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In Chinese Zen, author Prof. Yansheng shows how Zen, with its universal concern for the human condition, can help the individual achieve happiness and spiritual stability through a "eureka moment" of enlightenment that liberates the mind from its world of competing interests. By drawing on the vast literature of Chinese Zen Buddhism, Prof. Yansheng presents traditional Buddhist sayings, stories and dialogues that illustrate the way historical masters of Zen sought to induce their pupils to reduced inner conflict. In so doing, he allows the reader a panoramic view of the origins and development of Zen Buddhism in China and demonstrates its influence on literature in particular.
An inspiring introduction to Chan Buddhism in a value-priced hardcover edition. Perfect for daily spiritual guidance and gifts.
The development of Zen in China is really the story of the flourishing of Chinese philosophy, arts and literature beginning as far back as the Han Dynasty and earlier. Master Nan Huai-Chin offers an engaging chronicle of both in this groundbreaking work. The Story of Chinese Zen begins with the premise that the climate during Shakyamuni's founding of Buddhism in India ultimately influence the differences behind Hinayana and Mahayana thought, practice, and methods of seeking enlightenment. From there—beginning with its transmission to China—Master Nan outlines the Zen School, exploring influences on the development of Zen before the early Tang Dynasty, different meanings of studying Zen and pursuing the heart and goal of Zen." He explores the relationship between Zen and new-Confucianism and the inseparability of religion and Zen from Chinese literature and philosophy, especially Taoism. Born in Zhejiang province, China in 1918, Nan Huai-Chin has studied under thirty-two major Taoist and Buddhist masters, including the masters of the Esoteric School of Buddhism in Tibet, from whom he received the title of Esoteric Master. He has published over thirty books and is widely recognized as one of the foremost scholars on Zen and Taoism.
A beautifully compelling and liberating guide to the original nature of Zen in ancient China by renowned author and translator David Hinton. Buddhism migrated from India to China in the first century C.E., and Ch'an (Japanese: Zen) is generally seen as China's most distinctive and enduring form of Buddhism. In China Root, however, David Hinton shows how Ch'an was in fact a Buddhist-influenced extension of Taoism, China's native system of spiritual philosophy. Unlike Indian Buddhism's abstract sensibility, Ch'an was grounded in an earthy and empirically-based vision. Exploring this vision, Hinton describes Ch'an as a kind of anti-Buddhism. A radical and wild practice aspiring to a deeply ecological liberation: the integration of individual consciousness with landscape and with a Cosmos seen as harmonious and alive. In China Root, Hinton describes this original form of Zen with his trademark clarity and elegance, each chapter exploring in enlightening ways a core Ch'an concept--such as meditation, mind, Buddha, awakening--as it was originally understood and practiced in ancient China. Finally, by examining a range of standard translations in the Appendix, Hinton reveals how this original understanding and practice of Ch'an/Zen is almost entirely missing in contemporary American Zen, because it was lost in Ch'an's migration from China through Japan and on to the West. Whether you practice Zen or not, taking this journey on the wings of Hinton's remarkable insight and powerful writing will transform how you understand yourself and the world.
A fifth-century Indian Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma is credited with bringing Zen to China. Although the tradition that traces its ancestry back to him did not flourish until nearly two hundred years after his death, today millions of Zen Buddhists and students of kung fu claim him as their spiritual father. While others viewed Zen practice as a purification of the mind or a stage on the way to perfect enlightenment, Bodhidharma equated Zen with buddhahood and believed that it had a place in everyday life. Instead of telling his disciples to purify their minds, he pointed them to rock walls, to the movements of tigers and cranes, to a hollow reed floating across the Yangtze. This bilingual edition, the only volume of the great teacher's work currently available in English, presents four teachings in their entirety. "Outline of Practice" describes the four all-inclusive habits that lead to enlightenment, the "Bloodstream Sermon" exhorts students to seek the Buddha by seeing their own nature, the "Wake-up Sermon" defends his premise that the most essential method for reaching enlightenment is beholding the mind. The original Chinese text, presented on facing pages, is taken from a Ch'ing dynasty woodblock edition.
"An indispensable reference. Ferguson has given us an impeccable and very readable translation."---John Daido Loori --
Introduction by Paula Arai. This is the first collection to offer selections from the foundational texts of the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Zen traditions in a single volume. Through representative selections from their poetry, letters, sermons, and visual arts, the most important Zen Masters provide students with an engaging, cohesive introduction to the first 1200 years of this rich -- and often misunderstood -- tradition. A general introduction and notes provide historical, biographical, and cultural context; a note on translation, and a glossary of terms are also included.
Zen Masters of China presents more than 300 traditional Zen stories and koans, far more than any other collection. Retelling them in their proper place in Zen's historical journey through Chinese Buddhist culture, it also tells a larger story: how, in taking the first step east from India to China, Buddhism began to be Zen. The stories of Zen are unlike any other writing, religious or otherwise. Used for centuries by Zen teachers as aids to bring about or deepen the experience of awakening, they have a freshness that goes beyond religious practice and a mystery and authenticity that appeal to a wide range of readers. Placed in chronological order, these stories tell the story of Zen itself, how it traveled from West to East with each Zen master to the next, but also how it was transformed in that journey, from an Indian practice to something different in Chinese Buddhism (Ch'an) and then more different still in Japan (Zen). The fact that its transmission was so human, from teacher to student in a long chain from West to East, meant that the cultures it passed through inevitably changed it. Zen Masters of China is first and foremost a collection of mind-bending Zen stories and their wisdom. More than that, without academic pretensions or baggage, it recounts the genealogy of Zen Buddhism in China and, through koan and story, illuminates how Zen became what it is today.
Renowned scholar Burton Watson's translation exactingly depicts the life and teachings of the great ninth-century Chinese Zen master Lin-chi, one of the most highly regarded of the T'ang period masters.
How Zen Became Zen takes a novel approach to understanding one of the most crucial developments in Zen Buddhism: the dispute over the nature of enlightenment that erupted within the Chinese Chan (Zen) school in the twelfth century. The famous Linji (Rinzai) Chan master Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) railed against "heretical silent illumination Chan" and strongly advocated kanhua (koan) meditation as an antidote. In this fascinating study, Morten Schlütter shows that Dahui’s target was the Caodong (Soto) Chan tradition that had been revived and reinvented in the early twelfth century, and that silent meditation was an approach to practice and enlightenment that originated within this "new" Chan tradition. Schlütter has written a refreshingly accessible account of the intricacies of the dispute, which is still reverberating through modern Zen in both Asia and the West. Dahui and his opponents’ arguments for their respective positions come across in this book in as earnest and relevant a manner as they must have seemed almost nine hundred years ago. Although much of the book is devoted to illuminating the doctrinal and soteriological issues behind the enlightenment dispute, Schlütter makes the case that the dispute must be understood in the context of government policies toward Buddhism, economic factors, and social changes. He analyzes the remarkable ascent of Chan during the first centuries of the Song dynasty, when it became the dominant form of elite monastic Buddhism, and demonstrates that secular educated elites came to control the critical transmission from master to disciple ("procreation" as Schlütter terms it) in the Chan School.