John Daido Loori

An introduction to the creative spirit as it applies within Zen tradition shares personal anecdotes about the author's own experiences, suggesting exercises and visual tools--including the ancient practices of calligraphy, poetry, brush painting, and the tea ceremony--to help readers cultivate spiritual creativity. By the author of and The Eight Gates of Zen. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Cultivating Your Artistic Life

The Zen of Creativity

One of the most well-known and respected American Zen teachers offers an accessible introduction to the practice of Zen.

A Program of Zen Learning

The Eight Gates of Zen

Provides information on the practice of Zen meditation, covering such topics as body positions, hara focus, breathing, relaxation exercise, and walking meditation.

A Beginner's Guide to Zen Meditation

Finding the Still Point

A collection of three hundred koans compiled by Eihei Dogen, the thirteenth-century founder of Soto Zen in Japan, this book presents readers with a uniquely contemporary perspective on his profound teachings and their relevance for modern Western practitioners of Zen. Following the traditional format for koan collections, John Daido Loori Roshi, an American Zen master, has added his own commentary and accompanying verse for each of Dogen’s koans. Zen students and scholars will find The True Dharma Eye to be a source of deep insight into the mind of one of the world’s greatest religious thinkers, as well as the practice of koan study itself.

Zen Master Dogen's Three Hundred Koans

The True Dharma Eye

Through a comprehensive introduction and twenty-one chapters centered on koans from classic collections, western literary sources, and modern encounters, this book explains the relevance of koan study to Zen training today. It illuminates the value of koans in the practice of self-realization and their aliveness within the teacher-student relationship. This collection will prove an invaluable reference on koan study for those pursuing a greater understanding of Zen Buddhism.

The Zen Koan

Two Arrows Meeting in Mid-air

A guide to the subtle practice of koan study examines the history of the study and use of koans in China and Japan, includes writings from the masters of Japanese Zen, and vividly portrays the living tradition of koan introspection today in the East and West. Original.

Essential Writings on Zen Koan Introspection

Sitting with Koans

Steven Heine

Eihei Dogen

Taigen Dan Leighton

Shohaku Okumura

Eihei Dogen, the 13th-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 did with English, Dogen utterly transformed the language of Zen, using it in novel and extraordinarily beautiful ways to point to everything important in religious life. Dogen's Extensive Record is the first-ever complete and scholarly translation of this monumental work into English. This edition contains extensive and detailed research and annotation by scholar, translator, and Zen teacher Taigen Dan Leighton, as well as forewords by the 18th-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 American Zen master John Daido Loori.

A Translation of the Eihei Koroku

Dogen's Extensive Record

Zen Mountain Monastery Liturgy Manual

Konrad Ryushin Marchaj

A parable on a man's journey toward enlightenment combines verse with a collection of traditional Zen pictures that depict his quest to find and tame an ox and presents principles that can be used as a compass for a lifetime. Original. 15,000 first printing.

Stages on the Path of Enlightenment

Riding the Ox Home

Zen ritualsand—such as chanting, bowing, lighting incense before the Buddha statueand—are ways of recognizing the sacredness in all of life. A ritual is simply a deliberate and focused moment that symbolizes the care with which we should be approaching all of life, and practicing the Zen liturgy is a way of cultivating this quality of attention in order to bring it to everything we do. Here, John Daido Loori demystifies the details of the Zen rituals and highlights their deeper meaning and purpose. We humans are all creatures of ritual, he teaches, whether we recognize it or not. Even if we donand’t make ritual part of some religious observance, we still fall into ritual behavior, whether it be our daily grooming sequence or the way we have our morning coffee and paper. We run through our personal rituals unconsciously most of the time, but there is great value to introducing meaningful symbolic rituals into our lives and to performing them deliberately and mindfullyand—because the way we do ritual affects the way we live the rest of our lives. The book includes instructions for a simple Zen home liturgy, as it is practiced by students of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen.

The Daily Practice of Zen Ritual

Bringing the Sacred to Life

Looks at the social and ethical dimensions of Zen Buddhism, including the enlightenment teachings of Shakyamuni, and an explanation of the three pure acts

Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen Buddhism

The Heart of Being

Meditation is made easy in this celebration of a basic meditative art that reaches deep into Chinese and Japanese Buddhism for guidance on how to turn the act of simply sitting into a deeply spiritual act. Original.

Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza

The Art of Just Sitting

Stephen Addiss

Collects 40 famous examples of brush painting and calligraphy that demonstrate Buddhist applications of instructive art, complementing each piece with decoding information and Dharma commentary. Original.

The Art of Enlightenment

The Zen Art Book

Kazuaki Tanahashi

Dogen

When the thirteenth-century master Eihei Dogen, one of the most influential thinkers in Zen Buddhism and founder of the Japanese Soto school, returned to Japan after four years of study in China, the fruit of his pilgrimage was recorded in a collection of koans called the Chinese Shobogenzo, also known as Shinji or Mana Shobogenzo. This collection of three hundred main cases was first published in 1766 under the title Shobogenzo Sambyakusoku (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Three Hundred Cases), and was known to have provided the raw material for much of Dogen's better known Japanese-language Kana Shobogenzo. Dogen's collection of koans may come as a surprise to students of Zen as Dogen and the Soto school are generally known for the practice of shikantaza, or "just sitting," rather than for koan practice. Nevertheless, a careful study of Dogen's work reveals that he did use koans extensively in his writing and teaching, not only in the Kana Shobogenzo, but most of his other works as well. Zen students and scholars will find THE TRUE DHARMA EYE to be a source of deep insight into the mind of one of the world's greatest religious thinkers, as well as the practice of koan study itself. Following the spirit of Dogen's pioneering efforts to carry the dharma across cultural divides, John Daido Loori Roshi, one of the West's most respected Zen teachers, has added his own verses and commentaries to each koan. The resulting volume presents readers with a uniquely contemporary perspective on Dogen's profound teachings and their relevance for twenty-first-century Western practitioners of Zen.

Dharma combat is a practice form unique to Zen in which student and teacher confront each other before a live audience, so to speak. The Zen master takes a seat at the front of the meditation hall and is approached by students, one by one, who challenge the master with questions. The Zen master challenges them in return, and the pithy, energetic exchanges become a teaching for all involved. Cave of Tigers is proof that the ancient practice of dharma combat is alive and well in American Zen. It consists of records of actual dharma combat sessions between John Daido Loori Roshi and his students at Zen Mountain Monastery. The highly charged encounters range from koan-like exchanges to practical discussions of meditation, Buddhist philosophy, and the always-pertinent issue of bringing spiritual practice into everyday life.

The Living Zen Practice of Dharma Combat

Cave of Tigers

Cave of Tigers is a collection of edited manuscripts of dharma combats, between students at Zen Mountain Monastery in Tremper, New York, and Zen Master John Daido Loori, Roshi.

Modern Zen Encounters

There is a common misconception that to practice Zen is to practice meditation and nothing else. In truth, traditionally, the practice of meditation goes hand-in-hand with moral conduct. In Invoking Reality, John Daido Loori, one of the leading Zen teachers in America today, presents and explains the ethical precepts of Zen as essential aspects of Zen training and development. The Buddhist teachings on morality - the precepts - predate Zen, going all the way back to the Buddha himself. The precepts describe, in essence, how a buddha, or awakened person, lives his or her life in the world. The precepts are so central to Buddhist tradition that they are taken as vows in one's initiation to Buddhism. Daido Loori provides a modern interpretation of the precepts and discusses the ethical significance of these vows as guidelines for living. 'Zen is a practice that takes place within the world,' he says, 'based on moral and ethical teachings that have been handed down from generation to generation.' In his view, the Buddhist precepts form one of the most vital areas of spiritual practice. Accompanying the text are ten of the author's evocative black-and-white photographs.

Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen

Invoking Reality

The Zen tradition has just two main meditative practices: shikantaza, or "just sitting"; and introspection guided by the powerful Zen teaching stories called koans. Following in the tradition of The Art of Just Sitting (endorsed as a "A book we have needed for a long, long time"), this new anthology from John Daido Loori illuminates the subtle practice of koan study from many different points of view. Includes writings by: Robert Aitken William Bodiford Robert Buswell Roko Sherry Chayat Francis Dojun Cook Eihei Dogen Heinrich Dumoulin Hakuin Ekaku Victor Sogen Hori Keizan Jokin Philip Kapleau Chung-fen Ming-Pen Taizan Maezumi Dennis Genpo Merzel Soen Nakagawa Ruth Fuller Sasaki Sokei-an Sasaki Nyogen Senzaki Zenkei Shibayama Eido Shimano Philip Yampolsky Hakuun Yasutani Wayne Yokoyama Katsushiro Yoshizawa

This book of exquisite photographs arises from the premise that unless we love nature, we will not work to save it from exploitation and eventual destruction. The rich mixture of photographs, Zen poems and essays presented on these pages is intended to open our hearts to the wild and the wilderness, and to direct us to the ways in which we can heal the earth. The author is an award-winning photographer and videographer and his art and wildlife photography from the core of a unique teaching programme that integrates art and wilderness training and cultivates an experiential appreciation of the relationship of Zen spirituality to our natural environment.

John Daido Loori

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