Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record

Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record PDF Author: Thomas Cleary
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834828839
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The Blue Cliff Record is a classic text of Zen Buddhism, designed to assist in the activation of dormant human potential. The core of this extraordinary work is a collection of one hundred traditional citations and stories, selected for their ability to bring about insight and enlightenment. These vignettes are known as gongan in Chinese and koan in Japanese. Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record is a fresh translation featuring newly translated commentary from two of the greatest Zen masters of early modern Japan, Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) of the Rinzai sect of Zen and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) of the Soto sect of Zen. This translation and commentary on The Blue Cliff Record sheds new light on the meaning of this central Zen text.

Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record

Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record PDF Author: Thomas Cleary
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834828839
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
The Blue Cliff Record is a classic text of Zen Buddhism, designed to assist in the activation of dormant human potential. The core of this extraordinary work is a collection of one hundred traditional citations and stories, selected for their ability to bring about insight and enlightenment. These vignettes are known as gongan in Chinese and koan in Japanese. Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record is a fresh translation featuring newly translated commentary from two of the greatest Zen masters of early modern Japan, Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) of the Rinzai sect of Zen and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) of the Soto sect of Zen. This translation and commentary on The Blue Cliff Record sheds new light on the meaning of this central Zen text.

Sun-Face Buddha

Sun-Face Buddha PDF Author: Ma-tsu
Publisher: Jain Publishing Company
ISBN: 0875730221
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
A translation of the primary materials on the life and teachings of Ma-Tsu (709-788), the successor to the great sixth patriarch and the greatest Ch'an master in history, Hui-Neng (638-713). The book should be invaluable to all who wish to study the development of the Zen thought and philosophy over the course of history.

The Garden of Flowers and Weeds

The Garden of Flowers and Weeds PDF Author: Matthew Juksan Sullivan
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
ISBN: 9781948626491
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Groundbreaking new translation of key Zen Buddhist text whose intention is to awaken dormant human potential.

Blue Cliff Record

Blue Cliff Record PDF Author: David Rothenberg
Publisher: Distribution Partners
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
“Revisiting these 100 classic case studies, Rothenberg enlivens the process, and if he returns one to translations from the original, if his practice deepens another’s practice, so much the better.” –from the foreword by Sam Hamill, editor and translator of the Essential Chuang Tzu “It is astonishing how thousand year old riddles are brought here to evocative poetic life. David Rothenberg converts them into contemporary verbal music, and arcanum, a profound secret, a mystery without intellectual solution.” –Frederick Franck, author of The Zen of Seeing and The Buddha Eye This vividly poetic version of the classic 12th century Zen treasurehouse, the Blue Cliff Record, breathes new life into its extraordinary collection of one hundred koans, ingeniously devised from contemplations, insight, and enlightenment. “Rothenberg’s adaptation of the Blue Cliff Record is that rare thing, a work of art that is also useful. It is a bracing as a dive into a cold spring.” –Mark Rudman, winner of the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Poetry. Poet, writer, philosopher, and musician, David Rothenberg is a contributing editor at Parabola magazine and founding editor of Terra Nova, the award-winning journal of deep ecology. The author of Hand’s End and Sudden Music, his writing is featured in the anthologies The Best Spiritual Writing 1999 and The Soul of Nature.

Elegant Failure

Elegant Failure PDF Author: Richard Shrobe
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1930485514
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
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."

Zen Letters

Zen Letters PDF Author: Yuanwu
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1570627037
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
Zen Letters presents the teachings of the great Chinese master Yuanwu (1063–1135) in direct person-to-person lessons, intimately revealing the inner workings of the psychology of enlightenment. These teachings are drawn from letters written by Yuanwu to various fellow teachers, disciples, and lay students—to women as well as men, to people with families and worldly careers as well as monks and nuns, to advanced adepts as well as beginning students. A key figure of Zen history, Yuanwu is best known as the author of The Blue Cliff Record. His letters, here in English for the first time, are among the treasures of Zen literature.

The Blue Cliff Record

The Blue Cliff Record PDF Author:
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834828200
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
The Blue Cliff Record is a translation of the Pi Yen Lu, a collection of one hundred famous Zen koans accompanied by commentaries and verses from the teachings of Chinese Zen masters. Compiled in the twelfth century, it is considered one of the great treasures of Zen literature and an essential study manual for students of Zen.

Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record

Chan Rhetoric of Uncertainty in the Blue Cliff Record PDF Author: Steven Heine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199397783
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book provides an in-depth textual and literary analysis of the Blue Cliff Record (Chinese Biyanlu, Japanese Hekiganroku), a seminal Chan/Zen Buddhist collection of commentaries on one hundred gongan/koan cases, considered in light of historical, cultural, and intellectual trends from the Song dynasty (960-1279). Compiled by the disciples of Yuanwu Keqin in 1128, the Blue Cliff Record is considered a classic of East Asian literature for its creative integration of prose and verse as well as hybrid or capping-phrase interpretations of perplexing cases.The collection employs a variety of rhetorical devices culled from both classic and vernacular literary sources and styles and is particularly notable for its use of indirection, allusiveness, irony, paradox, and wordplay, all characteristic of the approach of literary or lettered Chan. However, as instrumental and influential as it is considered to be, the Blue Cliff Record has long been shrouded in controversy. The collection is probably best known today for having been destroyed in the 1130s at the dawn of the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) by Dahui Zonggao, Yuanwu's main disciple and harshest critic. It was out of circulation for nearly two centuries before being revived and partially reconstructed in the early 1300s. In this book, Steven Heine examines the diverse ideological connections and disconnections behind subsequent commentaries and translations of the Blue Cliff Record, thereby shedding light on the broad range of gongan literature produced in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries and beyond.

The True Dharma Eye

The True Dharma Eye PDF Author: John Daido Loori
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 9780834823112
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
A collection of three hundred koans compiled by Eihei Dogen, the thirteenth-century founder of Soto Zen in Japan, this book presents readers with a uniquely contemporary perspective on his profound teachings and their relevance for modern Western practitioners of Zen. Following the traditional format for koan collections, John Daido Loori Roshi, an American Zen master, has added his own commentary and accompanying verse for each of Dogen’s koans. Zen students and scholars will find The True Dharma Eye to be a source of deep insight into the mind of one of the world’s greatest religious thinkers, as well as the practice of koan study itself.

Zen Sand

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

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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.