Jump to content
 







Main menu
   


Navigation  



Main page
Contents
Current events
Random article
About Wikipedia
Contact us
Donate
 




Contribute  



Help
Learn to edit
Community portal
Recent changes
Upload file
 








Search  

































Create account

Log in
 









Create account
 Log in
 




Pages for logged out editors learn more  



Contributions
Talk
 



















Contents

   



(Top)
 


1 Early life  





2 San Francisco  





3 Later years  





4 Books  





5 See also  





6 References  





7 External links  














Edward Espe Brown






Deutsch
 

Edit links
 









Article
Talk
 

















Read
Edit
View history
 








Tools
   


Actions  



Read
Edit
View history
 




General  



What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Cite this page
Get shortened URL
Download QR code
Wikidata item
 




Print/export  



Download as PDF
Printable version
 




In other projects  



Wikimedia Commons
 
















Appearance
   

 






From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 


Edward Espé Brown
Personal
Born (1945-03-24) March 24, 1945 (age 79)
ReligionZen Buddhism
NationalityAmerican
SchoolSōtō
LineageShunryu Suzuki
Senior posting
TeacherSojun Mel Weitsman
Websitewww.peacefulseasangha.com

"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 the co-author of The Greens Cookbook, with Deborah Madison.

Early life[edit]

Kitchen at Tassajara, where Brown learned to bake bread

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.[1]

In 1955, Dwite and Brown flew to Falls Church, Virginia to visit their aunt Alice. It was her homemade bread baking that inspired Brown,[1] 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.[2]

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".[2]

San Francisco[edit]

Green Gulch Farm Zen Center where Brown once lived

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.[1] 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.[3]

Golden Gate Bridge is part of the view from Greens Restaurant, which Brown helped to found

ADharma heirofSojun Mel Weitsman,[4] in 1971, Brown was ordained as a Zen priest by Shunryu Suzuki, who gave him the Dharma name Jusan Kainei ("Longevity Mountain, Peaceful Sea").[5] He edited Suzuki's book Not Always So in 2002 after Suzuki's death in 1971.[6]

Brown helped to found the vegetarian Greens RestaurantinSan Francisco.[5] He and founding chef Deborah Madison wrote the vegetarian cookbook, The Greens Cookbook in 1987.[7]

Later years[edit]

Brown leads the Peaceful Sea Sangha in Fairfax, Marin County, California and is a member of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association.[8] Brown makes his living by teaching meditation in his home and by giving baking and cooking workshops at Zen centers in the United States, Canada and Austria. Brown tells his students that "every dough is different, just as every day is different". He also says that baking and living both come down to the same thing: "developing attention and awareness".[3]

He combines zazen with qigong, yoga, and handwriting change, so that some critics call his teaching style "Zen Lite". Brown told Carol Ness, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, "I'm not insistent on the forms. We're not all serious and sober. We sit and we talk."[3]

Brown is the subject of the 2007 documentary film How to Cook Your LifebyDoris Dörrie,[9] in which he and Dörrie suggest embracing joy and spirit within food habits.[3]『When you’re cooking, you’re not just cooking, you’re not just working on food...you’re also working on yourself, you’re working on other people.』He also appears in Spiritual Revolution (2008), a less well-known film by Alan Swyer.[10]

Books[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Hodgman, Ann (March 30, 2003). "Flour Power". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved March 25, 2012.
  • ^ a b Brown, Edward Espe (2011). The Complete Tassajara Cookbook: Recipes, Techniques, and Reflections from the Famed Zen Kitchen. Shambhala Publications. pp. 316–319. ISBN 978-1-59030-829-5.
  • ^ a b c d Ness, Carol (October 21, 2007). "Edward Espe Brown takes Zen cooking from Tassajara to movies". San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst. Retrieved March 25, 2012.
  • ^ "Brown, Kainei Edward Espe". Sweeping Zen. Archived from the original on October 13, 2011. Retrieved March 26, 2015.
  • ^ a b HarperCollins authors. "Edward Espe Brown".
  • ^ Suzuki, Shunryu (2002). Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-095754-9.
  • ^ Madison, Deborah; Brown, Edward Espe (2001) [1987]. The Greens Cookbook. Broadway (Bantam). ISBN 0-7679-0823-6.
  • ^ "Kainei Brown". Soto Zen Buddhist Association (SZBA). Retrieved March 27, 2012.
  • ^ "How to Cook Your Life". Internet Movie Database. Amazon. 2007. Retrieved March 25, 2012.
  • ^ "Spiritual Revolution". Internet Movie Database. Amazon. 2008. Retrieved March 25, 2012.
  • ^ Ann Hodgman (March 30, 2003). "Flour Power". The New York Times.
  • External links[edit]


    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edward_Espe_Brown&oldid=1146315945"

    Categories: 
    1945 births
    Living people
    American religious writers
    American Zen Buddhists
    Food and drink in the San Francisco Bay Area
    People from San Anselmo, California
    Religious leaders from the San Francisco Bay Area
    San Francisco Zen Center
    Soto Zen Buddhists
    Vegetarian cookbook writers
    Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area
    Zen Buddhism writers
    Zen Buddhist spiritual teachers
    Hidden categories: 
    Pages using religious biography with multiple nickname parameters
    Articles having same image on Wikidata and Wikipedia
    CS1 maint: location missing publisher
    Articles with ISNI identifiers
    Articles with VIAF identifiers
    Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
    Articles with BNF identifiers
    Articles with BNFdata identifiers
    Articles with GND identifiers
    Articles with LCCN identifiers
    Articles with NTA identifiers
    Articles with PLWABN identifiers
    Articles with DTBIO identifiers
    Articles with SNAC-ID identifiers
    Articles with SUDOC identifiers
     



    This page was last edited on 24 March 2023, at 03:31 (UTC).

    Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.



    Privacy policy

    About Wikipedia

    Disclaimers

    Contact Wikipedia

    Code of Conduct

    Developers

    Statistics

    Cookie statement

    Mobile view



    Wikimedia Foundation
    Powered by MediaWiki