FitnessProsBooks.com - How to Cook Your Life
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List Price: $27.98
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Manufacturer: Lions Gate
Starring: Edward Espe Brown, Doris Dörrie
Directed By: Doris Dörrie
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Lions Gate
EAN: 0031398233053
Format: Closed-captioned
Label: Lions Gate
Manufacturer: Lions Gate
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Lions Gate
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-05-06
Running Time: 94
Studio: Lions Gate
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Zen Is Cooking With Ed Brown
Comment: Intriguing, amusing and full of Zen moments. This documentary has profound depth- on the surface the film appears to be about cooking but the koan of the film is without a definite answer. One can find oneself exploring awareness, stillness, meditation, ritual and even cooking. Roshi Ed Brown encourages us to explore food as a metaphor. I was touched when he was examining the old teapot.
What's cooking? I think I got it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Getting it right: perfection in intention
Comment: 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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Editorial Reviews:
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Zen master & renowned chef edward espe brown is captured on film as he guides students through the mastery of cooking & the importance of how we treat our food. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 05/06/2008 Starring: Edward Espe Brown Run time: 93 minutes Rating: Pg13
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