Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Shambhala Library)
by Shunryu Suzuki
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Book Summary Information
Author: Shunryu SuzukiEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-10
ISBN: 1590302672
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Shambhala
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781590302675
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Shambhala Library)
Book Review: Four stars only to warn true "beginners": it's deceptively simple
Summary: 4 Stars
Beginner's minds: many possibilities; in experts: few. This sums up the optimism and clarity in these transcriptions. These talks were collated and edited by his students who organized these Zen pep talks in to Right Practice, Attitude, and Understanding. They flow, summed up in epigraphs and pithy examples that open up into profundity. As with the Zen message itself, deceptively simple on its surface.
This can be, as Amazon reviewers have cautioned, not the best book for absolute beginners. I liked David Fontana's "Discover Zen" and read that and pondered its contents for a few months before tackling Suzuki's classic. This will not give you a true primer for Zen; it's a guide for those already "sitting"-- that's the audience for the talks edited here. You can find out about Suzuki's life and career in David Chadwick's "Crooked Cucumber" (I recently reviewed Fontana and Chadwick); the contents of "ZMBM" strive for a sense of what a master might advise for his followers, but the aim's always to get beyond teacher-student dualities, and all barriers between you and the teaching. So easy to compress, yet it expands into infinity and nothingness from the brief chapters compiled within a few elegantly designed pages.
No inspirational fluff, this can be demanding, no-nonsense, and sobering. Basically, "just sit." Eat when you should eat, work when it's time to work, sleep the same-- and practice meditation regularly. Stay disciplined but free from habit; composed yet able to stand up for righteousness; detach from the world but marvel at it.
It's often moving. "When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is." (88) This gives a flavor of the calm tone and steady pace of these reflections from the Japanese-born founder of the San Francisco and Tassajara Zen Centers, responsible for the great 1960s expansion of Soto Zen into America. Anyone will find here wisdom, common sense, and the same peace that must have permeated the "zazen" sessions that inspired this book.
Summary of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Shambhala Library)
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." So begins this most beloved of all American Zen books. Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line of Shunryu Suzuki's classic. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it's all about. An instant teaching on the first page. And that's just the beginning. In the thirty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much re-read, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics-from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality-in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. It's a book to come back to time and time again as an inspiration to practice.A respected Zen master in Japan and founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki has blazed a path in American Buddhism like few others. He is the master who climbs down from the pages of the koan books and answers your questions face to face. If not face to face, you can at least find the answers as recorded in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, a transcription of juicy excerpts from his lectures. From diverse topics such as transience of the world, sudden enlightenment, and the nuts and bolts of meditation, Suzuki always returns to the idea of beginner's mind, a recognition that our original nature is our true nature. With beginner's mind, we dedicate ourselves to sincere practice, without the thought of gaining anything special. Day to day life becomes our Zen training, and we discover that "to study Buddhism is to study ourselves." And to know our true selves is to be enlightened. --Brian Bruya
Suzuki, Shunryu Books
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