- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219823
- eISBN:
- 9780520936232
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219823.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian, 700–790), author of the Sandokai, was born in Guangdong Province in southern China at the beginning of the eighth century. This was a formative era in which Zen was ...
More
Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian, 700–790), author of the Sandokai, was born in Guangdong Province in southern China at the beginning of the eighth century. This was a formative era in which Zen was growing in popularity and was first articulated as a unique school and lineage. It was also during this period that Zen became known for its emphasis on the direct experience of reality and the practice of seated meditation. Not much is known about Sekito's life. The first recorded event is an encounter, at the age of twelve, with the Sixth Ancestor, Daikan Eno (Ch. Dajian Huineng, 638–713). The Sandokai (Ch. Cantongqi) addresses the division between the Northern and Southern schools as well as other dichotomies such as one and many, light and dark, sameness and difference. Made up of twenty-two couplets (forty-four lines), the poem often follows a pattern of distinguishing first discontinuity, then continuity, and finally complementarity.Less
Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian, 700–790), author of the Sandokai, was born in Guangdong Province in southern China at the beginning of the eighth century. This was a formative era in which Zen was growing in popularity and was first articulated as a unique school and lineage. It was also during this period that Zen became known for its emphasis on the direct experience of reality and the practice of seated meditation. Not much is known about Sekito's life. The first recorded event is an encounter, at the age of twelve, with the Sixth Ancestor, Daikan Eno (Ch. Dajian Huineng, 638–713). The Sandokai (Ch. Cantongqi) addresses the division between the Northern and Southern schools as well as other dichotomies such as one and many, light and dark, sameness and difference. Made up of twenty-two couplets (forty-four lines), the poem often follows a pattern of distinguishing first discontinuity, then continuity, and finally complementarity.
Shunryu Suzuki
Mel Weitsman and Michael Wenger (eds)
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219823
- eISBN:
- 9780520936232
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219823.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
When Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1972, it was enthusiastically embraced by Westerners eager for spiritual insight and knowledge of Zen. The book became the most successful treatise on ...
More
When Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1972, it was enthusiastically embraced by Westerners eager for spiritual insight and knowledge of Zen. The book became the most successful treatise on Buddhism in English, selling more than one million copies to date. This book is the first follow-up volume to the author's important work. Like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it is a collection of lectures that reveal the insight, humor, and intimacy with Zen that made the author such an influential teacher. The Sandokai — a poem by the eighth-century Zen master Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian) — is the subject of these lectures. Given in 1970 at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the lectures are an example of a Zen teacher in his prime elucidating a venerated, ancient, and difficult work to his Western students. The poem addresses the question of how the oneness of things and the multiplicity of things coexist (or, as expressed in this book, “things-as-it-is”). Included with the lectures are the students' questions and the author's direct answers to them, along with a meditation instruction. The book provides an example of how a modern master in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition understands this core text of Buddhism today.Less
When Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1972, it was enthusiastically embraced by Westerners eager for spiritual insight and knowledge of Zen. The book became the most successful treatise on Buddhism in English, selling more than one million copies to date. This book is the first follow-up volume to the author's important work. Like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it is a collection of lectures that reveal the insight, humor, and intimacy with Zen that made the author such an influential teacher. The Sandokai — a poem by the eighth-century Zen master Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian) — is the subject of these lectures. Given in 1970 at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the lectures are an example of a Zen teacher in his prime elucidating a venerated, ancient, and difficult work to his Western students. The poem addresses the question of how the oneness of things and the multiplicity of things coexist (or, as expressed in this book, “things-as-it-is”). Included with the lectures are the students' questions and the author's direct answers to them, along with a meditation instruction. The book provides an example of how a modern master in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition understands this core text of Buddhism today.
