Synopsis:
The Mumonkan, or "Gateless Barrier," is the most widely used collection of koans in Zen practice. For centuries, monks, nuns, and lay people have struggled with these koans as a means of attaining enlightenment.
As director of the Montreal Zen Center for the past fifteen years, Albert Low has helped others work through these koans. In this book he provides contemporary and lively commentaries which serve to make the Mumonkan available to all readers and relevant to their everyday lives. He draws upon his own thirty years of practice, half of which has been spent as a teacher, to show how the Mumonkan can be a gateway to spiritual life. His commentaries are filled with anecdotes and new insights into the human condition.
The book is structured in the traditional style, with translations of each koan followed by the author's comments. The translations are drawn from the author's own interpretation and from his work with Roshi Philip Kapleau. Excerpts from the Diamond Sutra and a translation of the Prajnaparamita Hridaya ("Heart of Perfect Wisdom" sutra) are included, as well as the author's story of his own path toward awakening.
From Booklist:
It goes without saying that this is not the last word on Zen or the first. But it is an engaging collection of commentaries, complete with cracks through which truth slips as truth slips through koans (paradoxes to be meditated on) themselves. These commentaries are not answers, because koans are not questions; nor are they solutions, because koans are not riddles. They are perceptions, and for careful readers they may be windows. The book consists of a translation of each koan in the Mumonkan, the most widely used collection of koans in Zen practice, followed by the brief comments and verses of the compiler of the collection, the Zen master Mumon (A.D.1183^-1260), and Low's commentaries. Low, who is the director of the Montreal Zen Center, has written the commentaries "with an eye to practice, to helping people find a toe-hold on the sheer face of the koans and so be able to begin the work of finding their way to the summit to which all koans lead." Along with the commentaries, there is a concise introduction to koans, excerpts from two important Buddhist texts that provide some background for the koans, and a brief account of the author's own awakening, an example of what it means to work on the first koan in the collection. Steve Schroeder
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