Keep Me in Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri

by Dosho Port

Book Overview

"After my death I will come back and haunt over you, checking on your practice." Dainin Katagiri Roshi, one of the greatest pioneers of Zen in America, said this frequently, teasing Dosho Port and his fellow students. For Dosho, Katagiri Roshi's "haunting" still includes, to borrow a phrase from Warren Zevon, "keeping him in my heart a while" - continuing the intimate exploration of the indelible imprint that a Zen teacher leaves on a student's heart...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0861715683
• ISBN13: 9780861715688
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Length: 124 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Nice read!

This book was neither easy for me to read nor easy to set down. I have read most of it twice. Dosho Mike Port really dusts the middle path, making it visible to the younger students who might walk it. While different from Les Kaye's "Zen at Work" and Shunryu Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" (which is THE must-read book), this book recalls episodes with Dainin Katagiri. His teaching style, though gentle, was powerful. Dosho Mike Port noticed profound teaching in everyday interaction. "Keep Me in Your Heart a While" is a collection of such incidents. Starting with an encounter with Katagiri, touching a theme, and the mining the relationship between teacher and student, each chapter shares that Zen experience. Whether in traditional Chu'an (as in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), experiencing fellowship in a craft (an instructive tongue, an attentive ear, & a faithful heart), or walking the Zen path, there remains a universal quality. Thank you for writing this book, Dosho...

Keep me in your heart a while

Keep Me in Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri. This is a completely different book on Zen. Just when we think that everything has been said about this paradoxical subject, here comes Dosho Port-Roshi with a unique view of the teaching and a marvelous portrait of this excellent contemporary Zen Master Dainin Katagiri. May his illuminating presentation fill the hearts of many seekers. Luis H. Lopez

Capturing

Dosho Port captures Katagiri Roshi, Zen, himself and the relationship of all three in this tiny, dense book. The trees on the cover show it well, similar in all but size, and the one from the seed of the other. Dosho adds to the package his own in depth and intense knowledge of Zen. A quite different view of the Roshi than another biographical attempt I have read. In biography the accuracy of the lens has much to do with the accuracy of the portrait. I understand the decision not to explore the Roshi's sexual indiscretions, the book would have wandered away from Zen, but still, it is part of the picture that I would have liked filled in by an understanding hand. Maybe the next book?

A Fresh and Unique book on Zen practice.

This quite simply is amongst the most inspiring of all the modern Zen books I've read. It is unique in that it is not merely a collection of transcribed Dharma talks, but instead a look at the wholehearted practice of of its author as was taught to him by a Western Zen pioneer. This is the perfect reaction to all the Zen books that act has pacifiers to those who want Zen to be a path of personal self improvement. This book gives you the visceral feeling of true Zen practice.