Sitting With Koans

Author : John Daido Loori
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0861717643
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sitting with Koans written by John Daido Loori and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Zen tradition has just two main meditative practices: shikantaza, or "just sitting"; and introspection guided by the powerful Zen teaching stories called koans. Following in the tradition of The Art of Just Sitting (endorsed as a "A book we have needed for a long, long time"), this new anthology from John Daido Loori illuminates the subtle practice of koan study from many different points of view. Includes writings by: Robert Aitken William Bodiford Robert Buswell Roko Sherry Chayat Francis Dojun Cook Eihei Dogen Heinrich Dumoulin Hakuin Ekaku Victor Sogen Hori Keizan Jokin Philip Kapleau Chung-fen Ming-Pen Taizan Maezumi Dennis Genpo Merzel Soen Nakagawa Ruth Fuller Sasaki Sokei-an Sasaki Nyogen Senzaki Zenkei Shibayama Eido Shimano Philip Yampolsky Hakuun Yasutani Wayne Yokoyama Katsushiro Yoshizawa

Author : James Ishmael Ford
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1614293155
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Introduction to Zen Koans written by James Ishmael Ford and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indispensible guide to koans, teaching the reader about the importance of lineage, the practice of “just sitting,” and koan practice as paths to awakening. “This marvelous book opens the treasure house of Zen and yet, happily, does not dispel its mystery. James Ford, an excellent storyteller and longtime Zen practitioner, presents a detailed and beautiful description of the craft of zazen, including “just sitting” and various forms of breath meditation—but focuses primarily on koan introspection. The power of koans, these 'public cases' from China, has never ceased to enrich my own experience of Zen. They are a medium of exploration of the history, culture, and view of Zen, but most importantly are a medium of awakening. James Ford is fundamentally a koan person, and for this, the book is particularly rich, opening the practice of koans in a splendid way. I am grateful for his long experience as a teacher and practitioner of this rare and powerful practice. Since the word koan has found its way into popular English usage, I am grateful too for the more nuanced and fertile view of koans that Ford presents. His definition of the word is telling: “a koan points to something of deep importance, and invites us to stand in that place.” He has also has created a wonderful translation of the Heart Sutra, Zen’s central scripture—and carefully opens up the heart of the Heart Sutra through scholarship and practice. Rich in textual sources and woven throughout with the perspectives of contemporary teachers, Introduction to Zen Koans sheds new light on ancient teachings. Through it, the reader will discover the importance of lineage, the traceless traces of the Zen ancestors, and the places of “just sitting” and koan practice as paths to awakening, as the great doorways into Zen.” —from the foreword by Joan Halifax

Author : John Daido Loori
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0861719492
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Art of Just Sitting written by John Daido Loori and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-06-10 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shikantaza--or "just sitting"--is one of the simplest, most subtle forms of meditation, and one of the most easily misunderstood. This peerless volume brings together a wealth of writings, from the Buddha himself to Bodhidharma and Dogen and many of modern Zen Buddhism's most influential masters, all pointing directly to the heart of this powerful practice. Edited by one of America's pre-eminent Zen teachers, this book is a rich resource for wisdom seekers and scholars alike.

Author : Richard Shrobe
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
ISBN 13 : 1930485514
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Elegant Failure written by Richard Shrobe and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zen koans are stories of exchanges between Zen masters and their disciples at the moment of enlightenment or near-enlightenment. These stories have long fascinated Western readers because of their wisdom, humor, and enigmatic quality. Drawing on over thirty years of practice and teaching, Richard Shrobe (himself a recognized Zen Master) has selected twenty-two cases from The Blue Cliff Record, Book of Serenity, and Wu-men-kuan that he has found to be deeply meaningful and helpful for meditation practice. In Elegant Failure, he provides a wealth of background information and personal anecdotes for each koan that help to illuminate its meaning without detracting from its paradoxical nature. As Shrobe reminds us, "The main core of Zen teaching is the bare bones of what is there. In a certain sense, embellishing a story takes away from the central teaching: Don’t embellish anything, just be with it as it is."

Author : John Tarrant
Publisher : Shambhala Publications
ISBN 13 : 9780834823495
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bring Me the Rhinoceros written by John Tarrant and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bring Me the Rhinoceros is an unusual guide to happiness and a can opener for your thinking. For fifteen hundred years, Zen koans have been passed down through generations of masters, usually in private encounters between teacher and student. This book deftly retells more than a dozen traditional koans, which are partly paradoxical questions dangerous to your beliefs and partly treasure boxes of ancient wisdom. Koans show that you don’t have to impress people or change into an improved, more polished version of yourself. Instead you can find happiness by unbuilding, unmaking, throwing overboard, and generally subverting unhappiness. John Tarrant brings the heart of the koan tradition out into the open, reminding us that the old wisdom remains as vital as ever, a deep resource available to anyone in any place or time.

Author : James Ishmael Ford
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0861716434
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Book of Mu written by James Ishmael Ford and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the Zen principle of mu and presents the writings of over forty teachers on the practice of mu.

Author : Out Of Print
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 9780465080793
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sound Of 1 Hand written by Out Of Print and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 1975-12-17 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When The Sound of the One Hand came out in Japan in 1916 it caused a scandal. Zen was a secretive practice, its wisdom relayed from master to novice in strictest privacy. That a handbook existed recording not only the riddling koans that are central to Zen teaching but also detailing the answers to them seemed to mark Zen as rote, not revelatory. For all that, The Sound of the One Hand opens the door to Zen like no other book. Including koans that go back to the master who first brought the koan teaching method from China to Japan in the eighteenth century, this book offers, in the words of the translator, editor, and Zen initiate Yoel Hoffmann, the clearest, most detailed, and most correct picture of Zen that can be found. What we have here is an extraordinary introduction to Zen thought as lived thought, a treasury of problems, paradoxes, and performance that will appeal to artists, writers, and philosophers as well as Buddhists and students of religion."

Author : Gyomay M. Kubose
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Zen Koans written by Gyomay M. Kubose and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Steven Heine
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 9780791417737
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dōgen and the Kōan Tradition written by Steven Heine and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has three major goals in critically examining the historical and philosophical relation between the writings of Dōgen and the Zen koan tradition. First, it introduces and evaluates recent Japanese scholarship concerning Dōgen's two Shōbōgenzō texts, the Japanese (Kana) collection of ninety-two fascicles on Buddhist topics and the Chinese (Mana) collection of three hundred koan cases also known as the Shōbōgenzō Sanbyakusoku. Second, it develops a new methodology for clarifying the development of the koan tradition and the relation between intellectual history and multifarious interpretations of koan cases based on postmodern literary criticism. Third, the book's emphasis on a literary critical methodology challenges the conventional reading of koans stressing the role of psychological impasse culminating in silence.

Author : Steven Heine
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Zen Koans written by Steven Heine and published by . This book was released on 2014-08-31 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Koans, such as What is the sound of one hand clapping and Does a dog have Buddha-nature? are concise, confusing and often contradictory sayings expressed by ancient masters that serve as the centerpiece of Zen Buddhist learning and training on several levels. First, Koans form the central component of a remarkable body of literature contained in voluminous collections produced in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These works include various styles of elegant poetic and eloquent prose commentaries on cryptic dialogues. The Koan compilations were greatly influenced by one of the high points in the distinguished history of the literary tradition in East Asia. The texts appealed to intellectuals in China, Japan and Korea, who sought spiritual fulfillment through interpreting elaborate rhetoric related to mysterious metaphysical exchanges.