It’s Saturday morning. You roll out of bed and wipe the sleep from your eyes. You stumble to the kitchen and fire up your trusty Mr. Coffee machine. The aroma of coffee fills your kitchen as the anticipation of your first cup O’joe drips closer and closer to completion. That’s when it starts. You can feel the words penetrating your brain. Invading your consciousness. “The Best Part…”. You pause and remind yourself: “This is exactly what my meditation practice is teaching me to cope with”. You note the song and let it go. You’re determined to enjoy a mindful cup of coffee. Before the last drops hit the coffee pot it’s back. You can’t fight it anymore. The iconic Folgers coffee jingle is playing on full blast inside your head:
The Folgers marketing team would like nothing more than for us to believe Folgers coffee is the best thing you could see in your morning cup of java. But what if you could look into your cup of coffee and instead of seeing coffee grounds seeing The Dharma? The Buddha? Or even full blown enlightenment? A mindful coffee ritual steeped in Right Intention could change your day, or even your life. We’re going to take you on a journey, or maybe we should call it a coffee run, to teach you how to Incorporate Right Intention and mindfulness into your morning cup of coffee to bring you closer to the Dharma and enlightenment.
What is Mindfulness and How Do I Have Coffee Mindfully?
Mindfulness means fully engaging in, and being present with, your current experience, no matter what it is. It’s a way to practice meditation outside of traditional sitting practice and is in some ways similar to the Buddhist notion of Samu. Think of it as the instant coffee version of your traditional drip coffee. It has the same great taste and benefits without the time commitment. Mindfulness forces you to slow down and enjoy the task at hand. It’s the feeling of a warm mug cupped between your hands, it’s the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans wafting up from your coffee grinder, it’s the hints of chocolate or citrus that dance across your tongue when you take that first sip.
When you don’t practice mindfulness consciously, you’re more likely to get lost in thoughts about the past or future. Think about how many times you haven’t truly enjoyed your coffee because you’re worried about something else. Your big meeting later that day, or the faux pas you made at a social engagement the day before. Mindfulness prevents you from getting lost in those thoughts. At the end of the day, or in this case the beginning of the day, mindfulness boils down to being present and utilizing all of your senses to enjoy the task at hand.
This practice of incorporating mindfulness and meditation into your daily routine comes from the Zen lineage. Zen practitioners developed an idea called “work practice”. Work practice also focuses on paying attention to what is happening right now. It’s rooted in mindfulness. The idea of work practice originated in China. Chinese practitioners rejected the traditional monastic life and it’s values. They acknowledged it wasn’t practical for monks and lay people to devote themselves completely to study and meditation. There are too many day to day tasks necessary for survival that need to be done to focus only on practice. In India it was commonplace for monks to wander freely and take residence in the forests and fields. They would travel to a nearby town to ask lay people for food, depending on the lay people’s generosity for food to eat each day.
Given the colder, harsher climate of China, Chinese monks tended to congregate in monasteries. Dozens, or even hundreds, of monks descending on a small town to ask for sustenance wasn’t practical. It made the buddhist community a burden on others. To compensate for this Zen practitioners embraced the idea that each member should be expected to contribute their labor for the support of the greater community, monastic or otherwise. Rather than depending on the lay community, Zen practitioners incorporated meditation into everyday tasks, unifying survival and the Dharma while adapting it for a more modern world. Abbott Baizhang, Sixth Patriarch of the Chan tradition, put it succinctly when he said:
“A day without work is a day without food!” – Abbot Baizhang
Dogen’s “Instructions to the Tenzo”: Expanding on Zen Work Practice to Mindful Coffee Practice
This idea of “work practice” was expanded upon by Dōgen Zenji, founder of the Sōtō Zen lineage. His famous work “Instructions for the Tenzo” outlines guidelines on how to mindfully prepare food. A Tenzo is the head cook at a Buddhist monastery. Responsible for feeding all of their fellow monks to avoid becoming a burden on the greater community and also allowing their fellow monks to concentrate on their studies and meditation practice.
Dogen viewed the role of the Tenzo as a spiritual practice equal to that of Zazen. He stated a Tenzo should approach their work with mindfulness, devotion and care. He emphasized that they should view their work as a bodhisattva activity steeped in Right Intention. Additionally, he provided a few guidelines for the Tenzo to follow.
Firstly, due to the Buddha nature of all things, ingredients must be treated with respect. Because of their Buddha nature, you should not discard anything carelessly, not even a single grain of rice. We can practice this ourselves by being careful not to needlessly waste even a single coffee bean or drop of water.
Secondly, he emphasized the importance of practicing awareness during the process. He stated that all Tenzos should oversee all steps of preparing food. This way, they can ensure they carry out the process with respect for the Buddha nature of all things, while also doing it mindfully and with Right Intention. Dogen believed that an unwavering attitude was necessary to avoid lapsing in concentration, which someone filling in for you or completing a task on your behalf might not engage in. While it might be easier to zip over to Starbucks for your morning coffee you should try your best to make it at home. This will allow you the opportunity to practice the tenents of the “Instructions to the Tenzo” everyday.
Thirdly, he underlined the importance of learning from the experience by actually experiencing it. Much like seated meditation, you cannot learn the lessons of preparing food or drink mindfully from a book or by hearing about the experience. You must engage in the experience to reap the benefits. This is another reason to make coffee at home. You’re not just saving money. You’re also getting the opportunity to practice mindfulness in your own home as soon as you wake up.
Lastly, Dogen stressed the importance of engaging in the work practice of the Tenzo while utilizing “three minds“. These minds may not be applicable to you while creating coffee for yourself, but they’re important to be aware of for any daily activity. They are as follows:
- Joyful Mind (Kishin): A way of approaching the work with joy and gratitude for the opportunity to serve. Being cognizant of this mind allows you to express gratitude for the Karma you’ve cultivated and the experience of creating your own morning cup of mindful coffee.
- Parental Mind (Rōshin): Caring for the ingredients and the community with the same love and attention a parent gives to their child. The parental mind strengthens your ability to look deeply into your food and its roots, which we will discuss in more depth later in this post.
- Magnanimous Mind (Daishin): Working with a broad and inclusive perspective, understanding that all food nourishes the Dharma body. The Daishin mind helps you recognize the interconnectedness of all things. While your coffee may appear to be external, it quite literally becomes a part of you as you digest it. Recognizing that there is no real “separateness” between you and your cup of coffee helps to eliminate dualistic thinking first thing in the morning.
You can read Dogen Zenji’s Instructions to the Tenzo in full here.
How to Mindfully Enjoy your Coffee
The great thing about mindfulness is you can practice it everywhere and anywhere. You can mindfully wait in line at the DMV, you can mindfully drive your car, and you can mindfully brew and enjoy your morning coffee. Setting up a mindful coffee ritual allows you to start your day off on the right foot. Below we have a few tips to enjoy a mindful coffee experience.
Create a Mindful Coffee Ritual
Rituals are a large part of Buddhist practice, they’re a cornerstone activity of all religions for that matter. They serve as a framework to establish positive qualities and bring you closer to Buddhist teachings. Buddhist rituals typically involve some form of recitation, chanting and the making of offerings, but they don’t have to.
A ritual can be simplified to a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. Making coffee is the perfect example of a modern ritual. First you gather your ingredients, then you add the grounds, next you add hot water, you wait for it to brew, finally, you enjoy your coffee. At a high level, a Buddhist ritual simply brings you closer to the Buddha and the Dharma.
By establishing this framework in your morning routine you create the circumstances to incorporate the Dharma into the rest of your day. It’s a reminder to incorporate Buddhist teachings into everything you do, and incorporate right intention into all your daily activities, first thing in the morning.
Look Deeply into Your Coffee
This tip comes from Jan Chozen Bays’ “Mindfulness on the Go“. This pocket sized book of tips to live more mindfully is a “must read” for anyone trying to incorporate more mindfulness into their daily routine. There are some wonderful exercises such as “When eating, just eat” which focuses on cutting out all distractions like browsing social media on your phone or watching TV, “hot and cold” which teaches you to focus on sensations like the warmth of your coffee cup or the cool touch of your creamer bottle, and most importantly “Look Deeply into your Food”, which we’ll focus on here.
“Looking Deeply” into your food allows you cultivate a sense of appreciation for dependent origination and all the people and factors that led to a warm cup of coffee sitting on your kitchen table. In this exercise you practice “looking backward”.
When you see your coffee beans you don’t see just a coffee bean. You see the farmers that cultivated and lovingly grew those beans, the longshoremen that offloaded your beans when they were imported from a foreign country, the roasters that doted on those beans as they toasted in the coffee roaster, even the grocery store worker that packed the beans into the shelves so you could select them at your local shop. Let your imagination know no bounds.
Go back as far as the 15th century when explorers brought beans across the Red Sea from Ethiopia to Yemen. This practice will grow your appreciation of all the people that put their life energy into making something as simple a cup of coffee possible. As you sip your morning joe you’ll become more aware of the interdependence of all living beings.
Pause, Slow Down and Enjoy. The Key to Mindful Coffee practice
Mindful work happens when you slow down and enjoy the beauty of each movement. Mindfulness, or work practice, is easiest to achieve when you’re engaging in repetitive work that doesn’t require much thought. Every morning you make your coffee the same way. There can be small tweaks, such as whether or not to add creamer or sweetener, but people generally take their coffee the same way each morning.
When engaging in repetitive activities like this you have the opportunity to build awareness of the sensations in your hands, feet, nose and all other parts of your body. You’ll find that when you focus on your body the experience becomes more relaxed. You feel your senses sharpen as your mind stays free of distraction.
It’s recommended that you take time with each task. While loading the coffee filter don’t think about the next step of adding water. Simply enjoy the act of loading your coffee filter. Feel the weight of the coffee in your scoop, hear the sound of the grounds scattering across the filter, smell the aroma of the beans as they grind or when you open your tin. Don’t let your mind wander to the next task, stay focused on the sensations and process of the task at hand.
Another tip to slow down and enjoy your mindful coffee ritual is to work in silence. This doesn’t mean to ignore anyone you’re around. In fact, some tasks require you to communicate with others. Instead, you should focus on eliminating small talk or unnecessary speech. Don’t ask Siri what the weather will be like today, don’t fire off that email to your coworker. Speech leads to distractions, and can cause you to rush through the process to address whatever worry might be aroused by idle chatter.
The next tip might seem strange to westerners, but bowing in and out of your work can help cultivate a mindful practice. Simply begin by bowing to your work, and bow again when you finish. This helps set a clear boundary for your practice, almost like clocking in or out of your job. It’s a signal to begin your mindful practice at the start and allow your mind to wander afterwards.
Finally, set aside time to clean up when you’re done. This can be an exercise in work practice all by itself. It also allows you to engage in the next days work without distraction. Rather than having to look for a misplaced tool or being frustrated with yourself for the mess you left the day before and being distracted by those thoughts you can engage in the work. Cleaning up your workspace also creates a clear cut end point to your current activity, it’s much like bowing.
Incorporate “Noting” into Your Mindful Coffee Ritual To Calm Your Monkey Mind
The monkey mind is powerful. Always fighting for your attention and distracting you from the task at hand. Don’t worry, that’s completely normal! One of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that the goal is to stop thinking or control your thoughts. It’s not.
The goal of meditation is to be present in the moment. The goal of meditation is mindfulness. When you practice mindfulness you’re meditating. When you meditate you’re practicing mindfulness! Unfortunately, simply meditating won’t stop your monkey mind or thoughts from interjecting themselves into your current activity.
To help mitigate these interruptions you can use a tactic called “noting“. This is a technique where you simply acknowledge your thoughts, label them, then let them go. The goal isn’t to fight your thoughts. This technique is meant to prevent you from being distracted by your thoughts.
Think of your thoughts like a river or traffic. You simply see the water or cars going by, acknowledge them as water or cars, and watch them continue down their path. When you see them, note them, then move back to your task at hand. Don’t dwell on the cars or water that has already passed or is coming down the line, you see the traffic or river in front of you as what it is in the present moment. Practicing noting will allow you to continue to enjoy your mindful coffee session while your monkey mind fights for your focus.
Mindful Coffee: The Final Drops
The major takeaway here is that you can incorporate mindfulness into any activity. We’ve been focusing on mindful coffee but many of these same principles can be incorporated into anything you do. Like meditation itself, the activity isn’t a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.
The focus shouldn’t be on completing the task and moving onto the next thing. You aren’t just working, you’re just working. The purpose is to cultivate a Zen or mindful mind. By focusing on the task at hand we awaken the Buddha within ourselves and complete each task as a Buddha would, mindfully.
When we work as a Buddha we engage ourselves wholly. We drink in every last drop of the experience just like a coffee enthusiast savors every last drop from their cup. You free your mind from all distractions, prejudices and preconceived notions of what a cup of coffee should be and instead enjoy the experience for what it is. You take the same focus you have while sitting on your zafu and extended it to every aspect of your daily life, including the peace and enlightenment you experience while meditating.
Many Zen practitioners believe that everything is work. Feeding yourself is work. Cleaning is work. Going to your traditional job is work. Even creating art is an act of work, that’s why they’re called “works” of art! By creating a mindful coffee practice you remind yourself each morning to take this same approach to all you do in a day. It subtly reminds you that you can incorporate your Buddhist practice into everything you do.