Customer Reviews

The Whole World Is a Single Flower: 365 Kong-Ans for Everyday Life (Tuttle Library of Enlightenment)

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

 

 

I felt very sad when I read the review from someone in Winslow, Arizona. This person missed the point. I practice koans with one of the editors of this book, Jane McLaughlin-Dobisz, a Zen Master who received transmission from Zen Master Seung Sahn. She is a completely alive teacher who brings the teaching of this book alive in practice. The entire point of koan practice is to connect the teachings with everyday life, so that there is no separation between you and this world. This book presents some of these koans, or questions, to entice you to more deeply explore your mind before critical, analytical thinking. Zen Master Seung Sahn calls this your "don't know mind". By allowing yourself to be absorbed by these questions and respond from your gut, you may come to trust yourself, to believe in yourself. Through this belief, you will be able to participate in your life 100%, with compassion and vital presence. This is something that 100 books about Zen cannot give you. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in Zen practice, or koan practice, as an introduction to this centuries old path to cutting through the mind of opposites and returning to the source. If you have some idea about the path to enlightenment, you will have a big problem. This book may help you see through your ideas and wake up! I sit a seven day retreat every year and I read this book and it always helps me, I hope it will help you too.

There are three classic collections of kong-ans (the Korean word; Japanese is koans, Chinese is kung-ans) from ancient China: the Mumonkan, the Blue Cliff record, and (less known) the Book of Serenity. They follow the same basic form: the kong-an (the word means public case, and it's generally a very short story, e.g.: "A monk asked Joju, does a dog have Buddha nature? Joju answered Mu.") is presented, followed by commentary. In the Mumonkan and the Blue Cliff record the commentary is by the book's compiler; in the Book of Serenity you get a grab bag of comments by various teachers. This book is a contemporary representation of that tradition, presenting a large number of classic kong-ans from the Korean tradition, as well as kong-ans based on poems or fragments of poems (e.g., there's a series of kong-ans from the Tao Te Ching) and derived from other traditions (including the Christian tradition). Each kong-an is followed by a question or series of questions, and then by a short commentary. (Historical note: Today we tend to identify the kong-an with the question, but traditionally it's the basic situation that's the kong-an.)

Winslow AZ, who wrote the extremely negative review, is right on one point --- these stories, questions, and commentaries can seem incomprehensible if you read them the way you'd read, say, a review on Amazon.com. Well, hey, I'm a mathematician and mathematics papers are incomprehensible if you read them that way too. So, no, this isn't a book for people wanting an introduction to Zen Buddhism, whether philosophical or practical, and it isn't an analytical text for students working toward their PhD's either.

What it is is the real thing, a contemporary snapshot of a living tradition, and that's its value. People practicing in the very particular tradition of the Kwan Um School of Zen refer to this book regularly, just as the Mumonkan and Blue Cliff Record (most or all of whose cases are incorporated here, but with different commentary) have been referred to regularly for over 1,000 years. Kong-ans resonate with some people and not with others; for those for whom they resonate they are invaluable. If you want a taste of the living tradition, whether as a practitioner or a scholar, check this book out.

The secret to understanding this book is to follow Zen Master Seung Sahn's advice and cut off all thinking. Zen Master Seung Sahn is a great contemporary Korean Zen Master who has been teaching in the West since 1972. He has an intimate appreciation of his Western students' minds, and also a profound understanding of the whole Zen tradition. The book will give a valuable question to the mind of those who have never practiced, but it will be most treasured by those with some experience of meditation. Kong-ans (Jap. koans) which might seem paradoxical at first are revealed as simple and illuminating to the mind which sheds its attachments. That is the beauty (and the frustration) of studying kong-ans with an experienced teacher. This book should enlighten as well as provoke. It also contains many heretofore unknown stories from the Korean Zen tradition, as well as Taoist and Christian Kong-ans. A rare find!

It's clear that the last reviewer has never actually practiced with koans, which is all this book asks of you -- to practice. Perhaps "the author [seems to give] ludicrous explanations" because, as the author writes, One action is better than 10,000 sutras. In other words, this isn't a book to read in the same way that you'd read the newspaper, & you either agree or disagree with the author (like maybe reading about a jockey and deciding you hate riding horses -- when you've never even seen a horse). Plus here, essentially, there is no author. To put it another way: YOU'RE the author.

The reason I give the book five stars is also why I think the last reviewer is a bit off: Zen is NOT "the ultimate psychology of self knowledge" or anything else fitting so neatly into what we'd like it to be. Let go of "Zen," then what is this? Just this! What can you do?

Bring me the sound of the cicada, asks one of the koans. Seung Sahn might say, Put it all down, put down "psychology" and "self knowledge" and "Zen is supposed to be this," and bring me the sound of the cicada.

(And to clarify: I've never been a student of Seung Sahn's. Unfortunately.)

Most of us spend our days up in our heads, we learn a lot, we think a lot, study a lot, understand a lot, we 'know it all'. Until we come across that one question, that one situation where all thinking stops, all ideas are frozen.

One hundred volumes of Zen literature cannot help us, one hundred centuries of study cannot help us, one hundred milleniums of self-proclaimed mastery cannot help us. Stuck! Now what? ...

This wonderful book offers us not one, not two, but 365 of such rare moments. Allow yourself to get joyfully stuck, let your thinking slide away, and see, feel, smell, touch, hear, do, live... for the first time again.

Zen master Seung Sahn drew me in from the moment I first read his Compass of Zen (probably still one of the best works out there on the subject to date). I probably should have put the book down like he said before reading it, but I couldn't resist frankly. See the thing is, books like that are a blessing and a curse. Here you stand, on the verge of an entirely new horizon, yet your still attempting to approach this life academically. Okay, I was approaching life in that way; maybe you can or cannot relate. I developed a philosophical and theoretical illness, and I was constantly using my philosophy to try and "mend" the illness. In short, I was going absolutely insane. There I was, surrounded by piles of Zen books with no practice, no ZAZEN. Man I must have looked a mess sitting there, real disheveled.

Anyway, me and Zen went on a hiatus for a year or so as a result (I was mad at her). Then one holiday, my sister gives me some dharma talks on tape of various teachers , and that old spark was started again. But I knew (really, I did!) that things would have to change. I vowed to myself that I COULD NOT approach practice in the way I had previously, otherwise I may as well not bother at all. So I ordered a zafu and zabuton instead of another book. Let me tell you, that was a very wise investment. If you want a good grasp of Zen Buddhism, I highly recommend you get yourself one of each. So where does "The Whole World is a Single Flower" fit into all of this? Good question. I had to provide all of that background information (I know, I'm sorry) in order to say the following: This is the best book on Zen I've ever read. It's not about entertaining you or making you feel real cuddly inside. It's certainly not going to spoon feed you and then send you to naptime. It will merely ask us all some really tough questions, which cannot be answered outside of zazen. That's it. That's awesome! Questions we cannot answer, without a completely empty and reflective mind. YES! YES! Shakyamuni Buddha himself gave up all other routes and simply sat in Bodh Gaya with his questions. He didn't understand them really. He just had them, so in a way he did away with all convention and just sat.

The previous reviewer said this book has no author. Quite a keen way of putting it, really. This is public stuff inside, and without practice you'll HATE IT. I guarantee you will HATE this book without practice. End of story. You'll be ogling over some "spoon feed me" book perhaps. Which is fine really. Maybe you'll end up like I did, tired of that means and on the true path of zazen. So order this book when your done with all the others, and after you've finally gotten that zafu!

I have a fairly comprehensive Zen library (at least 100 volumes anyway) and bought this on the strength of the gushing reviews on the back cover. Big mistake. Zen koans obviously aren't supposed to "make sense" on the rational level or be susceptible to critical analysis in the same way you might analyze a poem, but the vast majority of these are simply dumb and unenlightening, followed by an equally dumb and unenlightening series of questions, followed by an equally dumb and unenlightening "commentary." I frankly stopped reading after about 200 of these. "Huang Po asked Zen Master Fu Hong why Bodhidharma came from the West. Fu Hong replied, 'The stone cow sits in a green chair.' Question: What did Fu Hong mean by 'green chair'? Commentary: Fu Hong made a big mistake. Grow up, fat boy." If that's your idea of the path to enlightenment, add this book to your library. If not, buy "Repo Man" and watch it eight times.

After reading this book it was clear that koans are not a useful practice for pursuing the truth. The author lists numerous koans, and then gives some ludricrous explanations in the form of pretend wisdom based on his view of the doctrine of Buddhism. Daily life will give a Zen student all the koans needed to pursue ultimate truth. Studying koans only helps fill a student's head with more fake "knowledge".
Zen is the ultimate psychology of self knowledge, and it's misleading to think that koan study helps achieve anything.