Zen Confidential

Author: Shozan Jack Haubner
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1611800331
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
A screenwriter and stand-up comic’s hilarious and profound account of his journey into Zen monkhood—featuring a foreword by Leonard Cohen Shozan Jack Haubner is the David Sedaris of Zen Buddhism: a brilliant humorist and analyst of human foibles, whose hilarity is informed by the profound insights that have dawned on him—as he's stumbled and fallen into spirituall practice. Raised in a truly strange family of Mel-Gibson-esque Catholic extremists, he went on to study philosophy (becoming very un-Catholic in the process) and to pursue a career as a screenwriter and stand-up comic in the clubs of L.A. How he went from life in the fast lane to life on the stationary meditation cushion is the subject of this laugh-out-loud funny account of his experiences. Whether he’s dealing with the pranks of a juvenile delinquent assistant in the monastery kitchen or experiencing profound compassion in the presence of his spiritual teacher, Haubner’s voice is one you'll be compelled to listen to. Not only because it’s highly entertaining, but because of its remarkable insight into the human condition.

Zen Confidential

Author: Shozan Jack Haubner
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834829053
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Single White Monk

Author: Shozan Jack Haubner
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834840944
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
Think the life of a Zen monk is all serenity, peace, and austerity? Think again. Here, Shozan Jack Haubner gives an often-hilarious, always-candid account of what it’s really like behind those monastery walls. Haubner’s adventures include memories of his dysfunctional Midwestern family that drove him ultimately to declare, “I think I should be a monk!” to a madcap account of the night he got stoned and snuck out of the monastery, alongside more sobering accounts such as his life-threatening brush with illness, the profound impact of a dear friend’s death, and reflections on the controversy that rocked his Zen community. That he finds timeless wisdom in both the tragic and the absurd is a tribute to Haubner's gifts as a writer and humorist, and to his clear insights into the nature of self and what the practice of Zen is all about.

Zen Sand

Author: Victor Sogen Hori
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824865677
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 785

Book Description
Zen Sand is a classic collection of verses aimed at aiding practitioners of kôan meditation to negotiate the difficult relationship between insight and language. As such it represents a major contribution to both Western Zen practice and English-language Zen scholarship. In Japan the traditional Rinzai Zen kôan curriculum includes the use of jakugo, or "capping phrases." Once a monk has successfully replied to a kôan, the Zen master orders the search for a classical verse to express the monk’s insight into the kôan. Special collections of these jakugo were compiled as handbooks to aid in that search. Until now, Zen students in the West, lacking this important resource, have been severely limited in carrying out this practice. Zen Sand combines and translates two standard jakugo handbooks and opens the way for incorporating this important tradition fully into Western Zen practice. For the scholar, Zen Sand provides a detailed description of the jakugo practice and its place in the overall kôan curriculum, as well as a brief history of the Zen phrase book. This volume also contributes to the understanding of East Asian culture in a broader sense.

Thank You and OK!

Author: David Chadwick
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834826860
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 474

Book Description
David Chadwick, a Texas-raised wanderer, college dropout, bumbling social activist, and hobbyhorse musician, began his study under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1966. In 1988 Chadwick flew to Japan to begin a four-year period of voluntary exile and remedial Zen education. In Thank You and OK! he recounts his experiences both inside and beyond the monastery walls and offers insightful portraits of the characters he knew in that world—the bickering monks, the patient abbot, the trotting housewives, the ominous insects, the bewildered bureaucrats, and the frustrating English-language students—as they worked inexorably toward initiating him into the mysterious ways of Japan. Whether you're interested in Japan, Buddhism, or exotic travel writing, this book is great fun. To learn more about the author, David Chadwick, visit www.cuke.com.

Zen in Brazil

Author: Cristina Rocha
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824829766
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
Widely perceived as an overwhelmingly Catholic nation, Brazil has experienced in recent years a growth in the popularity of Buddhism among the urban, cosmopolitan upper classes. In the 1990s Buddhism in general and Zen in particular were adopted by national elites, the media, and popular culture as a set of humanistic values to counter the rampant violence and crime in Brazilian society. Despite national media attention, the rapidly expanding Brazilian market for Buddhist books and events, and general interest in the globalization of Buddhism, the Brazilian case has received little scholarly attention. Cristina Rocha addresses that shortcoming in Zen in Brazil. Drawing on fieldwork in Japan and Brazil, she examines Brazilian history, culture, and literature to uncover the mainly Catholic, Spiritist, and Afro-Brazilian religious matrices responsible for this particular indigenization of Buddhism. In her analysis of Japanese immigration and the adoption and creolization of the Sôtôshû school of Zen Buddhism in Brazil, she offers the fascinating insight that the latter is part of a process of "cannibalizing" the modern other to become modern oneself. She shows, moreover, that in practicing Zen, the Brazilian intellectual elites from the 1950s onward have been driven by a desire to acquire and accumulate cultural capital both locally and overseas. Their consumption of Zen, Rocha contends, has been an expression of their desire to distinguish themselves from popular taste at home while at the same time associating themselves with overseas cultural elites.

INside EDition

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 4

Book Description

Unsui

Author: Eshin Nishimura
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824845315
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
Although the lines of the palm of the hand are barely visible in the early light, the monks of the Tofukuji monastery have been about their familiar rounds of daily tasks for several hours. Their routine is simple but faithfully practiced. Within its repetition lies the key to the self and the Buddha who resides within. The daily life of the monastery is portrayed here in ninety-seven watercolor sketches. Drawn during his last years by the Zen monk Giei Sato, these sketches recollect his days as an unsui, an apprentice monk. With humor and steadfast warmth Sato depicts the day of leaving home and the day of returning; the rainy season and the snowy season; the chores, the celebrations, the days of cleaning, and the days of begging. Each of the charming drawings is enhanced by a brief description of the event portrayed, a touch of Zen teaching, or a note on monastic life.

Tracing Back the Radiance

Author: Robert E. Buswell, Jr.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824843673
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
Chinul (1158–1210) was the founder of the Korean tradition of Zen. He provides one of the most lucid and accessible accounts of Zen practice and meditation to be found anywhere in East Asian literature. Tracing Back the Radiance, an abridgment of Buswell’s Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul, combines an extensive introduction to Chinul’s life and thought with translations of three of his most representative works.

Confucian Values and Popular Zen

Author: Janine Anderson Sawada
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824814144
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
Although East Asian religion is commonly characterized as "syncretic," the historical interaction of Buddhist, Confucian, and other traditions is often neglected by scholars of mainstream religious thought. In this thought-provoking study, Janine Sawada moves beyond conventional approaches to the history of Japanese religion by analyzing the ways in which Neo-Confucianism and Zen formed a popular synthesis in early modern Japan. She shows how Shingaku, a teaching founded by merchant Ishida Baigan, blossomed after his death into a widespread religious movement that selectively combined ideas and practices from these traditions. Drawing on new research into original Shingaku sources, Sawada challenges the view that the teaching was a facile "merchant ethic" by illuminating the importance of Shingaku mystical experience and its intimate relation to moral cultivation in the program developed by Baigan's successor, Teshima Toan. This book also suggests the need for an approach to the history of Japanese education that accounts for the informal transmission of ideas as well as institutional schooling. Shingaku contributed to the development of Japanese education by effectively disseminating moral and religious knowledge on a large scale to the less-educated sectors of Tokugawa society. Sawada interprets the popularity of the movement as part of a general trend in early modern Japan in which ordinary people sought forms of learning that could be pursued in the context of daily life.