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Experience Du Zen (L') (1989)

by Thomas Hoover(Favorite Author)

3.57 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

2226035249 (ISBN13: 9782226035240)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Albin Michel

review 1: I was surprised by how readable and amusing I found this history of Chinese and Japanese Zen masters to be. I've been philosophically engaged with Buddhism for years, but I'd never been very interested in the "lineage" of any particular Buddhist school — I figured I'd just skim this book and move on. As it was, I found myself reading it with great interest; Hoover's approach to the subject is well-researched, honest, affectionate, and periodically amusing. He starts by discussing the interaction of Taoism and Buddhism to create Zen and then takes a run through history, offering brief biographical sketches of the major teachers from Bodhidharma to Ma-tsu to Lin-chi to Eisai. He's attentive to the political context in which various schools rose and fell and is frank about ... morewhat's known to be true and what is apparently legend and myth. He even does his best to explain the masters' logic behind "shock" enlightenment, which can seem pretty mystifying to the non-practitioner. If Zen Buddhism intrigues you but, like me, historical figures don't, you might want to give this book a try — it makes the subject more accessible and entertaining than you'd expect.
review 2: “Words can point the way but the path must be travelled in silence.”Hoover takes a very chronological approach, illustrating the gradual dawn of Zen Buddhism by plodding through the teachings of the ancient masters. Each master added to what would later become the modern version of Zen Buddhism that puts a lot of emphasis on the intuitive, non-verbal understanding that ultimately leads to sudden enlightenment. Enlightenment isn’t something that can be achieved by reading sutras and chanting mantras. All anybody can do is try to make their mind as “susceptible” to sudden enlightenment as possible;“The traditional practices neither help nor hinder finding the way, since they are unrelated to the final flash of sudden enlightenment—which is in your mind from the beginning, ready to be released.”This can only be done by exterminating the shackles of rationality and cognition that constrain our mind and instead embrace the insight that resides beyond these artificial construction. Ironically, there isn’t much to be learned from the actual teachings of the old Zen masters since “All that was worth handing on died with them; the rest they put in books.”I confess, I would have preferred a little less history and a bit more philosophy in this book. Even though I tried to pay close attention, I can’t remember any of the names of the important teachers the book so meticulously examined, nor the dates or places. The book is very readable and concise but, given the nature of the subject it explores, I would have expected it to be a little more pensive. I enjoyed the bits where the author discussed the more elusive Zen concepts, such as “no-thought” and “oneness” immensely while the recapitulations of the various escapades that the ancient Zen masters stirred up felt a bit constrained, even tedious, at times.Don’t get me wrong, the mini-biographies of these individuals were most entertaining. The life of a Buddhist monk serving under a master was a lot less… formal than I would have imagined from 8th century China. To demonstrate their point of implicit understanding, the masters could do all kinds of crazy things, such as shout, act dog or hit the students with a stick. Apparently, when caught off guard, the mind enters a nonplussed state that is most susceptible to sudden enlightenment. These violent practices were rendered obsolete later on as one of the most revolutionary Zen masters developed a method of asking his students paradoxical questions (i.e. What’s the sound of one hand clapping) or giving a completely nonsensical answer to a reasonable question (i.e. If I were to ask you what day it is, you would say “Donuts”). This served the same purpose of facilitating the transition between the rational mind and intuition. This is a decent book for those who are semi-interested in understanding Zen Buddhism and its origins. For those who are looking for a more thorough account of either its history or its teachings should keep looking, however. In short, a good introduction for further study. less

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