VALERIE DAI HATSU | Benevolent kitchen

Valerie Dai Hatsu Duvauchelle

Valerie is a passionate advocate for activating new ways of being in the world. She believes that to live fully we need to allow for a radically different relationship to the world and to ourselves.

Her specific interest is in the application of new ways of being in community and seeks to understand the invisible evolutionary impulses that occur when we do things together.

She is a Tenzo cook in the Zen tradition and through her books, programs and retreats brings the universal teachings of this tradition into community living.

She is a Tenzo cook in the Zen tradition and, through her books, programs and retreats, she brings the universal teachings of this tradition to community living. She is working on a prototype for day-to-day community functioning, based on the principles of temples (Samu) for communities of committed practice (religious or otherwise).

She is committed to cultivating the dynamic posture of the "etravec" in the deployment of the living.

Valérie is attached to the Mountains and Clouds sangha and walks behind teacher Pierre Taigu Turlur. She is also a pioneer at Life Itself, where she has developed a Praxis ecology around the 5 minimum viable daily practices for engaged conscious communities.

Her journey

Her encounter with shôjin ryôri began when she sat in zazen at the Sojiji temple in Japan in 2003, where she lived for 13 years. It was through the body, sitting, doing and chanting together with the monks that the resonance was made for her. It wasn't until she returned to France in 2012 that she began to study the traces of Zen Buddhism. Deeply rooted in secularity, she sees the posture of zazen as a process of inclusive adjustment to the world, a disposition of "beingwith", and the practice of eating as a space of resonance co-constructing the world.

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BIO :

From 2003 to 2007, she practiced at Soji -ji temple (Tsurumi, Kanagawa prefecture) under the reverence of Noda Godo roshi, and discovered Zen cooking with Tenzo (practice cook) Koganeyama Roshi.

It was also at Soji-ji that she met Isshô Fujita, whom she would later follow to the Chizanso in Hayama (near Kamakura).

Her life was then divided between my plant-based cooking workshops, Zen practice, permaculture and her travels to temples to meet tenzos.

In 2012 she returned to France with the desire to pass on this practice to everyone, and created La cuisine de la bienveillance.

In 2014, she met Dainin Joko Procoppio, who offered her the position of Tenzo.

In 2017 she took the vows ( tokudo) of nun.

In 2018 she joined the Order of Mountains and Clouds, following in the footsteps of Pierre Taigu Turlur.

In 2019 she shares the practice of the food of benevolence in itinerancy and regularly visits intentional communities ( Tamera among others)

In 2020 she explores the question of community and more specifically food as a transformative process, and affirms her desire to build "bridges".

IN 2021 she affirms her commitment to the LIFE ITSELF network as head of collective practice development and develops the Praxis project at the Bergerac hub, where she works on a Praxis of food for communities.