How to Cook Your Life
2007, 93 minutes
Directed by Doris Dörrie
Opening October 26, 2007: San Francisco
Opening November 16, 2007: expanded venues (see Web site for further details)
“It’s one of the most dramatic things that happens—we’re offering food to the Buddha. I used to find this, when I was the cook at Tassajara, really annoying. Like, I have got things to do. And you want me to put some food in these little doll dishes, and so that somebody can put it on the altar, and the Buddha is not even gonna eat it; the Buddha’s not even going to smell it. What does the Buddha care whether you put some food there or not? About twenty years later, these things take a while sometimes … but I thought: Wow! What a great thing, you put the food on the dishes and you take it up and you put it on the altar, and then you bow, and then you turn and you walk away, and the Buddha doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t say: Thank you, nice meal, love the crepes. So what you do is you make your effort, and you offer it, and then you [bow]: this is my offering, and you leave.”
About the Film
How to Cook Your Life is a cheerful documentary about the art of cooking—and the art of cooking your life—without burning it, putting in too much salt, or overcooking it.
Filmmaker Doris Dörrie enlists the help of the charismatic and entertaining Zen Master, Edward Espe Brown, to explain the guiding principles of Zen Buddhism as they apply to the preparation of food and life itself. Food and being determine life, and life determines food. Dörrie and the cooking priest demonstrate that eating is more than just the intake of food. Cooking is a festival of senses, and an act of love and generosity.
During the summer of 2006, Dörrie and her crew filmed Edward Brown at his cooking classes at the Buddhist center Scheibbs in Austria, and two Californian Buddhist centers, the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and the Zen Center in San Francisco, where he teaches people of all generations. The filmmaker refrains from commentary, instead making the camera’s point of view that of a participant in the cooking courses. The camera also attends the lectures of Brown, which are based on the ancient tradition of Zen master Dogen, the founder of the Soto Zen School, who in 1283 wrote a cookbook encouraging his readers to discover Buddha in simple kitchen chores, like washing rice or kneading dough.
