This most influential teacher comes vividly to life in Crooked Cucumber, the first full biography of any Zen master to be published in the West. To make up his intimate and engrossing narrative, David Chadwick draws on Suzuki's own words and the memories of his students, friends, and family. Interspersed with previously unpublished passages from Suzuki's talks, Crooked Cucumber evokes a down-to-earth life of the spirit. Along with Suzuki we can find a way to "practice with mountains, trees, and stones and to find ourselves in this big world."

    The book became the most successful treatise on Buddhism in English, selling more than one million copies to date. Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness is the first follow-up volume to Suzuki Roshi's important work. Like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it is a collection of lectures that reveal the insight, humor, and intimacy with Zen that made Suzuki Roshi so influential as a teacher.The Sandokai—a poem by the eighth-century Zen master Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian)—is the subject of these lectures. Given in 1970 at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the lectures are an example of a Zen teacher in his prime elucidating a venerated, ancient, and difficult work to his Western students. The poem addresses the question of how the oneness of things and the multiplicity of things coexist (or, as Suzuki Roshi expresses it, "things-as-it-is"). Included with the lectures are his students' questions and his direct answers to them, along with a meditation instruction. Suzuki Roshi's teachings are valuable not only for those with a general interest in Buddhism but also for students of Zen practice wanting an example of how a modern master in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition understands this core text today.

    These 34 essays, poems and dialogues based on Taoist and Buddhist thought constitute a guide to what the author calls non-volitional living - the ancient understanding that our efforts to grasp our true nature are futile.

    Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) is unquestionably the most significant religious figure in Japanese history. Founder of the Soto school of Zen (which emphasizes the practice of "zazen" or sitting meditation), he was a prolific writer whose works have remained popular for six hundred years. "Enlightenment Unfolds" presents even more of the incisive and inspiring writings of this seminal figure, focusing on essays from his great life work, "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye," as well as poems, talks, and correspondence, much of which appears here in English for the first time. Tanahashi has brought together his own translations of Dogen with those of some of the most respected Zen teachers and writers of our own day, including Reb Anderson, Edward Espe Brown, Norman Fisher, Gil Fronsdal, Blanche Hartman, Jane Hirschfield, Daniel Leighton, Alan Senauke, Katherine Thanas, Mel Weitzman, and Michael Wenger.

    This volume, developed by the martial arts master and scholar, details the way that students arrive at a posture -- from beginning movements to the end pose. Master Cheng provides practitioners with a complete and concise guide to the Short Form, enabling them to make rapid progress.

    Yet, generally, there is very little explanation available about liturgy. This book addresses both the spirit and the forms of Zen liturgy, especially as they can function for lay practitioners. In exploring liturgy at home, we uncover the deepest truths which are the lives of each one of us, evoke them, and transform what we consider mundane activities into sacredness itself.

    Each was an outstanding figure who manifested Zen in his own way. Ikkyu was unconventional and uncompromising, a relentless enemy of the sham and hypocrisy that pervaded the religious circles of his day. Hakuin underwent a lengthy and strenuous apprenticeship to become a Master Teacher of Zen, training hundreds of disciples and insisting that they endure the same trials and surmount the same massive barriers that he had. Ryokan, in contrast, was a gentle, self-effacing recluse who never became an abbot but lived in quiet hermitages, savoring nature and writing poetry. All three were artists of the highest order, employing brush, ink, and paper as a means of transmitting Zen teachings and creating unique works of art.These are three of the greatest Zen masters in history-each unique, each an outstanding artist, and each a teacher of future generations. The biographies of these three men, in one volume, constitute an enlivening reading experience, full of insight on leading a meaningful life.John Stevens lived in Japan for thirty-five years, where he was a professor of Buddhist studies at Tohoku Fukushi University in Sendai. Stevens is a widely respected translator, an ordained Buddhist priest, a curator of several major exhibitions of Zen art, and an aikido instructor. He has authored more than thirty books and is one of the foremost Western experts on aikido, holding a ranking of 7th dan Aikikai. Stevens has also studied calligraphy for decades, authoring the classic "Sacred Calligraphy of the East." Other John Stevens titles that are likely to be of interest include "The Philosophy of Aikido, " and "The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei.""