Edward Espe Brown began cooking and practicing Zen in 1965 and was ordained as a Zen priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1971, who gave him the name Jusan Kainei, “Longevity Mountain Peaceful Sea.” He received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman in 1996.
Ed was Tassajara Zen Mountain Center’s first head cook (tenzo) and has served as head resident teacher (tanto) at each of San Francisco Zen Center's residential temples: Tassajara, Green Gulch Farm, and City Center. He has led meditation retreats and cooking classes throughout the United States and internationally, including in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, the Czech Republic, and England.
Beginning with The Tassajara Bread Book (1970), Ed has taught and inspired cooks and bakers to realize their capacity to nourish themselves and others through their work in the kitchen. He is the author of Tassajara Cooking, The Tassajara Recipe Book, Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings, and No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice (2018). He also co-authored The Greens Cookbook with Deborah Madison, and his The Complete Tassajara Cookbook (2009) brings together parts of three earlier works. He edited a collection of Suzuki Roshi lectures, Not Always So. The 55th Anniversary edition of The Tassajara Bread Book was released in 2025.
Ed’s work and teaching are also the subject of Doris Dörrie’s feature-length documentary How to Cook Your Life (2007). Ed is the founding teacher of the Peaceful Sea Sangha.