Chapter 13 — Vegetarian Restaurant Behind the Temple Gate

Yen Nhi now keeps her mother's notebook in her bedside drawer, wrapped in an old piece of linen to avoid mold. Since the day she found it among the handwritten recipes, she only dared to read it little by little, like a dieter dividing a precious dish into small portions so that each part will have the aftertaste for the next day. Tonight, after finishing the evening shift cleaning the shop, she opened it again, sitting next to the small oil lamp her grandmother still likes to light instead of electric lights "because the oil lamp makes the words less dazzling."

The first pages of the notebook are pure recipes — salt and sugar ratio, steaming time, how to choose mushrooms so they don't turn sour. But as time went on, her mother's writing began to change, no longer being dry lists, but incorporating short narrative paragraphs, as if while cooking alone, she borrowed a pen to talk to herself, or to someone who was no longer with her.

"It's been one year since Khiem passed away today. Mom cooked a pot of sour soup with chopsticks and intended to offer it to him, but her hands were shaking so much that the entire pot was oversalted and had to be poured over and recooked three times." Yen Nhi read that, her fingers stopped on the slanted handwriting, imagining her mother at that time - a woman in her thirties, who had just lost her husband in floodwaters, alone with a young child and a newly built restaurant, standing in the cramped kitchen, tears falling into the pot of soup without even realizing it.

The following pages tell fragmentarily, without clear chronological order, about the early years of the establishment. There is a passage where my mother writes about being disapproved by some people in the neighborhood, saying that a widow opening a restaurant is "not holding a funeral", there is a passage about sleepless nights because she worries about not having enough money to pay off the loan to build a restaurant, there is a short passage with just one sentence: "I don't want to cook anything today. But the customers have booked in advance, we can't let them go hungry." Yen Nhi recognized in those lines an exhaustion different from her own—not exhaustion due to speed and pressure of achievement, but the exhaustion of someone who has to carry an entire roof on her shoulders alone, with no one to share it with.

But then, about midway through the notebook, Mom's tone began to change. There is a paragraph dated nearly three years apart from the previous pages, the handwriting is much calmer: "The monk taught me something, I wrote it down here to remember forever: cooking is not to forget the pain, but to look straight at it, then turn it into something that can feed others. From that day on, I cooked differently. No longer cooked to finish, nor cooked to escape. I cooked to remember Khiem, cooked to remember that I was alive, and Other people also need to live kindly through every meal."

Yen Nhi sat silently for a long time in front of that page. She realized that the turning point in her mother's life was not a miracle, not a morning of waking up suddenly free of suffering, but a conscious decision, repeated every day in this small kitchen - choosing to look directly at loss instead of avoiding it, and turning it into something useful for others. There are pages that follow, meticulously recording the times my mother cooked for this or that person in the neighborhood who had a sad story - an old lady who lost her husband, an orphaned boy, an unemployed man who didn't dare step foot into the restaurant because he didn't have money to pay - and she always found a way to let them have a decent meal without feeling pitied. That's what Yen Nhi has been vaguely feeling for many years but has never been able to name it: her mother doesn't cook to feed a store, she cooks to feed hearts.

Closing the notebook, blowing out the oil lamp, Yen Nhi lay in the dark, thinking about the question she hadn't dared to face: was she cooking to feed a store, or to feed hearts? The answer, she knew, was still unfinished.

*

That same night, in the small room where monk Thich Giac Vien recuperated - a horizontal room next to the main hall that had been converted into a resting room, with a wooden bed, an old electric fan whirring, and the faint smell of green wind oil - Master Thien Tam sat beside the bed, his hands gently massaging the monk's feet as usual every night. Although the monk was much better than the day he fainted and had to be taken to the hospital, he was still weak, his voice was slower and more broken than before, and he had to sit with his back against several layers of pillows to breathe easily.

"Master," Thien Tam spoke up after a moment of silence, his voice somewhat hesitant, rarely seen in someone as calm as his teacher, "I have something to say, but I'm afraid that if I say it, you will think I'm indecisive."

Monk Giac Vien opened his eyes to look at his teacher. Although his eyes were tired, he still maintained his familiar gentleness. "Just say it. I've lived for more than seventy years. I've heard all kinds of stories in the world. Nothing surprises me."

Thien Tam took a breath and continued massaging with his hands, as if he needed something to relieve his nervousness. "Recently, every time I go out of the temple gate, to help people with something - fix the roof of Ms. Yen Nhi's house, or go with Uncle Duc Phong to carry relief supplies during a storm - I feel a very strange, very... lively joy in my heart, different from the calmness I usually have when chanting sutras and meditating in the main hall. I don't know what to call that feeling. But it keeps growing, making me start to wonder if my true path of service is the right one. inside the four walls of the temple, or in the middle of life, among people in need of a concrete helping hand."

He did not rush to answer immediately. Outside in the yard, crickets chirped and Bodhi leaves rustled in the night wind. The monk looked up at the roof, took a long time before speaking, slowly as if he was considering each word. "You know, when I was young, there was a night like this one, when I asked my teacher a similar question. At that time, the teacher didn't answer, just asked me the same question: Do you practice to escape life, or to understand life better?"

Thien Tam looked up and waited.

"If you practice to escape life," the monk continued, "then any call from outside life will frighten you, make you feel uncertain and guilty. But if you practice to understand life, to train your mind to be strong enough and compassionate enough, then that path has nothing in conflict with your desire to commit to helping the world. The issue is not whether you are in the temple or outside the temple, but whether your mind is peaceful and clear when doing so." He stopped to breathe, his thin hand placed on Thien Tam's hand, as light as a falling leaf. "You don't need to rush to decide anything. This is just a question you're carrying in your heart, not a door you have to open or close tonight. Just leave it there, observe it, don't rush to chase it away or rush to run after it. Then you will know the answer yourself, when the time is right."

"I'm afraid," Thien Tam said softly, "I'm afraid the monk will be disappointed in me, after so many years he guided me from an orphan with no one to rely on."

Monk Giac Vien shook his head slightly, a gentle smile appeared on his haggard face due to illness. "You are a child of Buddha's teachings, not my own child. If one day you see that your path to serving sentient beings needs another form, it is not that you are betraying what I taught you, but that you are practicing the most correctly what I taught you - living according to fate, living for the benefit of others, not for the sake of external appearance. I only hope that, no matter which path you choose, you will maintain a pure mind like I am sitting here confessing to you today. That is enough."

Thien Tam bowed his head, his eyes strangely stinging, an emotion he rarely allowed himself to express. The teacher did not say anything more, just continued to massage the monk's skinny legs, his heart felt somewhat lighter even though the question was still there, there was no final answer. But at least, he knew he was not alone in asking that question, and that his spiritual teacher, even though he was weak on his deathbed, was still tolerant enough not to box him into any stereotype.

Outside the window, the midsummer moon hangs above the top of the ancient Bodhi tree, pale light shines onto the quiet temple yard. Neither of them knew that, not far away, in a small room behind the kitchen of An Tam restaurant, Yen Nhi was also lying awake with her own question, both of which, although different in shape, revolved around the same axis - how to live a truly meaningful life, not just the model others expect.

The next morning, when Yen Nhi opened the shop door to welcome the first rays of sunlight, she saw Master Thien Tam sweeping the yard on the other side of the side gate as usual, his figure still calm and slow, nothing different from every other day. She nodded slightly in greeting, and the teacher nodded back, his smile as light as the morning breeze. Neither of them said what they had carried in their hearts last night - each of them kept their own questions to themselves, like two travelers going through a bumpy road together, each carrying a different burden, but both found some confidence knowing that beside them there was also someone silently walking forward, not alone in the concern of living a meaningful life.