In Japanese Buddhist temples, a meal isn't just food. Shojin ryori - often translated as devotional, temple or Japanese Buddhist cuisine - is a deliberate way of cooking and eating that aligns everyday acts with spiritual practice.
Being entirely plant-based, it excludes all forms of animal protein and dairy products. Does that make shojin ryori a vegan diet? Not quite.
Why Shojin Ryori Isn't Just Vegan Food
Calling shojin ryori 'vegan' is like calling zazen 'sitting'. It’s not wrong but it misses the point.
Translated as 'diligence' or 'earnest exertion', shojin (精進) is also the Japanese term for the fourth of the Six Paramitas - or Perfections - of Buddhism. Shojin ryori thus becomes a way to progress along a spiritual path through the preparing and partaking of meals.
Introduced to Japan alongside Buddhist teachings, shojin ryori laid the foundations of Japanese cuisine through principles such as the Rule of Five.
Meals are designed for balance: they must include the Five Colors (red, yellow, green/blue, white, black/brown), the Five Cooking Techniques (raw, grilling, simmering, steaming, frying) and the Five Tastes (sweet, salty, sour, spicy, bitter).
This ensures that meals can be full of flavor even without meat, fish or gokun, the Five Pungent Roots: leeks, chives, scallions, onions and garlic. Traditionally, these are avoided because they're thought to stimulate desire and anger. (Also, no one wants to sit downwind of someone chanting sutras after a lunch heavy on garlic.)
Seasonality, a cornerstone of traditional Japanese food culture, is not a garnish but the grammar of the meal: seasonal vegetables, wild plants, seaweed, tofu and grains express where you are and when you are there.
In spring, a shojin meal might include simmered bamboo shoots fragrant with kinome leaves. A summer dish might be lightly pickled cucumbers or eggplant dressed with a mash of fresh green edamame.
Fall brings with it the harvest. Persimmons, an icon of the Japanese autumn, could be served raw, steamed or chopped up and tossed in a tofu dressing.
In winter, meals turn naturally towards warmth - colorful hotpots and simmered root vegetables such as daikon radish.
In every season, though, rice porridge is appropriate and, indeed, advised. An economical dish that makes the most of the ingredients available, okayu is promoted in Japanese Zen for its health benefits.
Not only does it increase vitality and longevity, promote digestion and prevent colds but it's also said to make your speech 'clear and refreshing' - with porridge, you won't need breath mints before hitting those sutras.
Tenzo Kyokun: Instructions for the Cook
No one has had a greater influence on the development of shojin ryori than 13th-century monk Dogen Zenji, Soto Zen school founder and porridge evangelist.
In 1237, 10 years after returning from his studies in China, he wrote Tenzo Kyokun - Instructions for the Cook - an essay that makes it clear that the essence of Zen can be found in kitchen work.
The teachings apply to more than the head cooks of Zen temples; they're relevant to anyone who prepares food, whether for oneself or for others.
It's all a matter of attitude and intent. Without 'the Way-seeking mind', cooking is 'nothing but a vain struggle and hardship, without benefit in the end'. But if kitchen tasks are approached as a way to develop yourself and support others, they become a way to feed body and soul.
Dogen’s advice sounds like kitchen talk, yet each instruction can also be interpreted as a principle for life:
- Don't fret about the quality of the ingredients. Whatever you have received, 'respect and value them as if they were ingredients for an imperial repast'. Use what you have and use it well. (Also, use the whole: pumpkin skin, for instance, can be turned into a simmered dish, broccoli stems into pickles and the kombu used for dashi stock can be fried up as seaweeed fritters.)
- Hard work is a chance to practice. Wash rice and prepare vegetables with your own hands - don't pass up on this opportunity to develop patience and focus.
- Maintain purity and order. Wash utensils after use and return them to their proper spot: the things that belong in high places should go up high; the things that belong in low places should be stored low. Handle all objects with courtesy, picking them up and putting them down with care.
- Whatever your work or station in life may be, maintain sanshin: three minds. Having kishin - joyful mind - you rejoice that you can serve at all. Holding roshin - an elder's mind - you care for rice and water as though they were your own children.
Keeping daishin - a vast mind - you hold everything with equanimity. You do not rejoice if you have the ingredients for a rich soup nor become careless if you have only wild greens for a broth. You do not let circumstances alter your behavior but treat all tasks and everyone you meet with the same sincerity.
Spiritual Cuisine: Five Reflections Before A Meal
At Zen temples, the Five Reflections (gokan no ge) are recited before partaking, a reminder that eating itself is a form of practice:
- Engage with the food. Consider how nature and people’s hard work have culminated in the food before you.
- Reflect upon your day and yourself. Contemplate whether your actions have made you worthy of the meal.
- Examine your spirit. A mind burdened by greed or anger cannot truly savor the food.
- Chew slowly and enjoy every bite. Food is medicine, a way of rejuvenating and purifying the body.
- Be thankful for all. Eat with gratitude and be mindful of the bodhisattva vow to bring all beings to enlightenment.
Partaking as Practice: Temple Meal Etiquette
In shojin ryori, etiquette is less about formality and more about cultivating the right state of mind.
- Sit upright; bring the bowl to you with two hands. Posture is not performance; it's how you pay attention.
- One bite at a time. In temple style, you put your chopsticks down after each bite and rest your hands in your lap - this helps you to notice and chew the food fully.
- Finish what you receive. A traditional practice is to rinse your rice bowl with tea or hot water at the end and drink it, taking in the last grains and leaving nothing to waste.
- Let silence season the meal; set utensils down quietly and courteously. Conversation is not forbidden but quiet creates the space for discoveries.
From Temple Halls to City Tables: Places to try Shojin Ryori
If you trace shojin ryori back to a postal address, you'll find yourself in Fukui prefecture, walking the cedar-lined approach to Daihonzan Eiheiji, the temple that Dogen founded in 1244 and which has become one of the two head temples of Soto Zen in Japan.
Visitors can experience shojin ryori through a stay at the temple or at Hakujukan, its hotel nearby.
A more well-known option is Koyasan, the center of Shingon esoteric Buddhism, which also offers shojin ryori in the temples and restaurants there.
If you don't want to head into the mountains, there are restaurants in Tokyo and Kyoto where you can try shojin cuisine.
But menus in these secular settings can sometimes drift from strict temple precepts, for example, in the occasional use of milk. Ask the staff about the ingredients if you’re a strict vegan.
The Buddha in Your Kitchen
Cooking and inner training are not two. Stirring miso soup with presence can be the same as watching your breath on a meditation cushion.
If you'd like to search for the buddha in your kitchen, even if you're not ready to let go of meat and fish, you can start by adopting the philosophy of shojin ryori.
Keep faith with the land and the season, keep a vast, appreciative heart - and keep going. Before you can say 'umami', you'll have become your household’s tenzo.
By Janice Tay