Sun Face Buddha

A translation of the primary materials on the life and teachings of Ma-Tsu (709-788), the successor to the great sixth patriarch and the greatest Ch'an master in history, Hui-Neng (638-713). The book should be invaluable to all who wish to study the development of the Zen thought and philosophy over the course of history.

"Upside-Down Zen" invites readers to explore the vivid spirit of Zen Buddhism in fresh ways. Recalling, in another vein, the warm, lyrical style of Lin Jensen's "Bad Dog!, " author Susan Murphy offers a multifaceted take on the spiritual, grounded in the everyday. She uses her skills as storyteller, filmmaker, and poet to uncover the connections between Zen and Western cinema, as well as between Zen and traditions as diverse as Australian aboriginal beliefs and Jewish folktales. In the process, she finds spirituality where it has always belonged -- wherever life is happening. Murphy helps readers make sense of Zen koans, the often oversimplified and misunderstood teaching stories of the tradition, and highlights their wisdom for any reader on the spiritual path. A strong new voice in Western Buddhism, Murphy speaks for the many "unrecorded" women of Zen while bringing a lively, literate approach to a sometimes daunting genre.

The Blue Cliff Record is a classic text of Zen Buddhism, designed to assist in the activation of dormant human potential. The core of this extraordinary work is a collection of one hundred traditional citations and stories, selected for their ability to bring about insight and enlightenment. These vignettes are known as gongan in Chinese and koan in Japanese. Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record is a fresh translation featuring newly translated commentary from two of the greatest Zen masters of early modern Japan, Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) of the Rinzai sect of Zen and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) of the Soto sect of Zen. This translation and commentary on The Blue Cliff Record sheds new light on the meaning of this central Zen text.

Buddhisms and Deconstructions considers the connection between Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction, focusing on the work of Robert Magliola. Fourteen distinguished contributors discuss deconstruction and various Buddhisms--Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese (Chan)--followed by an afterword in which Magliola responds directly to his critics.

Under the leadership of Mazu Daoyi (709-788) and his numerous disciples, the Hongzhou School emerged as the dominant tradition of Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China during the middle part of the Tang dynasty(618-907). Mario Poceski offers a systematic examination of the Hongzhou School's momentous growth and rise to preeminence as the bearer of Chan orthodoxy, and analyzes its doctrines against the backdrop of the intellectual and religious milieus of Tang China. Poceski demonstrates that the Hongzhou School represented the first emergence of an empire-wide Chan tradition that had strongholds throughout China and replaced the various fragmented Schools of early Chan with an inclusive orthodoxy. Poceski's study is based on the earliest strata of permanent sources, rather than on the later apocryphal "encounter dialogue" stories regularly used to construe widely-accepted but historically unwarranted interpretations about the nature of Chan in the Tang dynasty. He challenges the traditional and popularly-accepted view of the Hongzhou School as a revolutionary movement that rejected mainstream mores and teachings, charting a new path for Chan's independent growth as a unique Buddhist tradition. This view, he argues, rests on a misreading of key elements of the Hongzhou School's history. Rather than acting as an unorthodox movement, the Hongzhou School's success was actually based largely on its ability to mediate tensions between traditionalist and iconoclastic tendencies. Going beyond conventional romanticized interpretations that highlight the radical character of the Hongzhou School, Poceski shows that there was much greater continuity between early and classical Chan-and between the Hongzhou School and the rest of Tang Buddhism-than previously thought.

Eihei Dogen, the thirteenth-century Zen master who founded the Japanese Soto School of Zen, is renowned as one of the world's most remarkable religious thinkers. As Shakespeare does with English, Dogen utterly transforms the language of Zen, using it in novel and extraordinarily beautiful ways to point to everything important in the religious life. He is known for two major works. The first work, the massive Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), represents his early teachings and exists in myriad English translations; the second work, the Eihei Koroku, is a collection of all his later teachings, including short formal discourses to the monks training at his temple, longer informal talks, and koans with his commentaries, as well as short appreciatory verses on various topics. The Shobogenzo has received enormous attention in Western Zen and Western Zen literature, and with the publication of this watershed volume, the Eihei Koroku will surely rise to commensurate stature. Dogen's Extensive Record is the first-ever complete and scholarly translation of this monumental work into English and this edition is the first time it has been available in paperback. This edition contains extensive and detailed research and annotation by scholars, translators and Zen teachers Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura, as well as forewords by the eighteenth-century poet-monk Ryokan and Tenshin Reb Anderson, former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center - plus introductory essays from Dogen scholar Steven Heine, and the prominent, late American Zen master John Daido Loori.