Books
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Nine-Headed Dragon River
Zen Journals 1969-1982
In August 1968, naturalist-explorer Peter Matthiessen returned from Africa to his home in Sagaponack, Long Island, to find three Zen masters in his driveway—guests of his wife, a new student of Zen. Thirteen years later, Matthiessen was ordained a Buddhist monk. Written in the same format as his best-selling The Snow Leopard, Nine-Headed Dragon River reveals Matthiessen's most daring adventure of all: the quest for his spiritual… Read More
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No Beginning, No End
The Intimate Heart of Zen
- edited by
- Peter Levitt
In No Beginning, No End, Zen master Jakusho Kwong-roshi shows us how to treasure the ordinary activities of our daily lives through an understanding of simple Buddhist practices and ideas. The author’s spontaneous, poetic, and pragmatic teachings—so reminiscent of his spiritual predecessor Shunryu Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)—transport us on an exciting journey into the very heart of Zen and its meaningful traditions. Because Kwong-roshi can transmit the most intimate… Read More
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One Robe, One Bowl
The Zen Poetry of Ryokan
The hermit-monk Ryokan, long beloved in Japan both for his poetry and for his character, belongs in the tradition of the great Zen eccentrics of China and Japan. His reclusive life and celebration of nature and the natural life also bring to mind his younger American contemporary, Thoreau. Ryokan's poetry is that of the mature Zen master, its deceptive simplicity revealing an art that surpasses artifice. Although Ryokan was born… Read More
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Only Companion
Japanese Poems of Love and Longing
Written by court princesses, exiled officials, Zen priests, and recluses, the 150 poems translated here represent the rich diversity of Japan’s poetic tradition. Varying in tone from the sensuous and erotic to the profoundly spiritual, each poem captures a sense of the poignant beauty and longing known only in the fleeting experience of the moment. The translator has selected these five-line tanka—one of the great traditional verse forms of Japanese… Read More
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Ordinary Enlightenment
A Translation of the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra
This classic scripture of Mahayana Buddhism and Zen emphasizes spiritual practice in the midst of secular life. Composed in about the second century CE, The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra tells the story of a householder named Vimalakirti who lived a worldly life while following the Bodhisattva path. This sutra is particularly applicable to Western students of Buddhism because it teaches that people in the secular life can practice Buddhism… Read More
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The Path of the Human Being
Zen Teachings on the Bodhisattva Way
Dennis Merzel, one of the most highly regarded American Zen teachers, explains how meditation can gradually lead us to becoming more and more familiar with our minds, allowing us to better understand ourselves and the nature of human life. He explores the practice of meditation in depth, as well as a range of related topics including: connecting meditation practice to everyday life, understanding central Zen concepts, working with a teacher,… Read More
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Practice Drills for Japanese Swordsmanship
To become an expert swordsman, one must pay close attention to detail, be highly self-critical, and practice diligently every day under the guidance of a good teacher. Unfortunately, contact time with a worthy mentor is limited for most. Practice Drills for Japanese Swordsmanship fills this obvious gap in the training of the modern swordsman by providing bokuto (wooden sword) drills to supplement the formal class activity of forms practice. Both… Read More
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Rational Zen
The Mind of Dogen Zenji
- edited by
- Thomas Cleary
Zen has often been portrayed as being illogical and mystifying, even aimed at the destruction of the rational intellect. These new translations of the thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen—one of most original and important Zen writers—illustrate the rational side of Zen, which has been obscured through the centuries, tainting people's understanding of it. Rational Zen consists of enlightening selections from Dogen's two masterworks, "Treasury of Eyes of True Teaching"… Read More
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Record of Things Heard
From the Treasury of the Eye of the True Teaching
This Zen classic is a collection of talks by the great Japanese Zen Master Dogen, the founder of the Soto School. They were recorded by Ejo, one of Dogen's first disciples, and later his foremost successor. The talks and stories in this volume were written in the thirteenth-century Japan, a time when Buddhism was undergoing a "dark age" of misinterpretation and corruption. It was in this atmosphere that Dogen attempted… Read More
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The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu
Joshu Jushin, also known as Chao-chou Ts'ung-shen (778–897), was one of the great Ch'an (Zen) masters of ancient China. It is said of Joshu that his "lips emitted light" because his manner of teaching was to speak words that so profoundly expressed Zen realization that students often had immediate insight. It was this ability to express the true nature of the enlightened mind in a way that was pithy and… Read More
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