Will Strief has just fallen from the sky… Literally. He is no angel. He is a parachutist for the infamous French Foreign Legion, or he was until one bad jump leaves him shattered: physically, mentally, and spiritually. After a life in the military, jumping out of planes, and living a hero’s tale, the twenty-three-year-old Will finds himself floating about in the social gutters of Marseille, France. Despite his limp, he is reveling in his sudden liberation and rock-star life: hilarious drug experiences, vicious drinking, and a delicious sex life that would gorge a lesser being. Yet, all he wants is to find some meaning in life. Is it found in romantic love? Silent meditation under the Bodhi Tree? Or climbing the Himalayas? Will must find the balance between ‘Sin’ and ‘Zen’. And through it all, he explores the idea of romance, lust, trust, friendship, and peace in a raw and realistic tone while living life at its ill-defined edge. It is a fast-paced transgressive fiction that delves into the mind of a restless man trying to navigate an unplanned, but ultimately revealing, journey. Just jump and hang on for the ride.

Zen is not a theology, it is a religion -- and religion without a theology is a unique phenomenon. All other religions exist around the concept of God. They have theologies. They are God-centric not man-centric; man is not the end, God is the end. But not so for Zen. For Zen, man is the goal, man is the end unto himself God is not something above humanity, God is something hidden within humanity. Man is carrying God in himself as a potentiality.

This volume concludes the two-volume sequel to Masao Abe's Zen and Western Thought. Like its companion, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, this work contains many previously published essays and papers by Abe. Here he clarifies the true meaning of Buddhist emptiness in comparison with the Aristotelian notion of substance and the Whiteheadean notion of process.

This groundbreaking book successfully fuses the two overlapping traditions of Zen Buddhism and Christianity. Very few Christians who are interested in Zen Buddhism understand the fundamentals of the religion itself. Most of the books which are available on Zen are superficial and fraught with caricatures and erroneous generalizations - concentrating more on meditation than on the real essence of Zen. Now the Christian who has been waiting for a clear and thorough explanation of Zen in terms he can understand has been provided with Zen Way--Jesus Way--a unique inside look at Christianity and Zen Buddhism by Dr. Tucker N. Callaway, a committed Christian missionary who for twenty years has practiced zazen in Japanese temples in an effort to reach the heart of the faith. Calloway has a knack for making philosophical concepts clear to the general reader and begins Zen Way--Jesus Way by presenting the fundamental presuppositions of Zen and several of the concepts which are logically deduced from them. Next he relates some of his experiences in Buddhist temples, while explaining the practical applications of Zen philosophy. Finally he interprets the Jesus Way in a manner that makes possible a genuine comparison with the Zen way.

Zen Awakening and Society considers the relationship between Zen and social ethics by examining ethical facets of Zen practice and satori, as well as the traditional socio-political role of Zen in Japan, ethical reflection by key Zen thinkers, those resources and pitfalls in Zen relevant to ethics, and possible avenues along which Zen Buddhists could begin to formulate a self-critical, systematic social ethic.

'Kennedy shows other Christians a way of integrating Zen Buddhism and Christian belief. He does this convincingly and gracefully... by weaving together Zen poetry and koans, Western poetry and literature, scriptural texts and personal experience.' National Catholic Reporter >

I call Zen the only living religion because it is not a religion, but only a religiousness. It has no dogma, it does not depend on any founder. It has no past; in fact it has nothing to teach you. It is the strangest thing that has happened in the whole history of mankind – strangest because it enjoys in emptiness, it blossoms in nothingness. It is fulfilled in innocence, in not knowing. It does not discriminate between the mundane and the sacred. For it, all that is, is sacred.