Customer Reviews

The Gospel According to Zen: Beyond the Death of God

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This book was my first introduction to zen writing and still is a favorite. Nice collection of writings by different authors, contemporary and classic, on the elusive subjects of zen, truth, and awareness. Inclusion of non-Zen writings, particularly from the Gospel of Thomas and Alan Watts, makes this a more universal, but perhaps less authentic, description.

I am a very spiritual person, but do not like to be tied to any one religion because I feel like there is something missing in everyone I learn about. This book does an amazing job at explaining how Eastern and Western phylisophical and spiritual ideas are not complete without each other. It explains Eastern and Western core principles in simplified but still accurately. It is a perfect book for people interested in expanding their knowledge of spiritual ideas and need a starting place or point of reference.

This book came to me at the right place and at the right time. I was looking for a more experienced based spirituality after getting burned out on authoritarean prophetic spiritualities. The essays in this book were gently thought provoking and thought transcending. The editors do not explain much and leave the reader to feel his or her own truth about what is said. There is a direct, playful, brain teasing, and pure way of directly experiencing life and the sacred at the heart of all the essays. For many years, I tasted a kind of sanity in the writings that lead me back to what I was actually experiencing. It inspired me to commit to daily meditation, something I have kept up for over 25 years. The poems called "Zenrin" I recited at a poetry gathering and everyone felt their truth within a warm silent afterglow.

This was my first introduction to Zen Buddhism some 25 years ago and it is still one of the best introductions I have read. Many selections are parable like and from many traditions. The editors and authors do not do much explaining and therefore leave us to figure out what each nugget means. I read part of this book, "the Zenerin", at a poetry reading long ago and everyone felt a potent silence afterwards and some understanding. Zen has always felt like a breath of fresh air and a touch of genuine sanity. It points to a devotional commitment to live in the now with all of life, joy and sorrow, being accepted fully. It rapidly pierces our tendancy to get caught in thinking and miss out on what life is about. The enlightenment that Zen points to seems always within reach and easy to live, as long as we do not think we got it.