Customer Reviews

Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

At first I balked at paying the asking price for this very slim book. It's good to have the poems (though Chinese Buddhist verse, telegraphic and full of technical terms, is notoriously hard to translate.) The Introduction and Notes are also helpful, but you mainly buy the book for Master Hung-chih's "Practice Instructions," a mere 28 pages!

Having bought the book and read it a number of times I realise that it would be a bargain at any price. This book is a jewel.

It's said that the elegance of the original Chinese can't be conveyed in translation. If this is the case it must be truly sublime, because even in English the prose reads like translucent poetry. I can't think of any other spiritual writing outside of the world of Sufism that combines profundity with beauty of style to quite the same degree.

A classic of koan Zen like the "Blue Cliff Record" is a fabulous mine of wisdom, but its extreme difficulty makes it all but inaccessible outside of the context of institutional Zen monasticism.

But this book comes from the other stream of Zen, the school of Silent Illumination, and it has something to offer everyone from the most advanced practitioner to the newest beginner who can only bathe in its atmosphere of beauty and wonder. Poetry is able somehow to express the inexpressible, and the boundless silent truth of Zen is conveyed more clearly by these luminous phrases than by anything else I've ever read.

I can't overpraise this book. I wish I had more than five stars to award. If you're interested in Zen, or Buddhism, or meditation, and you don't own this book, buy it immediately. If I could keep only one book on Zen, this would be the book. One of Master Hung-chih's crammed, poetic, evocative paragraphs is worth several dozen books by lesser writers.

I read this shortly after it first came out. It seemed OK and I put it aside. Several years ago --and after more sitting practice and retreats-- I reread it and now I think it is a treasure. In the translated passages/poems, Hongzhi is speaking consistently from a deeply enlightened experience.

Someone new to Zen may find this collection of talks from a twelfth century Chinese master fuzzy and not very helpful. But for someone with experience sitting, it is profound. Dogen also gave Hongzhi "five stars" in Shobogenzo.

Hongzhi's words have become my favorite sitting companion.

This is one of the best books I've ever read -- on Zen, Buddhism or Spirituality in general. Hongzhi was obviously as clear as they get, and his subtle and powerful language and insight is an inspiration to any practicioner, from any tradition. This book is a must read for anyone who seeks a deeper understanding of Reality.

I would agree that this text has a better chance of being meaningful after a few years of sitting. And for anyone (like me) who gets pretty twisted up studying Dogen's assertive essays, I would definitely recommend this as an antidote to Dogen's assertions that turn and twist in on themselves. My teacher called this Grandmother Zen, but, you know in a good way. It's gentle, but comes from considerable depth. I lived with this book by sticking with one page/week for over a year. That seemed to be a very good way to let it sink in. As I said my very favorite Zen text, excellent translation.

I've been aspiring to `just sit' for about 30 yrs. This book expresses the foundation of this practice and I've tried to study it closely. Still, I have no idea what I am doing.

The wisdom in the words resonates and inspires my practice more than anything I've ever read. I am very grateful it is available for me to read.

Journey with translator Taigen Daniel Leighton (with the assistance of Yi Wu), as he explores a collection of thoughts from the mind of a brilliant 12th century philosopher, Zen Master Hongzhi. Clearly this is a labor of love, from many perspectives. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book as a first foray into eastern philosophy, but it is wonderful to see how rich the lives of humans can be, even when they lived 800 years ago. And how rich your own life could be.

A delightful poetic and prose expression of the Soto Zen approach to practice referred to as 'silent illumination.' This is the first significant English version of some of the writings of Zen Master Hongzhi, a Chinese precursor by several generations to the important thirteenth-century Japanese Soto Zen master Dogen. Hongzhi formulated in an organized manner the central principles and poetic expression of the Soto school, which Dogen was later to inherit, deepen, and expand in Japan. This selection and translation of Hongzhi's writings by Taigen Dan Leighton, himself a monk in the Soto tradition, is a wonderful addition to the growing stock of literature in English on the Soto Zen tradition. The well-developed introduction and very useful textual annotations on unfamiliar Chinese cultural allusions in the text make this work an excellent and accessible gateway into the literature and practice of silent illumination Zen.