Zen in Ten: A Few of My Favorite Books
Must-Reads for Zennies! (Part One)
This is my first, but not my last list of book recommendations for people who are beginning their Zen practice and interested in learning more about the history, practice, and philosophy of Zen. Thank you for reading, dear reader! Bows of gratitude, Rev. Shoren Heather
Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama: This book is a foundational book on Zen practice and is as inspirational as it is practical. If you’re only ever going to read one book on Zen, I highly recommend perusing (this word, BTW, means to read carefully) this one every year.
We practice zazen, neither aiming at having a special mystical experience nor trying to gain greater enlightenment. Zazen as true Mahayana teaching is always the whole self just truly being the whole self, truly being life.
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki: When I first read this Zen classic about 20 years ago, I was both inspired and perplexed. Suzuki Roshi has a direct and poetic manner of speaking about Zen that both sinks below words and rises above them. It continues to stoke “my” bodhichitta!
Moment after moment, everyone comes out of nothingness. This is the true joy of life.
Living By Vow by Shohaku Okumura: I’d suggest you read everything written and edited by Okumura Roshi. He has the True Dharma Eye! In this book, Okumura Roshi offers profound and practical explanations of eight essential Zen chants.
To deepen our understanding we must negate our concepts. When we negate our beliefs and preconceptions we can see things from other points of view or a wider perspective. We should try to avoid grasping with our ready-made preconceptions or prejudices.
The Complete Illustrated Guide to Zen by Seigaku Amato: This book rocks! I wish that it had been available when I began practicing Zen all those years ago. Seigaku, who is a friend of mine, is a Soto Zen priest who is an amazingly talented illustrator. In this thin volume, he introduces the reader to Zen meditation, rituals, chants, and iconography. It’s a wonderful primer on all things Zen.
In the Soto Zen tradition, practitioners follow a road map to reduce the suffering of all beings. This road map is comprised of sixteen precepts called the bodhisattva precepts, which guide us along through life.
Waking Up to What You Do by Diane Eshin Rizzetto: Eshin is a former abbot and founder of the Bay Zen Center in Oakland, CA. She offers an insightful, thoughtful, sensitive, and practical exploration of the Buddhist precepts.
Listen to and feel your feelings and body sensations. Whatever your experience is, just let it rise naturally, breathing in and out. Let the thoughts about your experience melt into the experiencing itself as you breathe. In this place without comparison, you stand alone and present to the fullness of all that you are.
The Shamanic Bones of Zen by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel: I love this book and I love Zenju’s teaching spirit!! She uses personal anecdotes of her Zen experiences to explore and illuminate the mystical, sacred, and shamanistic/indigenous elements of Zen/Buddhism. I found her insights and examples profoundly inspiring and magical.
Zen is for those who thrive on the intangible, the ambiguous, the amorphous, and the infinite. We are stars forever suspended in nowhere. You can’t really see Zen. You can only experience it after some time of walking the path.
What Is Zen? Plain Talk for a Beginner’s Mind: by Norman Fischer & Susan Moon: I had the good fortune to meet both Norman and Susan a few years ago during a monastic practice period at Tassajara. In this book, Susan poses questions to her long-time mentor & friend, and Norman responses are fun, heartfelt, informative and clear.
Wisdom in Zen means the capacity to see that “form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” as the Heart Sutra teaches. There is a vast literature about prajnaparamita (“wisdom beyond wisdom,” the wisdom that cognizes the empty nature of all phenomena), and I can’t really say much about it here other than that it implies a special sort of wisdom that understands, even directly perceives, that things are not the way they ordinarily appear to be.
Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher by Steven Heine: Although there are numerous biographies about Eihei Dogen, Professor Heine’s passion for and knowledge of Dogen’s life, poetry, and teaching radiates through every page in this comprehensive and engaging biography.
Dogen’s understanding of the central Mahayana doctrine of original enlightenment (hongaku), or the innate endowment of the buddha-nature embedded in all beings, radically reinterprets previous beliefs that tended to reify or eternalize this central principle.
Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters by Grace Schireson: As a Soto Zen priestess, I feel fortunate that nowadays many centers include the names of female teachers as part of the daily liturgy. I am forever grateful to teachers/scholars like Schireson for documenting the socio-historical context and the unrelenting practice spirit of these female Zen pioneers.
My aspiration for this project is to provide a voice for our female ancestors’ broad and flexible teachings, which have been long scattered and forgotten. I hope that this collection of teachings will inspire Buddhist practitioners to engage in their practice more authentically, and provide Western Dharma teachers with women’s teaching stories and examples of adaptations and variety in Zen practice.
Zen Seeds by Shundo Aoyama: Aoyama Roshi is a poetic and profound teacher imbued with the True Dharma Eye! Her eloquent, simple words below speak louder and delve deeper than anything I could write to recommend this wonderful collection of her essays.
When we throw off the petty self and quietly give ourselves body and soul into nature’s keeping, then the fragrance of the plum blossom enduring the freezing wind, the throb of new life hidden in the springtime mud, and the welcoming voice of the plants and trees making merry in the thunder and rain are all able to reach us.
So glad to have the recommendations--heartfelt thanks.
I love every one of these books but have not finished Heine on Dogen yet. Now I will.