It’s been ten years since the world has known about temple food. There was a chef from America who visited me, Eric Ripert.
Together, we shared our energy through my food and afterwards he invited me to New York where I cooked a dinner for about 20 people.
It was sharing passion with each other and we could communicate with each other.
Temple food is not only vegetarian food, it’s energy food where you can share your minds together. I prepared about 20 different dishes that day.
Well, first of all, I’m not a chef. I’m a practicer of Buddhism. For me, making food is a kind of meditation.
So being a trendy chef or an honoured chef, it makes me happy but moreover it makes me happy that I’m able to communicate and to share with a lot of people.
Enlightenment is something of one’s own mind. It’s not something that goes outside, it’s not external.
If you eat something and it makes you feel calm, it’s one step closer to enlightenment.
I was very moved when I saw the episode because it reminded me of something I forgot, parts of me that I forgot.
When I saw it on the screen, I thought: this really does describe myself. I could see my inner self, which is normally not shown.
Yes. I think what my father wanted to tell me when I was very little is that you have to go through certain stages.
He was talking about the perfection of mankind or of a human being and how you can develop your own inner self.
Nowadays I kind of understand what he meant at those times.
I think the difference between Western vegan and Asian vegan-style food is that in Asia, if you’re vegan and you eat a radish, you eat the radish as a whole.
It’s a radish itself. But in Western style it’s more like you transform it into something else
Yes. I’m good at it.