Oklahoma Buddhist Monastery Hosts Vegetable Festival and Cooking Demonstration

Local Buddhists have recently promoted the benefits of vegetarianism by adopting a festive approach.

Saturday’s vegetarian festival at Buddha Mind Monastery, 5800 S Anderson Road, featured a variety of vegetables to show the community at large that meatless dishes could be both palatable and nutritious.

The festival included cooking demonstrations, food tastings, takeaway recipes, a vegetarian panel discussion, and a lecture on Buddhism. The highlight of the event was a complimentary vegetarian lunch that included dishes like stir-fried mushrooms, sesame balls, fried rice noodles, coconut jelly, vegetarian barbecue pork buns, Mapo tofu, egg rolls, fried rice, vegan barbecue, vegan chicken with soy tofu sheet, and vegan spring and duck rolls.

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Abbess Jian Shan said Buddhists wanted to highlight the importance of “mindful eating” and the benefits of a plant-based diet for health, environmental sustainability and animal welfare. She added that raising awareness about mindful eating also meant talking about the negative impact of meat farming on the environment and all sentient beings. The monastery leader also said festival-goers learned that practicing vegetarianism or veganism can reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

Vegetarianism also promotes compassion toward animals, she said.

“It’s based on the idea that we respect all animals, all sentient beings of Buddha nature,” she said.

She said it was the first time the popular festival had been held since the COVID-19 pandemic. The monastery, home to four Buddhist nuns from Taiwan, is one of eight Chung Tai meditation centers in the United States. The monastery is part of a global Buddhist community called Chung Tai World, headquartered at Taiwan’s Chung Tai Chan Monastery.

The abbess said online meditation classes had been offered while the monastery was closed during the pandemic, so she was heartened to see the Buddhist center filled with enthusiastic crowds again. People mingled in an open-air courtyard, classrooms and other spaces to learn about vegetarianism.

In addition to the merits of vegetarianism, the festival gave Buddha Mind nuns and volunteers the opportunity to share information about the monastery’s many offerings, including meditation classes, Zen Buddhism classes, vegetarian cooking classes for children and adults, dharma talks, sutra studies, ceremonies and other activities.

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‘Cultural exchange’

Justin Seal, a 43-year-old volunteer from Oklahoma City, said he is a Buddhist and regularly participates in monastery activities. The recent festival was one of his favorite events. He said he enjoyed the “cultural exchange,” with community members offering samples of Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine, as well as dishes from other cultures.

“We’re really here to make sure that people have a good place to learn about simple vegetarian dishes and to have a good place to think about mindful eating and what kind of food they really want to eat and put in their bodies,” he said.

Vin Chua said she has been a long-time volunteer at the monastery and continues to maintain ties there even though she now lives in Dallas. She said there are Buddhist communities in her area of ​​Texas, but nothing like Buddha Mind.

Chua said the nuns and volunteers decided to offer more demonstrations and food samples because they wanted to help local community members overcome one of the most common barriers to vegetarianism: not knowing how to prepare or cook vegetables.

More: Vegetarian Tales: Oklahoma City-area Buddhists host festival to share benefits of vegetarianism for mind, body and spirituality

“That’s why we have a group that introduced the ingredients, the vegetables, the fruits, the sauces and the dressings,” Chua said. “All of these elements together make delicious vegetarian dishes.”

The varied demonstrations, tastings and lunch drew locals like Anastatia Covington of Oklahoma City. She said she is not a vegetarian but attended the festival to get ideas for healthy meals.

“I’ve always tried to eat healthy, and I know they eat healthy, in general, in their culture and religion, and I just want to get ideas on how to cook (vegetables) differently,” she said.

This article was originally published on Oklahoman: Veggie Festival at Buddha Mind Monastery in OKC Shares Vegetarian Ideas