I’m a PhD student interested in monastic food practices. I’ve been living in Japan for a while, practicing zazen and learning the language. My research started with shōjin ryōri, but I’ve realized that understanding it properly also requires a deeper dive into Buddhism itself. I’ll be traveling in Thailand soon, and I’ll also be spending more time around Japan. Do you have recommendations for what I should read (besides Dōgen), or places/temples/universities I could visit to deepen both the academic and lived experience of Buddhist food practices?
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Welcome to the forum
You will find the practices around food vary a lot between Mahayana communities and Theravada communities.
In Theravada communities, like you will predominantly find in Thailand, there will be an alms mendicant tradition. Food will either be brought to the temple or collected on alms round. Food will only be consumed in the time between dawn and midday and many other rules will be kept from the Pali Vinaya.
An overview, to help lay people, can be found here.
A list of rules for Bhikkhus can be found in the index to the Buddhist Monastic Code (a modern overview and commentary used by many monastics to learn the vinaya). Rules regarding medicine will also interest you too, as these are largely edibles. Further information on practices around food for monastics, as explained in the BMC, are here.
You can find any rules in the mentioned in the BMC under Monastic Law> Theravada > Monks rules and there analysis here on Sutta Central.
And suttas on food can be found here Comprehensive Index of Pāli Suttas
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I fear you are going to be in for a cultural shock studying the Thai bhikku food practices after Japan.
Shōjin ryōri embodies both a deep ethical stance being vegan, exquisite cuisine, cooking as an art and very healthy food. I imagine you have seen Roshis growing old on that diet, still nimble in body and mind.
Thailand, at least eight years ago in the richer areas, couldn’t be more different.
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We have gone down the monastic nutrition rabbit hole before in this thread.
I find that ABC news story terribly reductive, but probably said enough on nutrition in the other thread
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Hi @norama Welcome to the forum.
I’ll assume you’ve read the well-known stuff:
- About Korean Temple Food having a moment: (e.g. https://doi.org/10.25024/kj.2008.48.4.147 )
- About Japanese food culture (e.g. Feasting with Buddhist Women: Food Literacy in Religious Belonging in: Numen Volume 68 Issue 5-6 (2021) )
- About the use of mindfulness for overeating (e.g Food-Specific Decentering Experiences Are Associated with Reduced Food Cravings in Meditators: A Preliminary Investigation | Mindfulness )
- etc already?
I read this interesting paper, perhaps you haven’t seen it, on how breaking taboo food practices can become a masculine bonding ritual: Fields of Life and Death: Cholangiocarcinoma, Food Consumption, and Masculinity…
On the normative side, Bhante Dhammika has this short introduction: The Buddha and the Philosophy of Food – BudBlooms which gets bad Google ranking 
As far as Thailand is concerned: make sure you visit temples early enough to participate in alms round. That’s a really lovely and unique experience! Definitely generative.
Best of luck in your research and travels!
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Apologies. I hope this original article is better:
or there is an easy read over at Bangkok Post.
,
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Actually I read just couple of them and some are already new, thank you for sharing it, I can’t wait to dig in!
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Thank you so much, that’s such a valuable resource!
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In monastic life, we’re taught to work with very simple reflections that we try to bring forth at different times. For instance, before the main meal, we say:
“Wisely reflecting, I use alms-food not for fun, not for pleasure, not for fattening, not for beautification, but only for the maintenance and nourishment of this body, for keeping it healthy, for helping with the holy life. Thinking thus, I will allay hunger without overeating, so that I may continue to live blamelessly and at ease.”
Offering this as a simple suggestion to the mind day in and day out is comparable to having a mirror that shows a monk his own attitudes to, in this case, food. Naturally, his way of relating to food will sometimes be greedy, or ungrateful, or indifferent, and so forth. But rather than blindly operating from these habitual attitudes, the monk notices them more clearly because the daily reflection encourages him to be mindful of his inner world as he partakes of the meal.
So day after day, he reflects on his inner world and then has the choice to take up the Buddha’s suggestions, which subsequently becomes a foundation for peace. It’s not rocket science. It’s more like tortoise work or earthworm work: you’re just inching along day by day, but the cumulative effect is very profound.
This reflection by Ajahn Viradhammo is from the book, The Contemplative’s Craft, (pdf) p. 73.
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Good morning,
My research on shōjin ryōri is still in progress, and I have started gathering some useful material. I would be very grateful if anyone could share recommended sources, including historical references, that discuss this food tradition and its development over time.
Thank you very much.
This may not be the best place to ask since there isn’t really a connect to the early Buddhist texts. Or is there?
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I read Tenzo Kyokun, but maybe there are more that I didn’t discover yet.
You might want to read the introduction to SuttaCentral to understand what we mean here when we say early Buddhist text. Dogen was alive almost 1500 years after the last of the early Buddhist texts were created. Basically there are no early Buddhist texts written in the Japanese lanuage. Translations into modern Japanese, yes. But if the original was Japanese then it’s not an early Buddhist text. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, just that it isn’t what we discuss here.
The Pali and Sanskrit Vinayas have lots to say about food, but I don’t think those rules were ever followed in traditional Japanese religious communities.
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Japanese Monasticism has a complicated relationship with Vinaya.
Before Saichō (8th-9th century) Japanese Monastics followed the Vinaya, generally the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya. After Saichō declaring Vinaya “unnecessary”, it started to die out in Japan.
Dōgen (13th century) for example, followed Chan Monastic rules very strictly, which were based heavily on the Vinayas (Which, Chinese Monastics also followed). But they had no ordination in the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya.
He is also said to teach Vinaya in secret to his ordained priests, as case studies in sīla.
So we say “Japanese Priests” instead of Monks, today.
It would be interesting to consider today, for a travelling Theravādin monastic, to see if for example a Chinese Dharmaguptaka Vihara or a Zen Temple could be classified as a “Vihara” for the purposes of staying for an extended period, consecration rules, etc. 
Also, there’s a growing Theravādin movement in Japan, so there’s quite many Theravādin Vinaya abiding “Religious Communities”, outside of Traditional Japanese schools.
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Cunningham’s Law: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”
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Is this topic distinct from Monastic foods as a topic to study
or should they be merged?
Yes, it can absolutely be merged.
精進料理 shōjin ryōri in Japan is about vegetarian dish 素菜/素食 in Chinese food. Vegetarian cuisine - Wikipedia, the United Kingdom
Are you in fact looking for ‘how to cook’ the particular Japanese vegetarian cuisine in history and in today?
If so, 精進料理 shōjin ryōri is no any connection with EBTs studies.
Yes, my research is based on Shojin, but sometimes from Chinese side its called Fucha Ryori. Monastic cuisine as well.
I’m looking into more of the religious side and some historical souces as well.. as now I only have Dogens part.