Zen River Cookbook Vol. 2 is now available!

At last! All the recipes since I started this blog have been turned into a recipe book. It’s taken a while to edit everything and format the book before being published via Amazon. If you want all the yummy recipes in one place, then please visit the Amazon store of your country to purchase the […]

Tenzo Note 3: Random Acts of Kindness

It always surprises me how much we might take for granted in this fickle life – let alone the fact we even have one! For this reason, it’s comforting to occasionally show appreciation to those who offer a crucial service that keeps this fragile society intact and flowing. For instance; the bin men. Around Christmas a few years ago we’d forgotten to wheel […]

Tenzo Note 2

The delegation of monks, nun and lay members from Lonquan Monastery in Beijing, China, just departed Zen River for Amsterdam after a two day visit. Although their monastery has been recently restored and active for just 10 years, they carried in them the essence of Buddhism dating back almost 2,000 years, without even being aware of it. Their practice […]

Tenzo Note 1

What will the next meal be, maybe something Chinese? We’re sitting on a coach, travelling with a dozen Chinese monks in their brown robes and several lay members from Longquan temple in Beijing. The opening ceremony for the new Chinese Longquan Great Compassion temple in Utrecht took place yesterday to a lot of colourful fan-fare (even the […]