These modern day parables in Zen Master Next Door send positive messages that are simple and inspiring. Based in the truth, they are an insightful means to explore our many relationships and how they touch our soul. Relevant and timely, these stories underscore our yearning to live an inspired life and they show that deep-rooted and ancient ideals are as mainstream as our exchanges with our neighbor next door. These parables are gentle but strong. They embrace but let go. They are simple and complex just like our own lives. They are, of course, parables. What others are saying about this book: What an inspiring way to learn about our very soul. These modern day parables in Zen Master Next Door are compelling and left me wanting more. - Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind

A lively collection of folk tales and Buddhist teaching stories from four noted premodern Japanese Zen masters: Taigu Sôchiku (1584–1669), Sengai Gibon (1750-1831), Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), and Taigu Ryôkan (1758-1831). Zen Master Tales collects never before translated stories of four prominent Zen masters from the Edo period of Japanese history (1603-1868). Drawn from an era that saw the “democratization” of Japanese Zen, these stories paint a picture of robust, funny, and poignant engagement between Zen luminaries and the emergent chоnin or “townsperson” culture of early modern Japan. Here we find Zen monks engaging with samurai, merchants, housewives, entertainers, and farmers. These masters affirmed that the essentials of Zen practice—zazen, koan study, even enlightenment—could be conveyed to all members of Japanese society in ordinary speech, including even comic verse and work songs. Against the backdrop of this rich tableau, Zen Master Tales serves not only as a text for Zen students but also as a wide-ranging window onto the fascinating literary, material, and social history of Edo Japan. In his introduction, translator Peter Haskel explains the history of Zen “stories” from the tradition’s Golden Age in China through the compilation of the classic koan collections and on to the era from which the stories in Zen Master Tales are drawn. What was true of the Chinese tradition, he writes—“its focus on the individual’s ordinary activity as the function, the manifestation of the absolute”—continued in the Japanese context. “Most of these Japanese stories, however unabashedly humorous and at times crude, impart something of the character of the Zen masters involved, whose attainment must be plainly manifest in even the most humble and unlikely of situations.”

Can you imagine waking up one day and experiencing a force—the Way—opening up to you? You may have been intrigued by Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’ or admired Neal Walsch’s ability to have conversations with God. Christian M. Wiese demonstrates in ‘The Way of the Meister’ that everyone can enjoy this daily intimate God connection. A Meister is a master of a craft. Ten years into his spiritual awakening, Christian shares his lessons learnt. The content of this book is enlightening, yet its delivery is pragmatic. ‘The Way of the Meister’ is a pilgrimage in a pocket. It is both an art and a science to keep the magic of the Way going every day. Learn how to become a spiritual Meister yourself.

"A uniquely playful and incisive illustrated collection of Zen teaching stories from one of America's best-known and most-respected Zen masters. A Modern Classic. In the tradition of the great koan collections and the extensive records of ancient masters, Robert Aitken--one of America's best-known and most-respected Zen masters--distills a lifetime of teaching down to its essence. Intriguing, playful, and deceptively easy to read, Zen Master Raven is a brilliant encapsulation of Zen in over a hundred koan-like encounters--featuring curious beginners like Mallard and Mole, to teachers-in-training like Porcupine, to the profound wisdom of masters like Brown Bear, Moose Roshi, and Zen Master Raven himself"--

What motivated Sodo–san to spend the last twenty years of his life in a “temple under the sky”— a corner of a public park where he taught passersby what it means to be forever young through the funky tunes he played on his grass flute? In The Grass Flute Zen Master: Sodo Yokoyama, we are seeking not only a truer understanding of this well–loved monk, but of zazen, Zen meditation, itself. In his search for insights into Sodo Yokoyama’s life, Arthur Braverman skillfully weaves a tapestry from seemingly disparate threads—the brief taisho period into which Sodo–san was born and where individualism shone; his teachers, both ancient and contemporary practitioners of Zen Bhuddism; the monk’s love of baseball; and the similarities Braverman finds between Sodo–san and Walt Whitman, who both found the universal in nature. Through conversations with Joko Shibata, Yokoyama’s sole disciple, and careful study of his teacher’s poetry, an intriguing tension between the personal and the universal is revealed. The Grass Flute Zen Master is a meditative examination not of just one life, but of many. The lineage of teacher and protégé is traced back through generations, contemporaries are drawn up from unexpected places, and Braverman examines his own long journey in Zen Buddhism; confronting his own expectations and surprising disappointments (the monk lived in a boarding house and later took a cab to his park when he could no longer walk the whole way) and the understanding and acceptance that followed. “When you play the leaf,” Sodo–san once wrote, “you’ll usually be a little out of tune. That’s where its very charm lies . . .”

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.

A unique voice in American poetry evocative of Han Shan’s Zen verses, Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions, and the writings of Jack Kerouac. What a long conversation we never had! All those rivers? we never crossed together. You so busy with your own life, I so busy with mine. Dick Allen, one of the founders of the Expansive Poetry movement, has won the Robert Frost Prize, the Hart Crane Poetry Prize, and the Pushcart Prize—among others. His work has been anthologized five times in the Best American Poetry volumes, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Tricycle, The Buddhist Poetry Review, and The American Poetry Review, as well as numerous other publications. He’s a former fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, and a former Poet Laureate for the state of Connecticut, where he lives and writes.

For many of us, the return of Zen conjures up images of rock gardens and gently flowing waterfalls. We think of mindfulness and meditation, immersion in a state of being where meaning is found through simplicity. Zen lore has been absorbed by Western practitioners and pop culture alike, yet there is a specific area of this ancient tradition that hasn’t been fully explored in the West. Now, in The Zen of Creativity, American Zen master John Daido Loori presents a book that taps the principles of the Zen arts and aesthetic as a means to unlock creativity and find freedom in the various dimensions of our existence. Loori dissolves the barriers between art and spirituality, opening up the possibility of meeting life with spontaneity, grace, and peace. Zen Buddhism is steeped in the arts. In spiritual ways, calligraphy, poetry, painting, the tea ceremony, and flower arranging can point us toward our essential, boundless nature. Brilliantly interpreting the teachings of the artless arts, Loori illuminates various elements that awaken our creativity, among them still point, the center of each moment that focuses on the tranquility within; simplicity, in which the creative process is uncluttered and unlimited, like a cloudless sky; spontaneity, a way to navigate through life without preconceptions, with a freshness in which everything becomes new; mystery, a sense of trust in the unknown; creative feedback, the systematic use of an audience to receive noncritical input about our art; art koans, exercises based on paradoxical questions that can be resolved only through artistic expression. Loori shows how these elements interpenetrate and function not only in art, but in all our endeavors. Beautifully illustrated and punctuated with poems and reflections from Loori’s own spiritual journey, The Zen of Creativity presents a multilayered, bottomless source of insight into our creativity. Appealing equally to spiritual seekers, artists, and veteran Buddhist practitioners, this book is perfect for those wishing to discover new means of self-awareness and expression—and to restore equanimity and freedom amid the vicissitudes of our lives.

Zen Master Udo is really irritating, and dangerous too when the razors fly but you can you love him? Well, maybe, perhaps, after enough Fiery Jack to blow your brains onto the ceiling. His pupil, Crudo Bhappat, is never sure but at least he has the consolation of being married to the lovely Jasmintha and owns a fine donkey for a pet. And he is a better footballer than Udo and has gorgeous hair. But, somehow Udo, Zen Master extraordinaire, always has the upper hand, the last word, the wise punch line. Or does he? Is he simply an aggressive misogynist with a few good wrestling moves? Or is he the cleverest man in Aberdabubajerstan? Do we really care? Travel the Silk Road to China, er, possibly, to find out.

A charismatic and extraordinary Zen teacher and artist, Hakuin (1686–1769) is credited with almost single–handedly reforming and revitalizing Japanese Zen from a state of extreme spiritual decline. As a teacher, he placed special emphasis on koan practice, inventing new koans such as the famous "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" He also stressed the need to extend the benefits of Zen to others. What made Hakuin even more remarkable was that he was not only a religious teacher but also a prolific artist. Using calligraphy and painting to create "visual Dharma," his teachings were rendered on paper in pictures, characters, and images, uniquely and magnificently expressing the nature of enlightenment as he wished to impart it to his students. The Religious Art of Zen Master Hakuin is a stunning volume containing many of Hakuin's finest calligraphies and paintings, along with brilliant commentary by Katsuhiro Yoshizawa, the leading Japanese expert on Hakuin and his work. Yoshizawa masterfully guides the reader from one piece of artwork to the next, sharing the story of Hakuin's life, revealing the profound religious meaning embedded in each illustration, and providing a detailed documentary of the lessons of one of Zen's most respected teachers.