Presents instructions, meditation guides, quotations, letters, essays, dialogues, and other writings by Zen masters over the centuries that were translated and published over a period of thirty years.

"This volume contains teachings predominantly from the Chinese Zen (Chan) tradition, including the writings of revered Chinese masters such as Pai-chang, founder of the Chan monastic tradition; Huang-po, one of the forefathers of the Lin-chi or Rinzai school; Foyan, the great master of the twelfth-century Chinese Zen 'renaissance', and many others."--

Presents instructions, meditation guides, quotations, letters, essays, dialogues, and other writings by Zen masters over the centuries that were translated and published over a period of thirty years.

Presents instructions, meditation guides, quotations, letters, essays, dialogues, and other writings by Zen masters over the centuries that were translated and published over a period of thirty years.

Presents instructions, meditation guides, quotations, letters, essays, dialogues, and other writings by Zen masters over the centuries that were translated and published over a period of thirty years.

Throughout Zen history, stories and anecdotes of Zen masters and their students have been used as teaching devices to exemplify the enlightened spirit. Unlike many of the baffling dialogues between Zen masters preserved in the koan literature, the stories retold here are penetratingly simple but with a richness and subtlety that make them worth reading again and again. This collection includes more than one hundred such stories—many appearing here in English for the first time—drawn from a wide variety of sources and involving some of the best-known Zen masters, such as Hakuin, Bankei, and Shosan. Also presented are stories and anecdotes involving famous Zen artists and poets, such as Sengai and Basho.