Zen For Beginners
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About this ebook
To create a book about Zen, however, is risky. It is one thing to describe the factual history of this exotic strain of Buddhism. It’s quite another thing to successfully convey the crazy wisdom of the Zen masters, their zany sense of humor, and their uncanny ability to pass on the experience of enlightenment to their students.
The authors of Zen For Beginners have clearly overcome these considerable risks. The book uses an engaging mix of clear, informative writing and delightful illustrations to document the story of Zen from its impact on Chinese and Japanese culture to its influence on American writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder. The paradoxical teaching stories and style of the Zen master are also shown as important keys to understanding Oriental art, literature, architecture, and attitudes towards life and death.
Judith Blackstone
Judith Blackstone, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychotherapist in New York and an innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality. Her published works include the books Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Empathic Ground, and The Intimate Life, as well as the audio learning course The Realization Process.
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Reviews for Zen For Beginners
3 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5'Zen For Beginners' is a beautifully-written book which makes me want to learn much more about the subject.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Another great find on Scribd.com. I really enjoyed this book. It has a terrific description of the Zen Buddhism lineage, and some great insights surrounding Buddhism in China and how it migrated to Korea and Japan. Terrific read!!
Book preview
Zen For Beginners - Judith Blackstone
A BOOK ON ZEN
IS LIKE THIS!
When we were asked, by the illustrator, to write this book, we right away said, No
.
First of all, any book on Zen starts out at a disadvantage. Zen cannot be described in words, it is an experience more basic than the level of conceptual thinking. It has to do with our innermost life, what the Zen masters call
"OUR ORIGINAL FACE, BEFORE
OUR PARENTS WERE BORN"
which is gone as soon as we analyse it. Zen is not something we can learn, or even become, because we are already it, we can only be it.
Second, this is supposed to be a light book, but Zen is a heavy subject—personally, we think it may be the heaviest subject on the planet—it’s about ultimate reality, liberation from pain and confusion, our greatest potential.
People devote their whole lives to it and are glad if they make even a little progress towards the possibilities of zen.
Then there are a few who get all the way to what is called enlightenment, they realize themselves completely, which also means that they realize the unity and the basis of the whole universe.
Which is just by way of saying that if there is something funny about this book, ifs not the fault of the subject matter.
And third, these enlightened masters are the only ones who should open their mouths at all about Zen. Anyone else is liable to make more confusion about it than less. We knew if we wrote this book, we could put in it only the most introductory information, that can be found in other books that were written by people with more experience than ourselves (and that’s what we did).
This doesn’t mean that we should be stupid, or in some kind of trance, far from it. The Buddhists count cognition as one of our six senses, and they definitely mean for us to know what’s happening, but directly, the way things are reflected in a clear mirror.
HELLO, I AM A RECURRENT METAPHOR IN ZEN TEACHINGS.
For example, if we look at a tree, and we have beginner’s mind, we won’t have to get into a whole dialogue with ourselves about how it’s an oak tree, there’s a lot of them around here, once I fell out of a tree just like this one, maybe if I sell the oak dresser in my room I can go to Bermuda, and so on–we just see the tree.
And then, because all of our senses are free to focus together, without distraction, we become aware of all kinds of things we otherwise wouldn’t notice–we can even sense that the life in the tree is not so different from our own, and at that point, we are reaching a level of perception which the Zen masters call intimacy
, or no separation
. Zen teaches that when we are most aware, there is no feeling of separation between subject and object. Like the space inside and outside of a vase, we experience the space inside and outside of ourselves as continuous.
THE MAN SEES THE MOUNTAIN THE MOUNTAIN SEES THE MAN
Beginner’s mind is unified mind. It is being completely involved in whatever we are doing. The great Master Obaku used to bow so much in his Zen practice that he always had a big lump on his forehead, so he really knew about bowing. He said:
WHEN I BOW, I JUST BOW.
Zen practice is for people who don’t mind always being at the beginning, because every moment is new, which mean that we are new, because we are not separate from the moment. The Zen masters say that we should experience our lives as if for the first time, without any of our old fears and prejudices. If we can forget to protect our separate selves and let life in completely, we can have a really good time.
IN THE MORNING,
IN THE EVENING,
AIN’T WE GOT ZEN?
The word Zen is the Japanese translation of the Sanskrit word dhyana, which means meditation. Rather than observing numerous rules