Zen and the Art of Insight [Paperback]

Thomas Cleary (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 1999

     The Prajnaparamita ("perfection of wisdom") sutras are one of the great legacies of Mahayana Buddhism, giving eloquent expression to some of that school's central concerns: the perception of shunyata, the essential emptiness of all phenomena; and the ideal of the bodhisattva, one who postpones his or her own enlightenment in order to work for the salvation of all beings.

     

     The Prajnaparamita literature consists of a number of texts composed in Buddhist India between 100 BCE and 100 CE. Originally written in Sanskrit, but surviving today mostly in their Chinese versions, the texts are concerned with the experience of profound insight that cannot be conveyed by concepts or in intellectual terms. The material remains important today in Mahayana Buddhism and Zen.

     

     Key selections from the Prajnaparamita literature are presented here, along with Thomas Cleary's illuminating commentary, as a means of demonstrating the intrinsic limitations of discursive thought, and of pointing to the profound wisdom that lies beyond it.

     

     Included selections from:

   •  The Scripture on Perfect Insight Awakening to Essence
   •  The Essentials of the Great Scripture on Perfect Insight
   •  Treatise on the Great Scripture on Perfect Insight
   •  The Scripture on Perfect Insight for Benevolent Rulers
   •  Key Teachings on the Great Scripture of Perfect Insight
   •  The Questions of Suvikrantavikramin

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Prolific translator Cleary (The Essential Confucius, not reviewed, etc.) has gathered together excerpts from the Prajnaparamita sutras, which come to us from Mahayana Buddhism. These selections are not for the fainthearted. Drawn from The Scripture on Perfect Insight Awakening to Essence, The Essentials of the Great Scripture on Perfect Insight, Key Teachings on the Great Scripture of Perfect Insight, The Questions of Suvikrantavikramin, and other works, they address the question of perfect insight. The often arcane selections are made intelligible to the uninitiated by Clearys useful introduction and commentaries, but, refreshingly, Clearly does not water down the writings or package the teachings so that any dilettante can painlessly digest them. On the contrary, he writes that those stuck in a stage of spiritual development where they still need dogma and rules will find the gnostic insight of Buddhism . . . imperceptible and effectively unavailable. The original sources concur: Perfect insight, we learn, is like a bonfire,/Ungraspable from the four directions. So just what is this perfect insight? Another passage puts it succinctly: It is the practice of rising above all worlds. Proceed with caution: Like the rabbis who cautioned anyone under 40 not to study Kabbalah, some Buddhist teachers have warned that people may be harmed by hearing about perfect insight before theyre ready. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Language Notes

Text: English

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1st edition (November 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570625166
• ISBN-13: 978-1570625169
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,113,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas Cleary is the preeminent translator of classic Eastern texts, including The Essential Tao, The Essential Confucius, The Secret of the Golden Flower, and the bestselling The Art of War.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Get out of jail free, January 25, 2012

By 

Norman Bearrentine "normbear" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zen and the Art of Insight (Paperback)

Length:: 2:56 Mins

Walter Lippmann famously said, "First we look, then we name, and only then do we see." This is an accurate description of the ordinary condition of human perception: what we see is limited by the names we have for things, by the categories of language. But language, even the language of science, is to reality as a map is to geography, and as useful as maps are, they don't come close to exhausting the infinite detail of reality.

Cleary's Zen and the Art of Insight is about learning to appreciate the reality beyond words, and in doing so, to put the world as we conceptualize it into perspective. We are so habitually immersed in language that we don't see how it restricts our thinking and perception, and this book is about getting outside language in order to see those restrictions. As long as we are unaware that there is a greater world beyond the walls of our prison, we are unaware that we are, in fact, imprisoned.

Once we see beyond the walls, we are free to come and go as we please--the prison is only a prison because of ignorance. With insight, conceptual thinking becomes a useful tool instead of a rigid enclosure.

Cleary translates classical teachings on the art of insight and then comments on his translations, describing various exercises "intended to effect a shift of attention from the conceptual to the intuitive mode."(p. xi-xii) These exercises include contemplation of impermanence, interdependence, emptiness, nonoccurrence, ungraspability, and the three natures of things; which lead to nonattachment, noninvolvement, and nongrasping. (This listing may not be exhaustive.) Further insights result:

"The ordinary perceptions and notions of things on which we act are conditioned by thought, imagination, mental pictures, and mental talk. All of these inner activities that influence our perception and behavior are also conditioned by other factors, both inherited and acquired. Therefore a temporary cessation of the stream of conditioned thought, imagination, envisioning, and description is employed to give the mind room to perceive things more directly. Terms such as gone and vanished refer to this practice of halting or stopping the flow of habit; they do not mean to suggest that insightful people can no longer think, imagine, envision, or speak."(p.22)

In "Afterword; Warnings on the Label," Cleary advises that these teachings are not for everyone:

"...the list of contraindications--people with mentalities for which the teachings are not recommended--also provides a framework for preliminary self-examination, through which one may approach insight by way of psychological housecleaning."(p. 150)

Most of the Afterword is included in "Look Inside!" so you can check to see if your particular mentality is among those for whom this book is not recommended.

(The video is illustrative of ideas found in the book, rather than a direct commentary.)