Customer Reviews

Living Buddha Zen

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This is a special book with a fragrance about it. The rich blue cover with its stylized plumb tree (for the White Plumb Zen lineage) is beautiful, and the titles of the individual sections (like "Patience! Small birds are speaking!", "Deep Intimacy and even Deeper Intimacy," and "Same Wind Blowing for a Thousand Miles") are arresting and intriguing. The book, adapted from an ancient text, recounts the transmission of awakening and awareness through fifty-two generations of enlightened buddhas, taking somewhat the form of a bucket brigade or the passing of an Olympic torch. Each transmission is described in around four pages, begins with a koan, and ends with a closing poem. Between opening and closing we observe, with the immediacy of an eye witness, the moment in which the student suddenly understands and makes the leap into living Buddahood. This book draws me back and back again.

For any Zen student, particularly one immersed in koan study, this book is a gem... richly expands on Keizan Zengi's koans in Transmission of the Light. A beautiful writer with a deep clarity.

I have found the translations and interpretations of Lex Hixon to be very fresh, alive, straightforward, and slightly heretical (in a good way). They show that no mere translator is at work but comes from one who understands what is being shared and lets his understanding bring aliveness back into the old words. This book traces a whole person to person transmission for centuries as the teachings and enlightenment of the Buddha are passed on into the future to reach us now. It would be interesting to add a few more chapters to include the people in the appendix who link up the very present moment of the lineage. In any case, Zen has koan study behind it. Many Zen teachers have tried to share that koans are not puzzles, but revelations of a core teaching designed to liberate. It is possible to "get it" right now from reading them, as the vital understanding passes from person to person in these snapshots. The book functions both historically and more so as record of essential teachings to study and learn from. I found the translations enjoyable and alive. This edition has Taizan giving an appreciation and blessing its contents. Taizan does give an important hint, too, that the words are meant to feed our enlightenment practice. Even though the words feel very clear, without some practice that might seem hard to understand.