Who Gathers and Chops Firewood for the Cook's Kitchen?

 The Fireplace Records, Chapter 8

Huineng Chopping Bamboo
Ink on paper by Liang Kai
Circa 1200 CE

Who Gathers and Chops Firewood for the Cook's Kitchen?
When he leaves, somebody new will take his place. 

Huineng (638-713 CE) was an hardworking monk who quietly followed all the Temple lifestyle rules.  His job was to gather firewood to use in the kitchen or elsewhere at the Temple.  He pulled a little cart and gathered sticks, driftwood, wood donations, and downed limbs.  He sawed, split up, and cut up dried wood to give to the cooks in the Temple kitchen or others tending fires.  He did this humble task well for many years.  

Huineng is remembered for emphasizing the power of simple useful work activities as a valid path to enlightenment (e.g., gardening, Temple maintenance, cooking, chores, firewood working, samu = work, transcribing, etc.)  Huineng became enlightened while chopping up bamboo.  He later became a leading Zen Master featured in many stories.  

Also, we all have roles, duties, work, and responsibilities to others and to ourselves. This is an underlying reality.  

"The kitchen was a hell of heat.  Woks large enough to bathe a child in sat on roaring, wood-burning brick stoves.  Young monks fed the insatiable fires, while others stirred the boiling rice.  Some chopped vegetables or prepared them for pickling. They were all under the direction of a senior priest, who was known only as "the Old Cook.""
- By Deng Ming Dao;, Chronicles of Tao, p. 166
The Kitchen of a Daoist Temple Monastery in the Huashan Mountains of China, circa 1930's.  

Somebody is still chopping wood for a fireplace stove, or providing you with the electricity or gas or coal for you kitchen ovens and stoves and cooking appliances.  

Without the fire in the kitchen for cooking we could not survive. 

So, who chops the firewood for your kitchen stove?

Comments, Sources

Refer to Cases ??? in Koan Classics.  OK. find any?  

Refer to my Cloud Hands Blog Posts on the topic of Koans/Mondos/Tests

The Daodejing by Laozi  

Pulling Onions  Over 1,043 One-line Sayings by Mike Garofalo

Chinese Chan Buddhist and Taoist Stories and Koans 

Fireplaces, Campfires, Stoves

The Fireplace Records By Michael P. Garofalo

October Lore

 "Leaves fall,
the days grow cold.
The Goddess pulls her mantle of Earth around Her
as You, O Great Sun God, sail toward the West
to the land of eternal enchantment,
wrapped in the coolness of night.

Fruits ripen,
seeds drip,
the hours of day and night are balanced."
-   Mabon Sabbat and Lore    

"A year of beauty. A year of plenty.
A year of planting. A year of harvest.
A year of forests. A year of healing.
A year of vision. A year of passion.
A year of rebirth.

This year may we renew the earth.
This year may we renew the earth.

Let it begin with each step we take.
And let it begin with each change we make.
And let it begin with each chain we break.
And let it begin every time we awake."
-  Starhwak, Reclaiming Samhain

Halloween (Samhain): Bibliography, Quotes, Poems, Links, Lore
October 31, 2020

Happy Thanksgiving Day

(This Post was made in November of 2017.  Families enjoy gathering in the warm kitchen area on cold November days in North America. We look forward to Thanksgiving Day.)

Happy Thanksgiving Day!!

T   hanks for time to be together, turkey, talk, and tangy weather.
H  for harvest stored away, home, and hearth, and holiday.
A  for autumn's frosty art, and abundance in the heart.
N  for neighbors, and November, nice things, new things to remember.
K  for kitchen, kettles' croon, kith and kin expected soon.
S  for sizzles, sights, and sounds, and something special that about.
    That spells THANKS for joy in living and a jolly good Thanksgiving.       
-   Aileen Fisher, All in a Word

"They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty.  For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercising in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion.  All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees).  And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc.  Besides they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.  Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.”-   William Bradford, 1621 

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln, declared the last Thursday of November to be a National Day of Thanksgiving.

November: Quotations, Saying, Poetry

Months and Seasons

Neo-Pagan Holidays

The first photo shows part of our family in 2012, at our home in Red Bluff, on Thanksgiving Day.

Photos of families enjoying a Thanksgiving Day together.  

Death Comes and Whispers to You

"Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers."
-  Carl Sandburg, Under the Harvest Moon

"In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning."
-   T. S. Eliot,  Four Quartets, East Coker No. 2, 1, 1940 

Autumnal Equinox in Red Bluff California, North Sacramento Valley, California, U.S.A. is on
Wednesday, September 23, 2015.  

Full Moon, September 27, 2015

Autumn Equinox Celebrations, Mabon

Months and Seasons Quotes, Poems, Sayings, Verses, Lore, Myths, Holidays Celebrations, Folklore, Reading, Links, Quotations Information, Weather, Gardening Chores Compiled by Mike Garofalo
Winter	Spring	Summer	Fall
January	April	July	October
February	May	August	November
March	June	September	December