A Buddhist master had a cook who was a simple man. One day, the cook burned his hand while preparing a meal and suddenly achieved the Buddhist goal of enlightenment, as the nature of all existence became clear to him. Excited, he asked the master what he should do next.

"Keep cooking," came the answer.

The story comes from Tibetan lamas by way of Lama Surya Das, a Buddhist teacher and author in Cambridge, who values its elemental wisdom: You don't need a house of worship to encounter the spiritual; it's found in the pattern of daily living, such as cooking the food we need. (Emily Dickinson made the same point in a poem, though not about food, that Das likes to cite: "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church / I keep it, staying at Home / With a bobolink for a Chorister / And an Orchard, for a Dome.")

The story of the cook is Das's contribution in a forthcoming anthology, Bread, Body, Spirit, which draws on numerous traditions and their takes on eating. Explaining the motivation behind the volume, editor Alice Peck, writes in the introduction: "Everybody needs to eat, to be nourished. It's simple. It's unending. Food presents us with a vast opportunity: through our experiences of food we can sustain a constant connection to the Sacred that pervades our lives."

Glimpsing the divine in a hot dog won't surprise devout believers who say grace before every meal; gratitude for plenty in a world where many starve is a recognition of blessing. Yet Bread, Body, Spirit includes contributions from outside organized religion. "Since You Asked," a poem by Williams College English professor Lawrence Raab, comes from the pen of a self-described agnostic.

The poem ponders an imaginary dinner attended by "everyone you expected, then others as well: / friends who never became your friends, / the women you didn't marry, all their children. / And the dead—I didn't tell you / but they're always included in these gatherings."

Reached on his cellphone during what Dickinson might call a moment of mundane spirituality, walking his dog, Raab says that as a nonbeliever, "what's sacred [in the poem] would be the communion of one's self and one's family and friends, extended imaginarily outward" to include phantoms from an existence that might have been. The only overt reference to religion and food in this particular poem is a playful mention about multiplying "wine and chickens." Tweaking the Christian story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fish was a bit of "sly humor" aimed at his Jewish brother-in-law, Raab explains.

The spiritual backgrounds of the contributors are as diverse as cuisine. Das's biography, for example, contains as much kosher as karma. Born Jeffrey Miller in Brooklyn 57 years ago and bar mitzvahed on Long Island, he quips that he's "Jewish on my parents' side." Study and tragic experience (he knew one of the students shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State in 1970) drew him to Eastern religions, and he became a Buddhist.

Julius Lester is the son of a Methodist minister who found Judaism in midlife. His essay in the book, "Braiding Challah," describes how he used to bake the Shabbat (Sabbath) bread on Fridays. A retired academic who lives in Belchertown, Lester had been intrigued by Judaism since learning as a boy that his maternal great-grandfather was Jewish. As an adult, he had a vision in which he was Jewish and happy. He converted in the early 1980s.

His essay highlights one of the many ritualized uses to which religions put food. "Cooking for Shabbat each week," Lester writes, "I am becoming a part of the Jewish people. Every dish I cook has been cooked and eaten on Shabbat for centuries." But it's his second sentence that leaps at a reader: "Judaism is not in the knowing; it is in the physicality of doing."

Downplaying knowledge seems an odd stance for an intellectual writing about an intellectually storied religion. Yet in an interview, Lester noted that Jewish ethical teaching stresses mitzvot, the commandments to moral conduct.

His is also one of the more mouth-watering entries in the book. "I especially like the Sephardic dishes like fassoulia, a simple but delicious stew of beef, green beans and pearl onions, or lamb tangine, a lamb stew with prunes and almonds."

Introduction

Part One: The Garden
ACTS OF FAITH
Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi
The Blossom Gives Way to the Fruit
Meister Eckhart
The Seed of God
Sister Miriam Therese MacGillis
Food as Sacrament
The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows
Lemon Love
Alison Luterman
Every Piece of Fruit
Kahlil Gibran
Speak to Us of Eating and Drinking

Part Two: Fish, Fowl, Flesh
ACKNOWLEDGING RESPONSIBILITY
A Native American Blessing
Sacrifice
From the Taittiriya Upanishad
Cycle
Nancy Willard
A Wreath to the Fish
Betty Fussell
On Murdering Eels and Laundering Swine
Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi
Are They Kosher?
Barbara Kingsolver
Free Breakfast
Jane Goodall
Tale of the Giveaway Buffalo
Matthew 26:26
Blessing
Michael Benedikt
The Beef Epitaph
Barbara Tanner Angell
Deer Season

Part Three: Cooking
TAKING ACTION
Edward Espe Brown
How Could I Have Ever Known It Would Be Like This?
Julius Lester
Braiding Challah
Mary Beth Crain
Food and God: Cooking as a Spiritual Calling
Lama Surya Das
Keep Cooking
Bernard Glassman and Rick Fields
Flour, Water, and Determination

Part Four: Serving
NURTURING
Buddhist Meal Gatha
Martin Buber
His Table an Altar
Brother Lawrence
Love Is Everything
Guru Gobind Singh
To Feed a Hungry Mouth Is to Feed the Guru
Diane Ackerman
Accepting
Zen Master Eihei Dogen
How to Share All Offerings
Jacqueline Kramer
Warm Sweet Milk
Amanda Cook
Sugar-Frosted Memories>/p>

Part Five: Eating
BEING PRESENT
Karyn D. Kedar
There Is Nothing More Profound
Julia S. Kasdorf
Onion, Fruit of Grace
Wendell Berry
The Pleasures of Eating
Marc David
How We Eat
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Sensei
Just Enough
Bich Minh Nguyen
The Plum's Eye

Part Six: Fasts
LETTING GO
Omid Safi
Ramadan, Date Omelets, and Global Compassion
Rabbi Irwin Kula and Vanessa L. Ochs
A Meditation on Fasting
Ram Dass
Stuffing Our Egos
Helen Nearing
Casting Off His Body
Rabi’a al-'Adawiyya
Miracle Onion
Jessica Swift
I Can Eat Chocolate for Breakfast

Part Seven: Feasts
REAPING
Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Heaven and Hell
Diana Abu-Jaber
I’ve Heard Angels at Dinner
Lynne Meredith Schreiber
Inheriting the Earth
Mary Rose O’Reilley
Key Lime Pie
Joan Chittister, OSB
Table Fellowship

Part Eight: Compost
NO BEGINNING AND NO END
The Qur’an 6:141
He Does Not Love the Wasters
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
A Worm in the Rice
Taittiriya Upanishad Part III
Food Is God
Kristen Wolf
The Parable of the Squash
Haven Kimmel
Diner
Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon
One Beautiful Meal

Part Nine: Grace
COMMUNION
Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji
The Path
Laurie Colwin
Feeding the Multitudes
Lawrence Raab
Since You Asked
Elias Canetti
Potlatch
Lynn L. Caruso
Communion
Sara Miles
Crossing II
Grace Paley
Peacemeal
Mary Oliver
Rice

Ways to Share Your Meal
Acknowledgments
Credits
About the Contributors