Cooking the Dharma: Buddhist Cookbooks in Contemporary Taiwan
Have you ever picked up a Buddhist cookbook—titles such as Mindful Recipes or The Buddhist Chef—in bookstores like Barnes & Noble? Buddhist wisdom is increasingly shared through cookbooks, which reflect Buddhist institutions’ growing engagement with popular media and culinary publishing. Yet in monasteries, chef-writers and kitchen volunteers—often laywomen—are typically seen as peripheral to religious life, overshadowed by monastic and institutional leaders. This project supports my pre-dissertation research in Taiwan, a global hub of engaged Buddhism, in summer 2026. I will visit Buddhist monasteries and commercial bookstores across Taiwan to collect cookbooks and food related materials to understand the textual landscape of contemporary Taiwanese Buddhist foodways.
