Buddha Facing the Wall: Interviews with American Zen Monks - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0963078437 ISBN 13: 9780963078438

Publisher: Keep It Simple Books, 1999

Synopsis

Buddha Facing the Wall presents firsthand accounts of life in an American Zen monastery. Interviews with fifteen monks offer vivid personal glimpses of how everything about the monastery—from the daily schedule through meetings with the teacher to the silence itself—is designed to support the deep inner work that leads to spiritual transformation.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Zen Buddhism/Spirituality
Inside an American Zen Monastery

"This is an important book that both answers and invites questions which all those in the Dharma should consider." -Joan Halifax Roshi

"I like Cheri Huber's approach-down to earth, commonsensical, useful, and illuminating. This book shows how the Dharma effectively applies to people's lives." -Robert Thurman, author of Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness

Buddha Facing the Wall is based on interviews with seventeen people living as Zen monks. In an interview about her own spiritual path, their teacher, Cheri Huber, discusses the purpose of monastic training:

"We look out from the barriers we have erected around ourselves-the prison of egocentricity-and wonder, why doesn't my life work? But that gets us nowhere. We have to see the barriers clearly and then push against them. The monastery is a safe place in which to discover how to go beyond egocentricity and to experience freedom you cannot know until you do."

Trained in the Soto tradition of Zen Buddhism, Cheri Huber has taught meditation for more than 20 years. She leads retreats around the country and has published many books, including The Key: And the Name of the Key Is Willingness, The Depression Book, There Is Nothing Wrong With You, and Time-Out for Parents: A Compassionate Approach to Parenting.

About the Author

Sara Jenkins worked as an art historian, director of an oral history project, and managing editor of a medical research journal before plunging simultaneously into freelance life and Zen Buddhism fourteen years ago. Since then she has occupied many points along the editorial spectrum, including copy editor, illustrations editor, nonfiction author's editor, book producer, and writer. She lives in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. Cheri Huber is the author of 19 books, including There Is Nothing Wrong with You, When You're Falling, Dive,and Time-Out for Parents. She founded the Mountain View Zen Center in Mountain View, California, and the Zen Monastery Practice Center in Murphys, California, and teaches in both communities. She travels widely and often, leading workshops and retreats around the United States and abroad, most recently in Costa Rica and Italy. She founded Living Compassion in 2003, a nonprofit group comprised of There Is Nothing Wrong With You Retreats (based on the book); Global Community for Peace: The Assisi Peace Project; The Africa Vulnerable Children Project; and Open Air Talk Radio, her weekly call-in radio show originating from Stanford University. She lives in Murphys, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: Keep It Simple Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0963078437
• ISBN 13: 9780963078438
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Jenkins Sara