ZEN BUDDHISM
AN INTRODUCTION TO ZEN WITH STORIES.
PARABLES AND KOAN RIDDLES TOLD BY
THE ZEN MASTERS.
With cuts from old Chinese ink-paintings
THE PETER PAUPER PRESS
MOUNT VERNON . NEW YORK
AN INTRODUCTION TO ZEN
Zen, a variety of Buddhism, now flourishes in Japan, and has infused richness into almost all of Japan’s cultural life. Before it took root in Japan in the twelfth century, it had been for five hundred years once of the great philosophycal-religious movements in China. It has only recently been discovered by the West, thanks to the books of Professor D. T. Suzuki and to the fascination that Japan has exercised on so many American servicemen and tourists.
Zen has been described as a mystical pantheism, a system of methaphysics taught with riddles and blows, a sort of existentialist cult, a blandly not-to-be explained higher way of daily life. Zen is something of all of those, but basically it is a variety of Buddhism.