Edward Espe Brown
| Edward Espé Brown | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Religion | Zen Buddhism |
| School | Sōtō |
| Lineage | Shunryu Suzuki |
| Dharma names | Jusan Kainei |
| Personal | |
| Nationality | American |
| Born | March 24, 1945 |
| Religious career | |
| Teacher | Sojun Mel Weitsman |
| Website | www |
"Kainei" Edward Espé Brown (born March 24, 1945) is an American Zen teacher and writer. He is the author of The Tassajara Bread Book, written at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, as well as other cookbooks that are still influential.
Brown's mother died when he was three years old. Three days after her death, his father decided to send Brown and his older brother Dwite to an orphanage in San Anselmo, California, because that was the only way he could visit them regularly (the alternative was to send the boys to live with relatives in South Dakota). Brown's father remarried four years later, and then the boys returned home.
In 1955, Dwite and Brown flew to Falls Church, Virginia to visit their aunt Alice. It was her homemade bread baking that inspired Brown, who called her bread "fabulously delicious". He wondered why other people weren't eating the same thing instead of "foamy white bread" bought in a store. Brown resolved to learn how to bake bread and to teach others how.
When he got home he asked his mother to teach him to bake bread. She said, "No, yeast makes me nervous." Brown eventually learned to bake bread, eleven years later, from two chefs at Tassajara. Brown later asked his brother if he remembered their trip to visit Alice. Dwite said yes he did, "What I remember was the Smithfield ham, but it didn't change my life".
He wrote The Tassajara Bread Book in 1970 with a $100 advance from the publisher. As of 2003, 750,000 copies were in print, with 3,000 copies still selling every year. From the mid-1960s to the mid-'80s, Brown lived, cooked, taught or was a manager at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Green Gulch Farm Zen Center and the San Francisco Zen Center.
A Dharma heir of Sojun Mel Weitsman, in 1971, Brown was ordained as a Zen priest by Shunryu Suzuki, who gave him the Dharma name Jusan Kainei ("Longevity Mountain, Peaceful Sea"). He edited Suzuki's book Not Always So in 2002 after Suzuki's death in 1971.
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Wikipedia