A respected Zen master in Japan and founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki has blazed a path in American Buddhism like few others. He is the master who climbs down from the pages of the koan books and answers your questions face to face. If not face to face, you can at least find the answers as recorded in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, a transcription of juicy excerpts from his lectures. From diverse topics such as transience of the world, sudden enlightenment, and the nuts and bolts of meditation, Suzuki always returns to the idea of beginner's mind, a recognition that our original nature is our true nature. With beginner's mind, we dedicate ourselves to sincere practice, without the thought of gaining anything special. Day to day life becomes our Zen training, and we discover that "to study Buddhism is to study ourselves." And to know our true selves is to be enlightened. --Brian Bruya

From Library Journal
In one of the best and most succinct introductions to Zen practice, the important teacher Shunryu Suzuki discusses posture and breathing in meditation as well as selflessness, emptiness, and mindfulness. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

ANNOTATION

"A primer on what Zen is and how a person can begin to practice it."--Publishers Weekly

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Zen mind is one of those enigmatic phrases used by Zen teachers to throw you back upon yourself, to make you go behind the words themselves and begin wondering. " I know what my own mind is, " you tell yourself, " but what is Zen mind?" And then: "But do I really know what my own mind is? Is it what I am doing now? Is it what I am thinking now?" And if you should then try to sit physically still for a while to see if you can discover just what your mind is, to see if you can locate it---then you have begun the practice of Zen, then you have begun to realize the unrestricted mind.

The innocence of this first inquiry---just asking what you are---is BEGINNER'S MIND. The mind of the beginner is needed throughout Zen practice. It is the open mind, the attitude that includes both doubt and possibility, the ability to see things always as fresh and new. It is needed in all aspects of life. Beginner's mind is the practice of Zen mind.

This book is about how to practice Zen as a workable discipline and religion, about posture and breathing, about the basic attitudes and understanding that make Zen practice possible, about non-duality, emptiness, and enlightenment. Here one begins to understand what Zen is really about. And, most important of all, every page breathes with the joy and simplicity that make a liberated life possible.