Zen cooking, Zen life: Focus on task at hand
By Julie Brown-Micko

It sounds like a joke: a Zen chef? According to Hollywood, most chefs chew up line cooks for breakfast, dabble in drink or drugs, and strive with soul-crushing, single-minded mania for Michelin stars. But Edward Espe Brown is about as far from Tinsel Town as a humble cook can get. In How to Cook Your Life, filmmaker Doris Dörrie examines Brown’s domain, where the kitchen is a temple and cooking a pathway to enlightenment.

The movie revolves around Brown, a Zen priest, chef, cookbook author (including The Tassajara Bread Book and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings) and all-around intriguing character. He travels and lectures, teaching cooking at various Buddhist centers. He’s an odd, kindly man, quick to anger, quick to laugh. He may be a Zen master, but he’s still a chef who complains about the quirks of macrobiotic purists and fumes over the clumsy missteps of beginning cooks. In a moment of extreme frustration, he takes a cleaver and whacks the top off a bottle of oil. Meditation practice is also troublesome. We watch him fidget, sigh heavily, and wriggle in his robes. To his credit, he is aware of his own shortcomings. He cheerfully admits with a laugh, “I am a human being!” And that is what holds our interest.

Buddhism teaches that awareness and intention in the actions of daily life—like cooking—are a spiritual practice. Brown quotes his mentor, Suzuki Roshi, who advised him, “When you wash the rice, wash the rice. When you cut the carrots, cut the carrots. When you stir the soup, stir the soup.” In other words, focus on the task at hand and be fully present in what you do. He laments the fact that the conveniences of modern life have sundered us from using our hands and enjoying the tasks of cooking. We’ve lost touch with what real food is. Too much of what we eat is tasteless and manufactured. We’re so used to fast food and celebrity fluff that we are dissatisfied by genuine food, and, by extension, by everyday human life.

The food is not stunning, but it does look authentic. There are fresh spinach greens, a plate of bright red tomatoes and yellow scrambled eggs, and springy bread dough moving under practiced hands. This is life; this is food that people fix every day. Brown assures us that we need not worry about pleasing everyone, because that only leads to frustration. He also wryly admits that fiascos, large and small, are part of cooking. All we can do, from the most experienced chef to the novice cook, is give it our best effort.

In the end, Brown admits, the hardest part about cooking is working with others and ourselves. The food takes care of itself. Wise words. How to Cook Your Life shows us how to feed the soul as well as the body.