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‘Somebody comes into the Zen center with a lighted cigarette, walks
up to the Buddha statue, blows smoke in its face, and drops ashes on its
lap. You are standing there. What can you do?”
This is a
problem which Zen Master Seung Sahn is fond of posing to his American
students who attend his Zen centers. Like much of Zen literature which
encourages flashes of instinctive understanding of the true way by
showing the classical Zen Masters in interaction with their students,
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha
is a record of a Zen Master’s way with his students. What makes this
book different and unique, however, is that Master Seung Sahn is very
much alive, that his students are young Americans, and that the
dialogues set down here took place in the U.S. Thus, for the first time,
the
kong-an method may be seen applied within a thoroughly
modern context, in place of the more familiar ancient Chinese setting
customary in traditional literature.
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha
is a delightful, irreverent, and often hilariously funny living record
of the dialogue between Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn and his American
students. Consisting of dialogues, stories, formal Zen interviews,
Dharma speeches, and letters using the Zen Master’s actual words in
spontaneous, living interaction with his students, this book is a fresh
presentation of the Zen teaching method of “instant dialogue” between
Master and student which, through the use of astonishment and paradox,
leads to an understanding of ultimate reality.
Ven. Seung Sahn is
the first Korean Zen Master to teach in the West. He attained
enlightenment at the age of twenty-two. After five years in the army, he
served as chairman of the committee to reform the Chogye order of
Korean Buddhism and was abbot of five temples in Seoul. He spent nine
years teaching in Japan, founding temples in Tokyo and Hong Kong. In
1972 he came to America with no money and no English, and supported
himself for a few months by repairing washing machines in a Laundromat.
He is now the director of growing Zen communities in Providence,
Cambridge, New Haven, New York, and Los Angeles.
232 pages. Paperback.
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LIST PRICE: $16.00 Our Price: $13.60 (You save $2.40)
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Stock Status:In Stock
Product Code: S-7168
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