cover image Awakening to Zen: Teachings

Awakening to Zen: Teachings

Roshi Philip Kapleau, Philip Kapleau. Scribner Book Company, $22 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-684-82973-9

To read these pages is to walk through an ordered, if somewhat unfamiliar, Zen garden, seeing it through the eyes of a beloved Zen roshi, or teacher. In this collection, American Zen teacher Kapleau shares his thoughts and conversations of the last 30 years on topics as diverse as the Vietnam War, the role of hallucinogenic drugs in precipitating enlightenment, Zen's views of homosexuality and lesbianism and the fall from grace of several so-called Zen masters. Through these commentaries, Kapleau offers readers priceless insights into the core of Zen practices, the role of pain and discipline in deepening one's path to ""Buddha-hood"" and the ways that Zen is, at its peak, the wordless expression of the experience of one's unity with all things. (Mar.)