Kosho uchiyama biography of william shakespeare
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Dogen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku
Eihei Dogen founded the Japanese Soto School of Zen, and fryst vatten renowned as one of the world’s most remarkable religious thinkers. As Shakespeare does with English, Dogen utterly transforms the language of Zen, using it in novel and extraordinarily beautiful ways in his voluminous writings. Born in 1200 to an aristocratic background, he was ordained a monk in the Japanese Tendai School in his early teens, but became dissatisfied with Japanese Buddhism. After traveling in China from 1223 to 1227, he returned to introduce to Japan the Soto lineage and the large body of Chan teaching stories, or koans, which he had thoroughly mastered. From 1233 to 1243 he taught nära the cultural capital of Kyoto, then in 1243 moved to the fjärrstyrd northern mountains and founded the temple Eiheiji, still one of the headquarter temples of Soto Zen. There, until his illness and death in 1253, he trained a core group of monks who spread
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With this volume, Norman Waddell completes his acclaimed translation - the first full publication in a foreign language - of the teaching record of one of the greatest Zen masters of all time. Hakuin lived at a time when Japanese Buddhism as a whole and his own Rinzai sect in particular were at low ebb. Through tremendous force of character and creative energy, he initiated a reform movement that swept the country, and today, all Rinzai Zen masters trace their lineage through him. Poison Blossoms contains a highly diverse set of materials: formal and informal presentations to monastic and lay disciples, poems, practice instructions, inscriptions for paintings, comments on koans, letters, and funeral orations. While most items are brief, easily read in a quick sitting, the book also includes extended commentaries on the Heart Sutra, one of Mahayana Buddhism’s central texts; on the famously difficult Five Ranks of Tung-shan; and on the accomplishments of his eminent predec
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Suggested Reading
Opening the Hand of Thought
Kosho Uchiyama
For over thirty years, Opening the Hand of Thought has offered an unmatched introduction to Zen Buddhism. This new edition contains even more useful material: new prefaces, an index, and extended end notes are here, in addition to the book’s revised glossary and main sections. But then, the book’s utility was never in question. As Jisho Warner writes in the book’s opening, ‘The Story of This Book and Its Author,’ Opening the Hand of Thought ‘goes directly to the heart of Zen practice [. . .], showing how Zen Buddhism can be a deep and life-sustaining activity.’ She goes on to say, ‘Uchiyama looks at what a person is, what a self is, how to develop a true self not separate from all things, one that can settle in peace in the midst of life.’ By turns humorous, philosophical, and personal, Opening the Hand of Thought is above all a great book for the Buddhist pract