How to Cook Your Life: Dogen’s Instructions to the Tenzo with Ed Brown, Online 5/2–5/23

Practice Center
Date / Time
May 2, 2026 / 10:30am - May 23, 2026 / 12:00pm
Event Type
Classes & Extended Courses
Description

The Zoom link to participate in this event will be provided at least 24 hours before it begins. Please call 415-354-0360 if you have any questions.


Let things come home to your heart,
and let your heart go out and abide in things.
—Zen Master Dogen

Food is mystery, source, and sustenance. Zen Master Tenkei said, “See with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue…nothing in the universe is hidden. What else would you have me say?”

Beyond recipes and rules, the kitchen offers liberation. When you let ingredients come forward to awaken and nourish, you discover a freer way to cook, and your own body and mind come alive with it.

Suzuki Roshi's teaching was, "When you are cooking you're not just cooking, you're working on yourself, you're working on others."  

In this online class, we will study Dogen’s Tenzokyokun (or Instructions to the Head Cook), drawing on Ed Brown’s personal experience serving as Tassajara’s first tenzo; Suzuki Roshi’s teachings, both anecdotal and written; and other stories and teachings. For those who’d like to go further, students may also wish to read Ed’s book No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice (2018) and/or view Doris Dörrie’s film How to Cook Your Life (2007).

Recordings:
All course sessions will be recorded, and registered participants will receive temporary access to the recordings for later viewing.

Fee Information
  • Benefactor Ticket Price: $210
  • General Ticket Price: $168
  • Member (Become an SFZC Member): $151
  • Sliding Scale 1: $101
  • Sliding Scale 2: $42
  • Current SFZC residents and qualified SFZC retirees may attend this course for free. To register, please email onlineprograms@sfzc.org at least 72 hours before the program begins.

Register Online

Or call 415-354-0360.

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