Karen Wang Diggs – The Sacred Kitchen
Consecrate your health, senses, and kitchen with an edible spiritual journey filled with storied culinary rituals, science-backed recipes, and ancient meditations that reconnect you to the nourishing hearth of the home.
What you will learn in Diggs The Sacred Kitchen
During this The Sacred Kitchen journey, you’ll:
- Be guided in meditations that transform ordinary sensory experiences into awakened moments of tasting, smelling, touching, hearing, and seeing
- Watch Karen demonstrate how to fold empanadas, create mocktails, properly prepare green tea, blend incense, create a torma offering — and prepare a final celebratory meal with you and your classmates
- Experience culinary rituals that honor your connections with the elements
- Learn tips for cutting attachments and addictions to sugar, carbohydrates, alcohol, and comfort foods
- Explore the 7 stages of spiritual alchemy and the 5 methods of fermentation — and how fermented foods are allies on the journey to enlightenment
- Learn how the billions of microorganisms that exist within your gut inform your sense of self and influence your thoughts and feelings
- Discover the alchemy of digestion — and its outer, inner, and secret levels of nourishment
- Integrate the 4 Immeasurables — love, compassion, joy, and equanimity — into your culinary practices
- Explore how knowing the essential nature of one taste liberates the mind
- Watch Karen prepare gomasio in honor of the Mahasiddhas and Zen Masters who became enlightened in the kitchen
- Create a sacred kitchen shrine and bless it with culinary offerings
- Gauge your body’s nutritional status using the olfactory sense
- Learn how to sharpen and care for knives as a spiritual art and meditative practice
- Create balance in your meals using the principles of the 5 Tastes — and colors that correspond with organs in the body
- Explore the practice of “just enough” or oryoki — a meditative way of eating that’s practiced in Zen monasteries
- Discover why the culture of tea, or camellia sinensis, is a vital part of monastic life — and how it facilitates meditation and spiritual development
- Learn to respect and honor your sources of sustenance by not wasting ingredients — from liver and bones to carrots and onion tops
What You’ll Discover in These 7 Weeks
In this 7-week transformational intensive, Karen will guide you through the fundamental skills and competencies you’ll need to reclaim the sanctity of cooking and eating through an edible spiritual journey that reconnects you with the nourishing hearth of the home.
Module 1: The Vipassana Kitchen — Transforming the Kitchen Into Sacred Space
How do we return the kitchen to its original intention — a sacred gathering spot to connect and nourish the body, heart, and soul?
You’ll begin by getting acquainted with the elements that can be found in your own kitchen and exploring how they connect with you, nature, and the cosmos.
The kitchen is the ancient hearth that contains the five sacred elements of water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. This week, you’ll harmonize these elements and reclaim your kitchen as a sacred space.
You’ll build a simple shrine in your sacred kitchen for cultivating generosity and transforming food into offerings… and reignite your senses with her Five Elements Spice blend and help from the ancient meditation practice known as vipassana, developed by the Buddha to reach his own enlightenment.
Vipassana means to be mindfully present so that we may see things as they really are. This can be applied to every aspect of cooking in the sacred kitchen. In doing so, every action becomes an opportunity to cultivate enlightened awareness.
You’ll also explore taste as a metaphor for enlightenment, and learn techniques for using your senses mindfully to create spiritual culinary experiences.
Last, Karen Wang Diggs will share recipes for igniting your sense of taste and new perspectives on the synergy between your body’s need for nutrition, mindfulness, and spirituality…
… and close class with a guided culinary ritual offering — the first of many.
This week, you’ll also:
- Be guided in the 5 Senses Meditation to transform ordinary sensory experiences into awakened moments of tasting, smelling, touching, hearing, and seeing
- Explore how knowing the essential nature of one taste liberates the mind
- Learn a special method to rapidly enhance, deepen, and enliven the sense of taste
- Discover a unique method to connect with the elements of nature in the hearth-kitchen
- Learn how to sharpen and care for knives as a spiritual art
- Watch Karen prepare gomasio in honor of the Mahasiddhas and Zen Masters who became enlightened in the kitchen — and cut carrots for a matchstick carrots and burdock recipe in a beautiful and mindful way
Module 2: Nourishing the Body as a Vehicle for Enlightenment
The Buddha stated, “Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.”
This week, you’ll explore your body as a sacred container for mind-body-spirit nourishment. You’ll discover the physiological connection between mindful eating and immunity, delve into the alchemy of digestion — and its outer, inner, and secret levels of nourishment…
… and see how live cultured foods nourish and strengthen your gut-brain-microbiota axis and its relationship to mind-body-spirit healing.
Karen Wang Diggs will share how your microbiome — and the billions of microorganisms therein — helps define your sense of self, and why cooking and eating at home honors your body and nature.
You’ll also learn tips for cutting attachments and addictions to sugar, carbohydrates, alcohol, and comfort foods, while developing healthy, spiritually aligned food choices as a path to greater enlightenment.
Last, Karen Wang Diggs will share recipes for igniting your sense of smell and balancing your microbiome… and close the week out with a special culinary ritual.
This week, you’ll also:
- Be guided in the 5 Senses Meditation with a special focus on smell
- Learn a method to heighten your sense of smell — and a practical test to gauge your body’s nutritional status using the olfactory sense
- Learn how the billions of microorganisms that exist within your gut inform your sense of self
- Honor the element of metal — and deepen your understanding on how to use knives as a meditative practice
- Watch Karen prepare sauerkraut live, and receive tips on fermentation
- Experience the Clouds of Nourishing Fragrance culinary ritual
Module 3: Alchemy in a Pot — Seven Stages of Spiritual Alchemy & 5 Methods of Fermentation
When you embark on a journey of spiritual awakening, alchemy comes into play as your dense self-identity steadily transforms into the gold of enlightenment. The same can be said of the alchemical processes that happen in your sacred kitchen.
This week, you’ll discover the seven stages of spiritual alchemy and the five methods of fermentation — using ancient food preparation methods, including using your hands, to increase connection and mindfulness.
Just as ancient alchemists used processes in their laboratories as external meditations to support inner transformations, traditional methods of preparing food can be used to activate, develop, and understand the transformative processes of our personal alchemical journey.
You’ll also discover how fermented foods are allies on your journey to enlightenment and how the microbiome of the hands influences the taste, nutritional quality, and vitality of food.
Last, Karen Wang Diggswill share recipes for igniting your sense of touch and demonstrate how to fold empanadas… closing the week out with a special culinary ritual.
This week, you’ll also:
- Be guided in the 5 Senses Meditation with a special focus on taste
- Learn a method to heighten your sense of taste — and how this relates to your sense of smell
- Explore the 7 stages of spiritual alchemy and the 5 methods of fermentation — and how fermented foods are allies on the journey to enlightenment
- Learn how your gut microbiome influences your thoughts and feelings — and how the microbiome of your hands can affect the outcome of food you prepare
- Watch Karen demonstrate how to fold empanadas
- Experience a culinary ritual to honor the earth element and the living organisms of soil
Module 4: Cooking With Compassion — Cultivating the 4 Immeasurables
Cultivating the Four Immeasurables — love, compassion, joy, and equanimity — is a sublime endeavor that enables you to see yourself and others as we truly are… indivisible.
When you follow a recipe, you tend to measure out ingredients in defined amounts. This week, you’ll recognize how everyone is different and requires nutrients that are appropriate for their unique physiology.
In doing so, you’ll learn to cook with the Four Immeasurables to expand your consciousness into limitless states of generosity and love that cannot be measured, increasing your measure of love and joy to honor and celebrate your sources of sustenance…
… while extending loving kindness and compassion toward yourself as you accept the diet that’s best for your body, mind, and spirit.
You’ll also explore the Five Tastes of Traditional Chinese Medicine and how focusing on them when preparing each meal connects you with nature and fine-tunes your body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
Last, Karen will share recipes for igniting your sense of sight and lifting your mood… closing the week out with a special culinary ritual.
This week, you’ll also:
- Be guided in the 5 Senses Meditation with a special focus on sight
- Learn how seeing through a heart of compassion adds its own flavor to your culinary creations
- Discover spices and herbs that enhance your experience of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s 5 Tastes
- Cultivate compassion and equanimity regarding the ethics of eating meat
- Respect and honor your sources of sustenance by not wasting ingredients — from liver and bones to carrots and onion tops
- Watch Karen Wang Diggs demonstrate how to create a mocktail
- Experience a culinary ritual to honor the element of wood as a process of your connection with earth and sky, and transformation
Module 5: Zazen in Motion — Merging Form & Emptiness
In Buddhism, the Heart Sutra states that “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”
Contained within the words of this sutra is the condensed revelation of the Doctrine of Two Truths, which is that of relative and ultimate reality.
This week, you’ll honor this ancient text in your sacred kitchen and merge the states of form and emptiness by first showing reverence to the ingredients you use in the preparations of a meal… and offering it to the benefit of all beings.
You’ll explore the Zen practice of Temple Cooking, or shojin ryori — showing respect and gratitude to all sentient beings and the cyclical dynamics of nature by selecting and cooking with ingredients that are local, in season, and sustainable.
You’ll learn to balance meals and your body with the principles of the Five Tastes, discover the benefits of cooking and eating from a place of deep inner stillness… and gain new insights into the nature of tea and its potential role in enlightenment.
Last, Karen will share recipes and practices for igniting your sense of hearing and optimizing flavor… closing the week out with a special culinary ritual.
This week, you’ll also:
- Be guided in the 5 Senses Meditation with a special focus on hearing
- Learn to focus on hearing and appreciation of silence as the audible emptiness which allows our inner souls to be heard
- Create balance in your meals using the principles of the 5 Tastes — and colors that correspond with organs in the body
- Explore the practice of “just enough” or oryoki — a meditative way of eating that is practiced in Zen monasteries
- Discover why the culture of tea, or camellia sinensis, is a vital part of monastic life — and how it facilitates meditation and spiritual development
- Watch Karen demonstrate how to properly brew green tea
- Experience a culinary ritual to honor the element of water with cups of elixirs
Module 6: Puja in Your Sacred Kitchen — Ceremonious Spices & Herbs for the Physical & Spiritual Body
Pujas, or offering ceremonies, are done in many spiritual traditions as a form of prayer, gratitude, and reverence.
There are many aspects of a puja that correlate directly with what you do every day in your own kitchen. This week, you’ll explore puja in depth, including the elements of a puja and how the five senses are represented in them…
…and gain a solid understanding of how to use this sacred ceremony in a simple yet reverential manner while preparing a meal.
You’ll learn the role of certain spices, herbs, and ancient grains in pujas — and how to make a torma ritual cake as an offering.
Last, Karen Wang Diggs will share ceremonious recipes and practices for igniting your “sixth” sense … and close the week out with a special culinary ritual.
This week, you’ll also:
- Be guided in the 5 Senses Meditation with a special focus on the “sixth” sense of proprioception and intuition
- Discover a selection of spices and herbs that are appropriate for offerings — and how they benefit your physical and spiritual body
- Discover how to prepare ancient grains for optimal digestion, nutrition, and transformation
- Watch Karen Wang Diggs demonstrate how to create an incense recipe
- Experience a culinary ritual to honor the element of fire with a simple homemade incense recipe
Module 7: Cooking the Sacred Meal — A Prayer of Preparation
In this final class, you’ll review what you’ve learned thus far and receive tips for maintaining your sacred kitchen and spiritual culinary practices…
… and then cook a meal with Karen, using both the functional and spiritual aspects of sacred cooking that you’ve explored.
You’ll also create an offering to your sacred kitchen shrine, dedicating your sacred space and all meals prepared therein to the nourishment of all beings.
Karen encourages you to gather ingredients for this meal ahead of time — or you can also just follow along by watching her demonstration.
During the last class, you’ll:
- Deepen your 5 Senses Meditation to transform ordinary sensory experiences into awakened moments of tasting, smelling, touching, hearing, and seeing
- Create an offering to your sacred kitchen shrine
- Receive an overview of the recipes, ingredients, and their relevance for this class
- Prepare a meal with your classmates and Karen as she focuses on the most important aspects of the past six weeks so you can maintain your sacred kitchen and spiritual culinary practices
- Learn tips for processing and integrating course content as a daily practice
- Experience a closing offering and prayers while dedicating your prepared meal to the nourishment and benefit of all sentient beings
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