Essential Zen

by Kazuaki Tanahashi & Tensho David Schneider

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ESSENTIAL ZEN"Essential Zen is at once a charming collection of teachings and a challenging array of ideas. For any reader who has a wish to hear the type of material presented by a good teacher of Zen, these readings provide one way to enter into that world. In the case of those who know all about Zen, it will be a refreshing review, delightful to read with its particular flavor."Can a book contain the essence of Zen? Tensho David Schneider reminds us that "Zen prides itself on being a teaching 'outside words and letters,'" and that therefore, "the essential Zen, in book form, would more likely consist of blank pages; a reader fills them in. Or not."Yet the teachings of ancient Chinese masters were recorded by their students, discussed, sometimes chanted, and given out as objects of meditation or koans. And, as Kazuaki Tanahashi points out, "However weird or enigmatic they are, or perhaps because of those very qualities, Zen stories have touched the hearts of people for over a thousand years."In Essential Zen, Tanahashi and Schneider present many of the classic writings regarded as "essential" in the East Asian Zen traditions along with a vibrant assortment of American Zen stories, poems, and teachings that reflect the present flowering of Zen in the West. At turns spare, elegant, witty, deeply serious, and marvelously humorous, these are reflections on everything from practical meditation techniques and the tasks of daily life to death, the environment, and activism.Including a history of Zen and its practices, this is a wonderfully lucid, lively, and comprehensive venture into the enduring, evolving, and essential heart of Zen.