Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness
eBook - PDF

Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness

Zen Talks on the Sandokai

  1. 199 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness

Zen Talks on the Sandokai

About this book

When Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1972, it was enthusiastically embraced by Westerners eager for spiritual insight and knowledge of Zen. The book became the most successful treatise on Buddhism in English, selling more than one million copies to date. Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness is the first follow-up volume to Suzuki Roshi's important work. Like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it is a collection of lectures that reveal the insight, humor, and intimacy with Zen that made Suzuki Roshi so influential as a teacher.

The Sandokai—a poem by the eighth-century Zen master Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian)—is the subject of these lectures. Given in 1970 at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the lectures are an example of a Zen teacher in his prime elucidating a venerated, ancient, and difficult work to his Western students. The poem addresses the question of how the oneness of things and the multiplicity of things coexist (or, as Suzuki Roshi expresses it, "things-as-it-is"). Included with the lectures are his students' questions and his direct answers to them, along with a meditation instruction. Suzuki Roshi's teachings are valuable not only for those with a general interest in Buddhism but also for students of Zen practice wanting an example of how a modern master in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition understands this core text today.

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Yes, you can access Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness by Shunryu Suzuki, Mel Weitsman,Michael Wenger in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Théologie et religion & Bouddhisme. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. CONTENTS
  3. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  4. INTRODUCTION
  5. SEKITO KISEN AND THE SANDOKAI
  6. NOTES TO THE READER
  7. THE SANDOKAI: English Translation
  8. Chinese Text and Japanese Transliteration
  9. FIRST TALK: Things-As-It-Is
  10. SECOND TALK: Warm Hand to Warm Hand
  11. THIRD TALK: Buddha Is Always Here
  12. FOURTH TALK: The Blue Jay Will Come Right into Your Heart
  13. FIFTH TALK: Today We May Be Very Happy
  14. SIXTH TALK: The Boat Is Always Moving
  15. SEVENTH TALK: Without Any Idea of Attainment
  16. EIGHTH TALK: Within Light There Is Utter Darkness
  17. NINTH TALK: The Willow Tree Cannot Be Broken
  18. TENTH TALK: Suffering Is a Valuable Thing
  19. A SHORT TALK DURING ZAZEN
  20. ELEVENTH TALK: We Should Not Stick to Words or Rules
  21. TWELFTH TALK: Do Not Pass Your Days and Nights in Vain
  22. TALK GIVEN TO A VISITING CLASS: We Are Just a Tiny Speck of Big Being
  23. THE SANDOKAI: Compiled Translation by Suzuki Roshi
  24. LINEAGE CHART OF TEACHERS MENTIONED IN THE TEXT