Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen - Softcover

Glassman, Bernie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590300793 ISBN 13: 9781590300794

Publisher: Shambhala, 2003

Synopsis

In Infinite Circle, one of America's most distinctive Zen teachers takes a back-to-basics approach to Zen. Glassman illuminates three key teachings of Zen Buddhism, offering line-by-line commentary in clear, direct language:

   1.  The Heart Sutra: the Buddha's essential discourse on emptiness, a central sutra of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition.
   2.  "The Identity of Relative and Absolute": an eighth-century poem by Shih-t'ou His-ch'ien, a key text of the Soto Zen school.
   3.  The Zen precepts: the rules of conduct for laypeople and monks.
His commentaries are based on workshops he gave as Abbot of the Zen Community of New York, and they contain within them the principles that became the foundation for the Greyston Mandala of community development organizations and the Zen Peacemaker Order.

About this title

Review:

What is the relationship between doing Zen and doing good? According to Bernie Glassman's Infinite Circle, they are inseparable. Glassman, a Zen teacher and social activist for three decades, uses the pages of Infinite Circle to explicate his philosophy, which unites diversity and oneness, or the relative and the absolute. For notions of the absolute Glassman turns to the Heart Sutra. For the relative, he explains the Bodhisattva Precepts. To reconcile these two realms, he tackles a brief but complex eighth-century treatise called The Identity of Relative and Absolute. Although the subject matter is challenging, the book is based on a series of lectures. Glassman, a former applied mathematician and aerospace engineer, keeps the tone conversational and works in examples from science and everyday life. For Glassman, enlightenment does not follow from doing Zen; rather, to be enlightened is to do Zen, and vice versa. On the path to understanding this, Infinite Circle is infinitely engaging. --Brian Bruya

About the Author:

Bernie Glassman is a Zen master and the first dharma successor to Taizan Maezumi Roshi, founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles. He is well known for integrating Zen practice with social, economic, and educational initiatives. He is also the author of Instructions to the Cook and Bearing Witness: A Zen Master's Lessons in Making Peace.

About this edition

• Publisher: Shambhala
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1590300793
• ISBN 13: 9781590300794
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160