Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness : Zen Talks on the Sandokai / Shunryu Suzuki; Mel Weitsman, Michael Wenger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Suzuki, Shunryu, Author.

Contributor:

Weitsman, Mel, Editor.

Wenger, Michael, Editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sekito Kisen--Doctrines.

Sekito Kisen.

Zen Buddhism--Doctrines.

Zen Buddhism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (206 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [1999]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

When Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's 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. Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness is the first follow-up volume to Suzuki Roshi'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 Suzuki Roshi so influential as a 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 Suzuki Roshi expresses it, "things-as-it-is"). Included with the lectures are his students' questions and his direct answers to them, along with a meditation instruction. Suzuki Roshi's teachings are valuable not only for those with a general interest in Buddhism but also for students of Zen practice wanting an example of how a modern master in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition understands this core text today.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Sekito Kisen and the Sandokai

Notes to The Reader

The Sandokai

First Talk. Things-As-It-Is

Second Talk. Warm Hand to Warm Hand

Third Talk. Buddha Is Always Here

Fourth Talk. The Blue Jay Will Come Right into Your Heart

Fifth Talk. Today We May Be Very Happy, and the Next Day We Don't Know What Will Happen to Us

Sixth Talk. The Boat Is Always Moving

Seventh Talk. Without Any Idea of Attainment, Just to Sit Is Our Way

Eighth Talk. Within Light There Is Utter Darkness

Ninth Talk. The Willow Tree Cannot Be Broken by the Snow

Tenth Talk. Su¤ering Is a Valuable Thing

A short talk during zazen

Eleventh Talk. We Should Not Stick to Words or Rules Too Much

Twelfth Talk. Do Not Pass Your Days and Nights in Vain

Talk given to a visiting class

THE SANDOKAI. Compiled Translation by Suzuki Roshi

LINEAGE CHART OF TEACHERS MENTIONED IN THE TEXT

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786613520432

9780520936232

052093623X

9781280095009

1280095008

9781597345101

1597345105

OCLC:

475927155