Most overtly religious Zen book I've read in a while, including a "things you must believe in order to be a Buddhist" chapter (fairly innocuous, 8 Mahayana tenants: all beings have buddha nature, illusion of a self. Took me forever to finish this, long stretches of putting it down and forgetting it existed. There were some parts of the book which read like dogma, and these passages made me doubt the entire text, but the mind is so quick to doubt and create boundaries, that it is sometimes best not to pay heed to each of its voices. The other key takeaway is to meditate with eyes open - I tend to close them which always carries me to a different world of distractions which constantly keeps shifting. One key takeaway for me was that ideal lengths of meditation is 15-25 minutes instead of sitting in long hours. The book goes through theories, beliefs, and at the end even a practical guide for meditation. The ox herding describes the process of awakening I am unable to grasp how trying to understand what the zen master means by mu will help to realise the self, but Yamada Koun reminds me as the reader repeatedly that I cannot understand any of the zen teachings with conceptual knowledge but need to experience these myself.Īnother interesting nugget from the book that stood out for me, which I intend to dig deeper is the ten ox herding pictures. A zen master is asked by a monk "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?: Jôshû, the zen master replies, ‘Mu!' which means no, or nothing. Two very popular koans referred to in the book are Mu and teh sound of one hand clapping. Both also use koans, a form of puzzles to focus the mind in practice. Both schools emphasise on sitting in meditation (zazen) as a way of reaching self knowledge. I learned a little about two schools of zen after reading this: Soto and Rinzai. A good introduction to Zen, as I have known very little about it except for the emphasis on meditation in this form of buddhism.
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