Customer Reviews

In Buddha's Kitchen: Cooking, Being Cooked, and Other Adventures in a Meditation Center

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really enjoyed this book about the author's experiences cooking in a Buddhist Monastery in Northern California. Several chapters are real gems: Jizo Ceremony, Impermanence, A Cup of Tea and On Having A Teacher. She makes good use of her early experiences as a chef to contrast with the new attitude of mindfulness and silence.

Even though I give it five stars I still walked away from the table hungry for a little more.

I would have liked to read a deeper treatment of transforming the five poisons into the five wisdoms, something intriguing that was only mentioned in passing.

How can you write a whole book about cooking in a Buddhist kitchen and not include a single recipe? The Author does mention at one point that she is working on a cookbook. I'd love to read that as a companion volume to this great book on practical application of Buddhist ideas to daily life.

In Buddha's Kitchen was an honest and profound look into the mind's phenomenon. I was left with a deep sense of humanity as I learned that my own questions are part of a larger communal experience. Kimberley Snow's book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in Buddhism, but her experience is also a reflection of everyone who searches their daily life for the good within. I recommend this book for anyone looking for that everyday Buddha. Kimberly if you're reading this, thank you.

I picked up this book with wonder. I am a writer who lived in a California Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center, and was the Cook. South of Dorje Ling, and thus somewhat different - yet I was profoundly moved by her eloquent portrait of what could have been my own experience. Despite the unusual reason for my personal resonance with the story, I believe that even people who are not former Meditation Center cooks will find this book wonderful reading. The story is quite entertaining, and the dharma is presented in an elegant, unassuming, and egoless style, that is incredibly readable.

What a fun and insightful book. While the theme of cooking runs through the book, the lessons are much deeper than recipes. Highly recommended!

What a lovely reading experience in bits by the bed ~ Snow is a lovely and talented writer. It was easy to pick up and return to her worlds. She made me laugh, reflect, be deep and still. I thoroughly enjoyed each chapter, each view into a different world of introspection, growth and fun with food. I completed her book feeling well nourished.

I was reading this shortly before and during Christmas with family where I was having to do all the cooking and cleaning due to the poor health of my mother. It was so synchronistic in that I was having to deal with all sorts of personalities and negative situations and remember my mindfullness/loving kindness practice. I highly recommend this book to anyone on the path to enlightenment and has had to deal with unpleasentness. I HIGHLY, HIGHLY +10 recommend this book to anyone on the path who has worked in restaurant kitchens (which I have).

This is a wonderful book, and if you haven't spent any time in a dharma center, you will feel as though you had. I loved how Dr Snow's realization shone through. You can learn a lot from this book, and it so fun & easy to read.

This is an amazing book. Who could have anticipated such a combination of fall-down-funny good humor and profound evocation of the nature of the Buddhist path in everyday life?
Chef Snow, trying to get away from her commercial kitchen, winds up at a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center in charge of the kitchen there! Meditation in action doesn't even begin to describe her adventures. Her long journey to awareness is the perfect introductory book I would recommend to anyone yearning to make their own days more meaningful and happy and useful through the exposure to ancient spiritual insights. Certain to be recognized as a classic, but more important it's a delightful "read" that will literally change lives.
To put it briefly, keeping with Snow's ongoing metaphor of the kitchen, "downright delicious & joyously nourishing."

Not really a recipe or cook book, its more a book ABOUT cooking! What a joy to read, and follow the steps of food, travel and life in Asia.

I found this book by accident and fell in love with it. Enjoy!

If you are looking (like I was) for Hindustan cooking, try this book, (its great!)

The Khaki Kook Book: A Collection Of A Hundred Cheap & Practical Recipes Mostly From Hindustan

Congenially written by Kimberley Snow, (a resident of a Tibetan Buddhist community for six years and who served the center as head cook), In Buddha's Kitchen: Cooking, Being Cooked, And Other Adventures In A Meditation Center is a wry memoir of both physical and spiritual work, and which showcases the those transcendent values of meditation which can be found in mundane tasks and the simple joys of everyday life. A delight to read, In Buddha's Kitchen is enthusiastically recommended to students of Buddhist philosophy and practice as being deeply spiritual and embracing the crucial importance of compassion, love, and joy in even the most menial of life's duties.