Product Details

• Actors: Edward Espe Brown
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: May 6, 2008
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0014BQR74
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #40,410 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "How to Cook Your Life" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Dorris Dörrie's jazz-inflected documentary should come with a disclaimer: Don't watch on an empty stomach. While it doesn't cover the basics of food preparation, How to Cook Your Life offers a delectable introduction to Buddhist living. Yes, subject Edward Brown is both pastry chef and Zen priest, but Dörrie's approach is more holistic than instructional. (For culinary specifics, viewers can always pick up Brown's bestselling how-to guide, The Tassajara Bread Book.) In other words, home cooking--as opposed to fast food and pre-packaged goods--isn't just healthier and better for the environment; it connects the creator to the product of their efforts. And it helps if they know more about the tools of their trade. Hence, the director of 2000's Enlightenment Guaranteed and a Buddhist practitioner herself, also interviews organic gardeners, cookware salespeople, and the like. Throughout, Brown shows students in the US and Austria how to prepare vegetarian pizza, fruit tarts, and other wholesome delights. All the while, he talks about the connection between the body and the spirit. Fortunately, Brown isn't some kind of holier-than-though type. Little things, like hard-to-open packages, can set him off, but he's just as quick to laugh. To him, cooking is a way to nourish yourself and others. As he likes to say, "When you wash the rice, wash the rice." (True, he sounds like Yoda at times; it’s actually quite charming.) Like Super-Size Me, How to Cook Your Life is an elegy for those long-lost days of leisurely dinners with loved ones. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Product Description

HOW TO COOK YOUR LIFE - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting it right: perfection in intention, June 29, 2008

By 

Daiho - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: How to Cook Your Life (DVD)

This delightful and insightful film from German director Doris Dorrie (Enlightenment Guaranteed) demonstrates, in the tradition of great Buddhist teachings, the marvel of life that is and always has been right under your nose, right at your fingertips, right there waiting for you to really see it, really feel it, really smell and taste it.

Ostensibly a profile of American Soto Zen priest Edward Espe Brown , for 30 years the head cook of the California Tassajara Zen Center, the film is in the end more about how we relate to food, and ultimately how we relate to life. In Japan's Soto Zen tradition, cooking is more than just feeding the monks. It's about close attention to detail. It's about respect for the produce of the Earth. In the process, its as much about preparing yourself as it is a meal.

13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen elevated the position of cook within his monasteries to near the importance of the abbot. He saw in the handling and preparation of food a means for cooks to practice mindfulness, and through careful attention to detail maintain the health and morale of the monastic community. He wrote a treatise on the subject, Instructions to the Tenzo, that is still studied in Soto Zen monasteries. In fact you'll see in the film some of the cooks at Tassajara studying this very text.

These days Edward Espe Brown leads cooking, health and meditation seminars in the US and Europe, at which much of the footage for this film was shot. Director Dorrie doesn't shy from showing us more than the wise, Zen-master side of her subject, including segments in which Brown loses his temper with his students, as well as with a plastic wrapper and a bottler stopper. As he remarks to a class at the beginning of the film, he may have been practicing Zen for 40 years, but he's still a human being subject to nervousness and anxiety at the beginning of each new retreat. He notes as well that he still makes mistakes, that mistakes are part of the process of cooking, as they are with life. Perfection, he adds, is to be found in the effort.

While not a kinesthetic subject, Dorrie does a good job of keeping the viewer's attention by mixing up shots and breaking the film up into thematic units. Except for a small diversion on the homeless and a woman who survives by living off supermarket discards, Dorrie remains tightly focused. The understated jazz soundtrack is perfect accompaniment to themes of spontaneity and authenticity.

You won't come away from this film with a handful of new recipes, but you might have a new respect for cooking and the practice of mindfulness.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great DVD! Ed Brown gives us a new way to view our life, November 5, 2009

By 

J. TEETERS "somedimsum" (Yucaipa, CA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How to Cook Your Life (DVD)

Looking at your life and the experiences you have everyday in terms of the kitchen really helped me to switch some of my views and habits. I used to look at cooking, working and doing the many things I do everyday as one endless, thankless task.

Now I am thinking more about what I do as an experience. How to Cook Your Life has brought a perspective to into my life. I just ordered The Complete Tassajara Cookbook: Recipes, Techniques, and Reflections from the Famed Zen Kitchen and the stories and insight are wonderful. Oh, and it has some great recipes too!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful, June 20, 2009

By 

Thora Harrison "hakuran" (san rafael, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How to Cook Your Life (DVD)

this is a moving and charming story. i have been baking his bread for 30 years and was delighted to hear and see him. my friends found it unexpected and warm-hearted.