Zen Under the Gun: Four Zen Masters from Turbulent Times

Book Overview

Sometimes history is cruel: a civilization starts to fall apart and a stable social order starts to unravel; upheaval and uncertainty abound. Tyrants ride high, old notions of justice vanish, and people may feel they have nowhere to turn for relief. In some ways, this is the story of human civilization. Indeed, this is what happened to the Chinese world in the thirteenth century when the Mongol conquerors mangled China and left the Chinese social order in tatters. This book, from one the pioneering and preeminent translators of Zen for the West, presents a selection of Zen lessons from four teachers in four successive generations whose public lives spanned a turbulent period in Chinese history. These four Zen masters were all eminent teachers, and their teaching words reflect the state of the art of Zen teaching in their time. And they are, even now, all vividly relevant.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0861715926
• ISBN13: 9780861715923
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Good example of Buddhism, slightly misleading title.

The footnotes are excellent and overall the translation is easy to read. It's really just a translation of Zen Buddhist text from a particular period of time, a time when Buddhism was, by the account of the book, well funded and respected in China.