Nine-Headed Dragon River [antikvár]

PREFACEThe unwary reader has in hand a "Zen book" composed against the best instincts of its author, who has no business writing upon a subject so incompletely understoodfar less a subject such as Zen, which is fundamentally impossible to write about.Journals kept during fifteen years of practice provide a rickety armature for Zen poems, stories, and teachings, those luminous expressions of deep insight by Zen masters, past and present, which have delighted me and refreshed my life. This book will only justify itself if it transmits enough of that delight so that others may be drawn toward the path of Zen.It is my hope that my deep gratitude to my teachers in the Rinzai and Soto sects will be made clear in this book, which is not "my book" but a compendium of teachings, and the property of the Zen Community of New York. In my life there have been many other teachers who were not Zen masters; I thank them, too, with all my heart. Many were Dharma sisters, Dharma brothers, in various Zen groups in America, and some were insightful friends and strangers, American Indians, sherpas, commercial fisherman, spontaneously leading a "Zen" way of life.Zen has been called "the religion before religion," which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith. And the phrase evokes that natural religion of our early childhood, when heaven and a splendorous earth were one. But soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the