Capturing in verse the ageless spirit of Zen, these 150 poems reflect the insight of famed masters from the ninth century to the nineteenth. The translators, in collaboration with Zen Master Taigan Takayama, have furnished illuminating commentary on the poems and arranged them so as to facilitate comparison between the Chinese and Japanese Zen traditions. The poems themselves, rendered in clear and powerful English, offer a unique approach to Zen Buddhism, "compared with which," as Lucien Stryk writes, "the many disquisitions on its meaning are as dust to living earth. We see in these poems, as in all important religious art, East or West, revelations of spiritual truths touched by a kind of divinity."

Nobel Peace Prize nominee, internationally renowned Zen master and bestselling author Thich Nhat Hanh shares his mindful techniques in mastering the art of living. 'Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout...a scholar of immense intellectual capacity' -- Martin Luther King '[He] shows us the connection between personal, inner peace and peace on earth' -- His Holiness the Dalai Lama 'The father of mindfulness' -- Irish Times 'Easy to read and understand' -- ***** Reader review 'Uplifting, questioning, and reaffirming' -- ***** Reader review 'An enlightening book by a truly enlightened being' -- ***** Reader review 'Compulsive reading' -- ***** Reader review ''The Art of Living' is probably the best Buddhist book I've read so far' -- ***** Reader review ************************************************************************** Master the art of living from one of the world's most revered spiritual leaders. Thich Nhat Hanh, the world's most renowned Zen master, turns his mindful attention to the most important subject of all - the art of living. The bestselling author of The Miracle of Mindfulness presents, for the first time, seven transformative meditations that open up new perspectives on our lives, our relationships and our interconnectedness with the world around us. He reveals an art of living in mindfulness that helps us answer life's deepest questions, experience the happiness and freedom we desire and face ageing and dying with curiosity and joy instead of fear. Stimulating and inspiring, this book teaches us the importance of looking inside ourselves and developing compassion, before we can turn to our relationships at home and in the wider world. Full of remarkable stories from Thich Nhat Hanh's own experiences and mindful practices for engaging with life, this will be a book that will help us generate happiness, understanding and love so we can live deeply in each moment of our life, right where we are. Thich Nhat Hanh is the subject of the major documentary Walk With Me narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch

The Linji lu, or Record of Linji, ranks among the most famous and influential texts of the Chan and Zen traditions. Ostensibly containing the teachings of the Tang dynasty figure Linji Yixuan, the text has generally been accepted at face value, as reliable records of the teachings of this historical figure. In this book, Albert Welter offers the first systematic study of the Linji lu in a western language. Welter places the Linji lu in its historical context, showing how the text was manipulated over time by the Linji faction. Rather than recording the teachings of the illustrious patriarch of legend, the text reflects the motivations of Linji faction descendants in the Song dynasty (960-1279). The story of the Linji lu is not simply the story of one heroic figure, Linji Yixuan, but the story of an entire movement that sought validation through retrospective image making. The success of this effort is seen in Chan's rise to prominence. Drawing on the findings of Japanese scholars, Welter moves beyond the minutiae of textual analysis to place the development of Linji lu within the broader forces shaping the development of the Chinese Records of Sayings literary genre as a whole.

First published in 1983. Dogen was one of the great Zen masters of the Middle Ages in Japan, and in this book Masanobu Takahashi, a leading authority on Dogen, explains his thought in the clearest terms. Professor Takahashi has drawn on many years of study and on deep understanding of the whole structure of Dogen's thought to give a lucid account of Dogen's complete philosophy. This first systematic introduction to Dogen's thought to be published in English, translated by Yuzuru Bobuoka.

In Nietzsche and Zen: Self-Overcoming Without a Self, Andre van der Braak engages Nietzsche in a dialogue with four representatives of the Buddhist Zen tradition: Nagarjuna (c. 150-250), Linji (d. 860), Dogen (1200-1253), and Nishitani (1900-1990). In doing so, he reveals Nietzsche's thought as a philosophy of continuous self-overcoming, in which even the notion of "self" has been overcome. Van der Braak begins by analyzing Nietzsche's relationship to Buddhism and status as a transcultural thinker, recalling research on Nietzsche and Zen to date and setting out the basic argument of the study. He continues by examining the practices of self-overcoming in Nietzsche and Zen, comparing Nietzsche's radical skepticism with that of Nagarjuna and comparing Nietzsche's approach to truth to Linji's. Nietzsche's methods of self-overcoming are compared to Dogen's zazen, or sitting meditation practice, and Dogen's notion of forgetting the self. These comparisons and others build van der Braak's case for a criticism of Nietzsche informed by the ideas of Zen Buddhism and a criticism of Zen Buddhism seen through the Western lens of Nietzsche - coalescing into one world philosophy. This treatment, focusing on one of the most fruitful areas of research within contemporary comparative and intercultural philosophy, will be useful to Nietzsche scholars, continental philosophers, and comparative philosophers.

Within the context of a careful review of the psychology of religion and prior non-Lacanian literature on the subject, Raul Moncayo builds a bridge between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism that steers clear of reducing one to the other or creating a simplistic synthesis between the two. Instead, by making a purposeful "One-mistake" of "unknown knowing", this book remains consistent with the analytic unconscious and continues in the splendid tradition of Bodhidharma who did not know "Who" he was and told Emperor Wu that there was no merit in building temples for Buddhism. Both traditions converge on the teaching that "true subject is no ego", or on the realisation that a new subject requires the symbolic death or deconstruction of imaginary ego-identifications. Although Lacanian psychoanalysis is known for its focus on language and Zen is considered a form of transmission outside the scriptures, Zen is not without words while Lacanian psychoanalysis stresses the senseless letter of the Real or of a jouissance written on and with the body.

Empowering Bernard Lonergan's Legacy offers an interdisciplinary approach to Lonergan's work. It presents a series of five "feedback matrices" to situate his work within a historical context. The matrices also serve to establish foundations for an interdisciplinary ethics and a method for interreligious dialogue. "Feedback" and "matrix" are key, but previously unstressed, notions in Lonergan's work. The book's final two collaborative feedback matrices could best be implemented in a proposed international Lonergan association. Raymaker argues that without such an association, Lonergan's breakthrough method cannot reach its interdisciplinary and collaborative potential. One of Lonergan's most important achievements was his development of foundations for the sciences, ethics, and interreligious dialogue. One can best empower Lonergan's legacy through a correct understanding and implementation of how the data of human consciousness affects all human knowledge and activities.

Beyond Duality and Polarization explores an experience-based learning model, the Phenomenal Patterning approach for personal transformation. Rather than traditional prescriptive learning, methods of personal discovery help us understand how the human mind actually functions. Dr. Koziey introduces two modern Zen skills, watching and catharsis, to increase self-awareness. This frees us from habitual patterns we learned in childhood. We identify the patterns of our own thinking and behaving and see that many of the problems we face are self-created. Repressions are revealed in the shadow psyche and we are able to dissolve our negativity. The overriding message is that when we stop fighting, life starts flowing again.

In Nietzsche and Zen: Self-Overcoming Without a Self, Andre van der Braak engages Nietzsche in a dialogue with four representatives of the Buddhist Zen tradition: Nagarjuna (c. 150-250), Linji (d. 860), Dogen (1200-1253), and Nishitani (1900-1990). In doing so, he reveals Nietzsche's thought as a philosophy of continuous self-overcoming, in which even the notion of "self" has been overcome. Van der Braak begins by analyzing Nietzsche's relationship to Buddhism and status as a transcultural thinker, recalling research on Nietzsche and Zen to date and setting out the basic argument of the study. He continues by examining the practices of self-overcoming in Nietzsche and Zen, comparing Nietzsche's radical skepticism with that of Nagarjuna and comparing Nietzsche's approach to truth to Linji's. Nietzsche's methods of self-overcoming are compared to Dogen's zazen, or sitting meditation practice, and Dogen's notion of forgetting the self. These comparisons and others build van der Braak's case for a criticism of Nietzsche informed by the ideas of Zen Buddhism and a criticism of Zen Buddhism seen through the Western lens of Nietzsche - coalescing into one world philosophy. This treatment, focusing on one of the most fruitful areas of research within contemporary comparative and intercultural philosophy, will be useful to Nietzsche scholars, continental philosophers, and comparative philosophers."

'The perfect guide for a course correction in life' Deepak Chopra If we open our eyes and see clearly it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant An insightful exploration into the origins and history of Zen Buddhism from pioneering Zen scholar Alan Watts. With a rare combination of freshness and lucidity, Watts explores the principles of Zen and how it can revolutionize our daily life.

Charlotte Joko Beck is one of the most popular Zen teachers currently teaching in the West. This beautifully written book is a Zen guide to the problems of daily living, love, relationships, work, fear and suffering. Beck describes how to be in the present and living each moment to the full.

What kind of person should I strive to be? What ideals should I pursue in my life? These basic human questions and others like them are components of the overall question that guides this book: What is enlightenment? As Dale Wright argues, any serious practitioner of human life, religious or not, confronts the challenge of living an authentic life, of overcoming common human disabilities like greed, hatred, and delusion that give rise to excessive suffering. Why then, Wright asks, is this essential question often avoided, even discouraged among Buddhists? One reason frequently cited by Buddhists is that pondering a distant goal might be a waste of energy that would be better applied to practice: Quiet the flow of obsessive thinking, put yourself in a mindful state of presence, and let enlightenment take care of itself. In this book, however, Wright contends that pondering this question is meditative practice-that attentive inquiry of this kind is essential as the starting point and guide for any mindful practice of life. Meditative reflection on the meaning of enlightenment focuses us on our aim and direction in life. It guides us in shaping our practices, our ideals, and the kinds of lives we will live. Asking what enlightenment is as a basic form of meditation helps to activate our lives and get transformative practice underway. From Wright's perspective, there is no more important question to ask than this one. What is Buddhist Enlightenment? offers a wide-ranging exploration of issues that have a bearing on the contemporary meaning of enlightenment, including a concluding section with 10 theses that answer the title's question. Written by a leading scholar of Buddhism, the book balances deep learning and an accessible style, offering valuable insights for students, scholars, and practitioners alike. While he takes an examination of what enlightenment has been in past Buddhist traditions as his point of departure, Wright's historical considerations yield to the question that our lives press upon us-what kinds of lives should we aspire to live here, now, and into the future?

Offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins: random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we can't otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities -- our capacity for love, our appreciation of beauty, our altruistic capability, our creativity and intelligence -- have come into being and evolved. How we think about our origin matters: if we think we are machines living among other machines, we will act accordingly. By showing evolution as a creative and intelligent process with its own inherent logic, THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN NATURE resolves the dilemma of how to have, at the same time, both truth and ethics. Instead of starting in an imagined remote and 'uncertain past' and moving to the present, this book starts at the certain and 'immediate present' and works back. That consciousness, creativity, and intelligence exist is certain. The question is: how can these have evolved? Dr Albert Low has made a study of human nature throughout his life. To write this book he draws on his prolonged meditations on creativity and the human condition, his years of providing psychological and spiritual counseling, and a wide-ranging knowledge of Western psychology, philosophy, and science.

This title is originally published in 1980. Dogen was the founder of the Soto School of Zen and one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Japanese Buddhism. When originally published, this historical and textual study was the first to examine in detail the line of continuity between Dogen and his Chinese predecessors, through his Chinese master, Ju-ching.

The principles of Zen philosophy have been applied to professions as varied as motorcycle maintenance and baseball. In "The Quest for Self" author Takeshi Iizuka shows how he has himself applied Zen principles in business. Iizuka starts from the realization that life is but a single existence, and this leads to his reflections about how best we should live our lives. Iizuka teaches a management style that does not stand in conflict with the fulfilled and meaningful life that is based on Zen principles. Drawing on both eastern and western philosophies, "The Quest for Self" strives to help others find meaning and purpose in life and business.

This work shows how the Mahayanistic views of life and the world differs markedly from that of the Theravada, which is generally taken as Buddhism by occidentals, to explain how the religion of Buddha has adapted itself to its environment in the Far East. For this purpose, out of thirteen Japanese sects, the Zen sect has been singled out, not only because of the great influence it has exercised on the nation, but also because of the unique position it holds among the established religious systems of the world.

As regards Japan, it was first introduced into the island as the faith for the Samurai or the military class, and molded the characters of many distinguished soldiers and statesmen.

Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics explores the implications of Zen Buddhist teachings and practices for our moral relations with the natural world. At once an accessible introduction to Zen and an important contribution to the debate concerning the environmental implications of the tradition, this book will appeal both to readers unfamiliar with East Asian thought and to those well versed in the field. In elucidating the philosophical implications of Zen, the author draws upon both Eastern and Western philosophy, situating the Zen understanding of nature within the Buddhist tradition, as well as relating it to the ideas of key Western philosophers such as Aristotle, Kant and Heidegger. These philosophical reflections on Zen are used to shed light on some prominent debates in contemporary environmental ethics concerning such issues as the intrinsic value of nature.

Koans are enigmatic spiritual formulas used for religious training in the Zen Buddhist tradition. This innovative religious practice is one of the most distinctive elements of this tradition, which originated in medieval China and spread to Japan and Korea. Perhaps no dimension of Asian religious has attracted so much interest in the West, and its influence is apparent from beat poetry to deconstructive literary critisism. The essays collected in this volume argue that our understanding of the Koan tradition has been severely limited. The authors try to undermine stereotypes and problematic interpretations by examining previously unrecognized factors in the formation of the tradition, and by highlighting the rich complexity and remarkable diversity of Koan practice and literature.

The essays in this volume attempt to place the Chan and Zen tradition in their ritual and cultural contexts, looking at various aspects heretofore largely (and unduly) ignored. In particular, they show the extent to which these traditions, despite their claim to uniqueness, were indebted to larger trends in East Asian Buddhism, such as the cults of icons, relics and the monastic robe.
The book emphasises the importance of ritual for a proper understanding of this allegedly anti-ritualistic form of Buddhism. In doing so, it deconstructs the Chan/Zen 'rhetoric of immediacy' and its ideological underpinnings.

SAMURAI ZEN: the Warrior Koans brings together 100 of the rare riddles which represent the core spiritual discipline of Japan's ancient Samurai tradition. Dating from the thirteenth-century these records of Japan's Kamakura temples, are traditionally guarded with a secrecy, and they reflect the earliest manifestation of pure Zen in Japan. Created by Zen Masters for their warrior pupils the Japanese koans use incidents from everyday life - a broken tea-cup, a water-jar, a cloth - to bring the warrior pupils of the Samurai to the Zen realization.

Contents:
Preface Part I 1. The Zen Master Wept 2. Monks and Soldiers Move on their Stomachs 3. The Zen of Assassination 4. Oomori Sôgen - the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of Zen 5. Zen Master Dôgen Goes to War - The Militarist and Anti-Semitic Writings of Yasutani Haku'un 6. Carrying Zen to China 7. Zen "Selflessness" in Japanese Militarism: Section One: The General and the Zen Master Zen; Section Two: The Foundation of Military Spirit Part II 8. Buddhist War Bereavement 9. Confessions of a Buddhist Chaplain 10. Buddhism - The Last Refuge of War Criminals: Section One: Colonel Tsuji Masanobu Goes Underground; Section Two: Finding Religion on Death Row 11. Buddhism - A Top Secret Religion in Wartime Japan; Epilogue, Notes, Works Cited, Index

Following the critically acclaimed Zen at War (1997), Brian Victoria explores the intimate relationship between Japanese institutional Buddhism and militarism during the Second World War.
Victoria reveals for the first time, through examination of the wartime writings of the Japanese military itself, that the Zen school's view of life and death was deliberately incorporated into the military's programme of 'spiritual education' in order to develop a fanatical military spirit in both soldiers and civilians.  Furthermore, that D. T. Suzuki, the most famous exponent of Zen in the West, is shown to have been a wartime proponent of this Zen-inspired viewpoint which enabled Japanese soldiers to leave for the battlefield already resigned to death.  Victoria takes us onto the naval battlefield in the company of warrior-monk and Rinzai Zen Master Nakajima Genjô.  We view the war in China through the eyes of a Buddhist military chaplain.  The book also examines the relationship to Buddhism of Japan's seven Class-A war criminals who were hung by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in 1948.
A highly controversial study, this book will be of interest, first and foremost, to students of Zen as well as all those studying the history of this period, not to mention anyone concerned with the perennial question of the 'proper' relationship between religion and the state.

Contents:
Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Glossary of Terms Introductions Part 1: Australian Buddhism in Context The Origins of Buddhism Japanese Zen Buddhism Buddhism in the West Japanese Zen in the West Buddhism in Australia Japanese Zen in Australia Part 2: Australian Buddhism in Transition Practical Expressions Sociological Expressions Ideological Expressions Characteristics of Western Buddhism Part 3: Models of Change Issues in Adaptation Theories of Change Breaking Down the Boundaries Appendix A: Japanese Zen Buddhist Groups in Australia Appendix B: Diamond Sangha Affiliates World-wide Appendix C: Agreements Concerning the Structure and Function of the Diamond Sangha Endnotes Bibliography Index

Buddhism first came to the West many centuries ago through the Greeks, who also influenced some of the culture and practices of Indian Buddhism. As Buddhism has spread beyond India, it has always been affected by the indigenous traditions of its new homes. When Buddhism appeared in America and Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, it encountered contemporary psychology and psychotherapy, rather than religious traditions. Since the 1990s, many efforts have been made by Westerners to analyze and integrate the similarities and differences between Buddhism and it therapeutic ancestors, particularly Jungian psychology.
Taking Japanese Zen-Buddhism as its starting point, this volume is a collection of critiques, commentaries, and histories about a particular meeting of Buddhism and psychology. It is based on the Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy conference that took place in Kyoto, Japan in 1999, expanded by additional papers, and includes:
* new perspectives on Buddhism and psychology, East and West
* cautions and insights about potential confusions
* traditional ideas in a new light.
It also features a new translation of the conversation between Schin'ichi Hisamatsu and Carl Jung which took place in 1958.
Awakening and Insight expresses a meeting of minds, Japanese and Western, in a way that opens new questions about and sheds new light on our subjective lives. It will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and analytical psychology, as well as anyone involved in Zen Buddhism.

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