Customer Reviews

The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu (Sacred Literature Series)

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Green's translation seems to capture the frustrating, obvious, mocking, simple character of the lessons of the great Chinese Zen masters. Some of the prose is beautiful. Some is poetic. Some of it is deep like a pond with brilliant light reflected on its surface. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward.

This book is extraordinary. As Mumon has observed in the _Gateless Gate_, "Joshu's tongue has no bone, so he can speak freely." That freedom is exactly what is communicated by these aphorism. Admittedly, some are hard too understand, but other strike the soul like lightning. These are the words of a man who underwent the shattering experience of enlightenment, and the book conveys that sense of power and transcendence.

As Korean Zen master Seung Sahn often described koans as fish hooks-Joshu's sayings are much the same way. This book is nearly impossible to approach via the intellect, the entire work is a koan. This book is much like "The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi", also published by Shambhala, very esoteric and highly engaging. If you want a book that is more "entertaining" in the conventional sense, try a book of any modern master. If you are looking for what Zen sounded like and meant to our earliest of lineages long ago, then this book is just for you.

Zen master Joshu was a VERY influential master in Zen history, accredited with 5 koans in The Gateless Gate & 12 koans in the Blue Cliff Record. The book is not an easy read, and at first it may even bore you. This is true. But through the years your curiousity will peak now and then, forcing you to pick the book up again and dust it off a bit. It's as if Joshu must marinate you for a bit, before your mind can open to what he is saying. Read this book attentively and try not to think too much while pouring over it, this alone may be your most baffling rival. Your own thinking. Listen to Joshu, not you! I hope you get through the tough process of reading it once, and come back to it over and over again-because it is so confusing. In essence, I hope you find Joshu to be a crazy old friend.

Enjoy:)

This is one of those enigmatic works that's definitely not easy to figure out. Joshu, of course was one of the great Zen masters of Ancient China. He's especially known for his Mu answer in response to the question does a dog have a Buddha nature. This work expounds on the collected sayings of Joshu. It's only 180 or so pages and divided into small stanzas and what-not. However, it takes a while for this stuff to sink in because you can't really understand it by using your intellectual mind. My suggestion is to read the book through the first time without letting yourself get caught up in trying to decipher it. Let it settle into your mind like a pebble settling onto the bottom of a body of water and then come back to it. It's definitely not an introductory work for the novice wanting to learn about Zen or something like that. These are ancient collected sayings which are really one large koan. I do recommend the book for people seriously interested in Zen study, but I won't suggest this for anyone just wanting to learn a general knowledge about Zen. This book wasn't quite as rich as I expected and therefore I was a little disappointed but I suppose there is still some merit in it.