Mentors
My grandmother, my gurus, and the masters whose hands shaped my own.
I do not stand alone. The work I do today carries the imprint of my grandmother, who first taught me to fall in love with food and culture. After her came every guru who showed me the path, every kitchen I trained in and every chef who corrected my hand. Naming them, and honouring what they taught me, is the only proper way to begin any account of the work.
My grandmother, where it began
Before any chef, guru or kitchen, there was my grandmother.
She is the one who first taught me to fall in love with food and culture: the rituals of the kitchen, the patience of a slow stock, the way a meal is where a family gathers and a heritage is passed on. Everything I do today begins with her, from the plates I send to the pass to the way I talk about food as memory.
She is, and always will be, my first mentor.
The spiritual refuge
I was a practitioner before I was a chef.
My root guru, H.E. Tsem Rinpoche
H.E. Tsem Rinpoche, Founder and Spiritual Advisor of Kechara House Buddhist Association Malaysia, was my root guru. Through him I took refuge in the Guru and the Triple Gem, as Vajrayana practice asks, and began my life as a Buddhist. He carried the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, yet what he taught me reached past any one sect. He taught me what the Dharma is: Buddhism for all mankind, the same teaching rooted in Lord Buddha Sakyamuni, whatever the form or sect in which it is practised.
Rinpoche believed the Dharma had to live in the world. Dharma in motion was his phrase for it. The social work he led was one expression of that: Kechara Soup Kitchen fed people who needed feeding, with no preconditions. What he gave me above all of it was a clearer understanding of the practice itself. It belongs to whoever takes it up sincerely. A teacher’s job is to put the student on the path and let them walk it. Without that foundation, nothing I have done since would have had a place to stand.
He has entered Parinirvana and is no longer here in person. The clarity he gave me about what the Dharma is, and what it is not, has stayed with me ever since. With palms folded, I remain indebted to his clarity, his loving-kindness and his insistence that the Dharma is for all mankind, without exception.
See also: “Learning from awakened minds”, The Star (Wesak 2018): “Tsem Rinpoche has always taught that true spirituality must result in the creation of benefits to the community we live in.”
My current guru, Master Jeff Chew
Master Jeff Chew, Founder of Bodhicitta Buddhist Association KL, is my current guru. His own teacher is Phra Thepyanmongkol, abbot of Wat Luang Phor Sodh Dhammakayaram in Ratchaburi, a Thai temple founded in honour of Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro and dedicated to the meditation tradition that monk established. Master Jeff ordained there, took his vows under Phra Thepyanmongkol and trained in the Vijja Dhammakaya practice. He later disrobed, came back to Malaysia and began the lay Dhamma work that is now Bodhicitta. The word bodhicitta means the mind of awakening: the wish to benefit all beings, without exception and without condition. He carries that name without fuss.
Over these seven years, Master Jeff has changed how I listen, how I teach and how I cook. He is the foremost Pali expert I have known, and his teaching draws almost entirely on the Suttas, the Buddha’s own discourses, with examples from daily life. He reminds me to stay resolute in my work and to be ready to shift when circumstances ask for it. He teaches Metta, loving-kindness, as a daily discipline in body, speech and mind. The deepest thing he teaches, though, is how to give without keeping count. He helps people. He shows up. He does not announce it or record it. In his understanding, the moment a kindness asks for acknowledgement it stops being one. I am still trying to learn this. It is the hardest part of the practice, and the part of him I most want to carry on.
I am very much still a student, and the practice continues. With palms folded, I remain indebted to his patience, his clarity and his teachings, the steadiest light I carry into every season of the work.
sādhu. sādhu. sādhu. anumodāmi.
To my grandmother, and to every guru, every master and every chef who corrected my hand: the work you began continues, with a gratitude I will never finish repaying.