Though not a chef or restaurant in the traditional sense, Jeong Kwan and her food and cooking at Baekyangsa Temple, about four hours south of Seoul, Korea, have inspired some of the world’s most celebrated chefs. Building on Buddhist philosophy and drawing for inspiration on the Temple’s own gardens, Jeong Kwan, herself a Zen Buddhist nun, creates astonishing vegan flavors and reminds us that many of the best ideas for plant-forward cooking have been nurtured and refined over centuries by food cultures and religious (including monastic) traditions. Jeong Kwan and her philosophy about creating plant-based deliciousness were recently featured in the Netflix series Chef’s Table.

Jeong Kwan, a Buddhist nun known as ’The Philosopher Chef’ has made influential insights into the field of Buddhist temple cooking methods focused on the future of sustainable eating practices. Although first and foremost a Buddhist nun, not a chef, she has had great opportunities to be involved in Buddhist temple food cooking practices at a multiplicity of scales (e.g., glocalization from transnational to local) ever since she became a nun at her age of 17. Kwan, appearing in Chef’s Table Season 3 by Netflix, has been featured in the screening of the 2017 Berlin Film Festival on the category of document film series. Since then, much of her philosophical wisdom in temple food cooking and eating practices has been spread out to the world. The Baegyangsa temple, Chunjinam hermitage, where she is the head nun, has received a great number of visitors from many parts of the world. Here, she addresses the necessary goal of eco-friendly, old-fashioned eating-well practices in order to serve the world in which we all live together harmoniously. Jeong Kwan has been featured in The New York Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Sunday Moring Herald, and The Korea Times: EATER: Food & Wine.

Her approach
The description “temple food” refers to the food eaten daily at Buddhist temples where everything is considered a part of meditation practice, from growing vegetables to preparing the food, and monks and nuns are directly involved in the whole process. “Temple food is carefully prepared and combined to teach a lesson of peaceful coexistence and the truth of interconnectedness of all beings: the circle of life by showing, how all humans like food are born from nature and ultimately returns to it” (Temple Food website, 2017). It might be better answered by referring to our Temple Food Cooking School’s SLOGAN: Global Communication through Korean Buddhist Temple Food: The Philosopher Chef's Table at Baegyangsa Temple, Chunjinam Hermitage My virtues are so few that I hardly deserve to receive this meal; I will take this meal as medicine to get rid of greed in my mind; I will take this meal to maintain my physical being in order to achieve enlightenment.: Where do you find inspiration?
The unique Buddhist cultural approach to strictly eco-friendly food experience has been shaped over centuries based on a foundation of Buddhist philosophy and practice. This phenomenon sheds light on the process of Korean Buddhist culture handed down through generations. Today, it is, however, disappearing due to the incompatibility with modern technological changes of mass production and consumption. On the other hand, Buddhist monks and nuns are trying to work together with local communities to ensure the wholesome ingredients of temple cuisine, and share their agricultural products that have been grown eco-friendly in various temples especially in the mountainous areas across the country where they originated over the centuries. Hence, my way of temple food cooking might give rise to the question of future of food and agriculture by delving into the current trend of the Buddhist cultural activity-focused eating-well wave, which strives to conserve the origins of Buddhist intangible heritage as nourishing traditional temple cuisine to share both the spiritual and practical wisdom: i.e., the potential of the traditional Buddhist farming techniques and the healthy eating tradition that individuals who are health conscious can get the most out of them.