When we write week in, week out about Zen Restaurants, Zen Cafe, food and the like, we rely on a type of contemporary interpretation of what Zen is. Why do we apply the label to drinks, meals, certain types of businesses and other material objects? It’s not an easy question to answer other than calling it an indefinable quality with some sort of Oriental influence.
So it’s probably fair to explain exactly what Zen is from a more prosaic level and then you can make your own decision as to whether it applies to what we write about.
The term Zen derives of course from Zen Buddhism, a branch of Mahayana Buddhism which can be dated all the way back to 7th century China. The development of this school is credited to a South Indian prince or possibly a Persian who became a monk called Bodhidharma. Making his way to China around the 7th century, he began to develop his own form of Mahayana Buddhism. Records from the period are sketchy but Chán is understood to have been the early name for this new school; over the millennia it has morphed into the term Zen.
Bodhidharma scroll
The link between India, China and Central Asia is a fascinating one in this period. When trading between the regions began as borders were crossed, the development of the Silk Road began; the vast network of routes that brought merchants and their goods from one region to another. It was along these routes that Indian monks originally brought the message of Buddhism to the settlements and towns along the way – reaching as far as China in the decades before Bodhidharma made the journey.
Evidence of Buddhist art and other religious relics have been discovered at ancient sites in many places along the Silk Road, most notably in sites which border the western edge of the Taklamakan desert in western China.
So when you eat a ‘Zen’ labelled meal or ‘Zen’ denoted drink, ponder the origins of the term and why we describe it as such.