The Zen of Food

Story and Pictures: Wanda Hennig

First appeared: East Bay Edible

“In Zen practice we want our intuition — our universal self — to come forth,” says Berkeley Zen Center abbot, Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi. “When you’re doing simple tasks [like peeling broccoli or breaking lettuce into bite-size bits], your body, mind, the broccoli, the knife, your hand, the breath, are all involved. When you keep bringing your attention back to what you’re doing — when you are simply one with your activity — it’s the same as sitting zazen.”

Butterfly effect links Buddhist groups in South Africa and San Francisco

Story and photos by Wanda Hennig
First published in the Sunday Tribune, South Africa
The Ufafa district, near Ixopo in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, is home to around 23,000 people. Families reside in a sprawling muddle of family compounds that stagger up hills and tumble into valleys, forming a jumbled patchwork of mud, thatch, concrete block and tin. The dwellings have no electricity. Water for drinking, washing, cooking and bathing is hand-pumped from underground wells and carried in plastic bucket and barrels. The area could have been forgotten. But — was it serendipity, karma or …