kinds of high-protein wheat gluten on my tray. One version was in the form of a small yellow pillow stuffed with sweet miso “jam,” kind of like a Zen ravioli, I thought, dipping another type seasoned with cinnamon in a sweet miso mustard sauce. As I chewed, the salty, sweet, and fiery flavors ricocheted around my mouth like a game of culinary pinball.

Flavor variety plays a pivotal role in shojin ryori cooking. In addition to the five different colors and cooking methods, every meal includes five different tastes: bitter, spicy, salty, sour, and sweet. (Shojin ryori also aims to include the sensation of
awai,
meaning “fleeting and delicate.”)

This focus on five comes from China. In religious schools of thought, such as Taoism, there are five elements in the universe: wood and fire (which are yang), water and metal (which are yin), with the earth in the center. The Chinese believe the universe operates in terms of yin and yang, which together produce energy and all phenomena.

Because the temples served as the inspiration for tea kaiseki, every kaiseki meal also aims to include these same five flavors, cooking methods, and colors. An ideal wanmori, the zenith of the tea kaiseki, includes them all (along with five different textures, such as crunchy, soft, chewy, slippery, and soupy). Given the shad
owy light in a teahouse, however, the five colors are often appreciated more in the mind than eye.

Probably the tastiest dish on my tray that night was the Zen temple staple “sesame tofu.” Made from ground sesame seeds, water, salt, and the starch kudzu, the dense nutty square of custard came in a pool of soy topped with a spot of wasabi. It was satiny, rich, and as unctuous as a triple-crème cheese.

In the tradition of all monastery meals, I ended dinner with a small bowl of white rice, some clear soup (instead of miso), pickles, and a pot of brewed green tea. The soup, made from a lightly salted kelp stock, contained tiny pinwheels of hydrated dried soymilk skin that unfurled in the hot broth to look like miniature white roses. The pickles consisted of a few chewy kelp squares, a salty pickled plum, and popular yellow daikon radish pickles called
takuan.

Takuan Osho (1573–1645) was the Zen monk said to have invented these pickles, which appear at every temple meal. The shape is the reason. Cut in rectangles to resemble
hyoshigi,
the paired wooden sticks that are struck together to mark the beginning of temple meditations, these beloved pickles nicely sponge up the juices from the monks' bowls. At the end of each meal the monks rinse their bowls “clean” with a swirl of brewed green tea, which they then drink, thus eliminating the need to waste dishwater and soap.

Tea kaiseki guests also always receive takuan pickles to sponge clean their bowls. For dishes that come before the pickle course, they wipe them clean with soft papers, which they carry in small packets tucked into the front fold of their kimonos. Leaving spotless bowls enables the guests to express their respect for the food. It also helps the tea master clear away dishes more eas
ily, since sloshing soup bowls and stacked receptacles half filled with food could tumble onto the tatami.

Additionally, each tea guest carries a small leak-proof bag in his or her kimono sleeve in which to deposit unwanted food, such as bones or garnishes (although a thoughtful tea kaiseki cook will avoid such things). Again, the concept of letting nothing go to waste at a tea kaiseki stems from life in the temples, along with the concept of “pickle-wiped” spotlessness and purity.

Despite all that the temple had served me, I did not feel full. This made sense, since balance and harmony are essential to all shojin ryori meals. Rich foods, like the tempura, balance with fresh light foods, like the cooked vegetables. Also, portions are modest because the monks' evening meal is considered “medicine” and, thus, consumed in judicious quantities.

Since meditations are a major activity at Enryaku-ji Temple, I set my alarm clock for 6:00 the next morning to dress in time to join the monks in their prayers. To my relief, the services resembled nothing I had feared. They began at 6:30 in the cavernous Central Hall, billowing with incense and glowing with half a dozen candles and the famous “Inextinguishable Dharma Light” on the altar. Dharma, meaning “Great Law” in Sanskrit, refers to Buddha's teachings, and the trio of lamps at Enryaku-ji has been burning ceaselessly for the past twelve hundred years. Said originally to have been lit by the founder, Saicho, himself, they symbolize the legions of Buddhist priests who study at Enryaku-ji and then leave to “illuminate their surroundings” in the outside world.

According to Buddhist texts, right before Buddha died, he told his cousin Ananda, “As long as monks like you gather in a group, follow the rules, and train themselves, the Dharma will thrive. Be lamps unto yourselves. Holding fast to the Dharma, be
your own refuge. Do not seek refuge beyond yourselves. In this way, you will overcome darkness.”

Along with several other guests, I sat on a tatami stage behind the monks. We had cushions to sit on. We could slump. There were no sticks. Although I couldn't understand the services, the humming and chanting proved tremendously soothing. And in that cloud of calm, I headed back to the guest quarters for breakfast in the communal dining hall.

Compared to dinner, breakfasts at Enryaku-ji were meager. However, they were much more generous than the monks' lean offering of rice porridge, pickles, and brewed green tea. Each morning we received steamed white rice, thin miso soup filled with fronds of wakame seaweed, pickles, and a braised vegetable dish, such as cold string beans that had been simmered in vegetable stock and topped with ground sesame seeds.

After breakfast, I usually walked around the temple complex with the other visitors. Approximately 500 pilgrims venture to the temple each year to walk the grounds or stay overnight and chant with the monks. At the top of a long set of stone stairs sat Daiko-do, the Great Lecture Hall, where Enryaku-ji's monks have gathered for centuries to hear talks on Buddhist teachings. Behind the massive wooden door stood several life-size wooden statues of famous priests who had studied at Enryaku-ji and then left to establish various Buddhist sects. There was even a figure of Eisai, the man who had first brought powdered green tea and fine tea seeds to Japan.