Good Reading
• An excellent place to start is the suggested reading list on Joan Sutherland's Awakened Life Web site.
• Autumn Years: Taking the Contemplative Path by Elizabeth M. King and Robert H. King
• Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans to Bring You Joy by John Tarrant
• Engaged Spirituality in an Age of Globalization by Robert H. King, Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh
• Essential Zen by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider
• Everyday Zen: Love and Work (Plus) by Charolette Joko Beck
• The Light inside the Dark: Zen, Soul, and the Spiritual Life by John Tarrant
• Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh
• The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chodron
• Principles of Zen: The Only Introduction You’ll Ever Need by Martine Batchelor (also published as The Way of Zen)
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: A Collection of Talks by Shunryu Suzuki
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Links
Awakened Life—www.awakenedlife.org
The Open Source—www.joansutherland.net
Wet Mountain Sangha—www.wetmountainsangha.org
Pacific Zen Institute—www.pacificzen.org
Zen Buddhist Resources
The Zen Site Homepage—www.thezensite.com
Buddhist Peace Fellowship—www.bpf.org/html/home.html
Zen Art
Ten Oxherding Pictures—A Powerpoint presentation
Shambhala Zen Art Gallery—www.shambhala.com/html/zenart/
Publications
Buddhadharma: The Practioners Quarterly—
www.thebuddhadharma.com
Shambhala Sun—www.shambhalasun.com
Tricycle Magazine – The Buddhist Review—www.tricycle.com/
Turning Wheel (Buddhist Peace Fellowship)—
www.bpf.org/html/turning_wheel/turning_wheel.html
Zen Buddhist Resources
BuddhaNet / Zen Buddhism—www.buddhanet.net/l_zen.htm
DharmaNet – Worldwide Net of Study, Practice and Action—
www.dharmanet.org/
Zen Buddhism WWW Virtual Library—
www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Zen.html
Female Teachers in Zen and Ch’an Buddhism—
http://members.tripod.com/~Lhamo/2zen.htm
Zen Buddhism Sacred Texts—www.sacred-texts.com/bud/
Links to Zen Art
Zen and Zen Influenced Painting—A slide show
Japanese Zen Art at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art— www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/zen/hd_zen.htm
Buddhist Art – Pacific Asia Museum (Visions of Enlightenment –
Understanding the Art of Buddhism)— www.pacificasiamuseum.org/buddhism/base.htm
Haiku
Introduction to Haiku (Biography of Basho)—
www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/5022/
Simply Haiku—www.simplyhaiku.com/
Haiku—www.ahapoetry.com/haiku.htm
ZEN—www.do-not-zzz.com/
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As primarily English speakers, we use English words in our practice whenever possible; we meet for retreats, not sesshin, and we do work in the room rather than dokusan (and trust me, you’re glad about that). An old friend of mine spoke of growing up in a household where his parents switched to Yiddish whenever they had something really interesting to talk about. When he was young, my friend thought that English was the language of children and the ordinary, while Yiddish was the language of the special and the mysterious.… You get the point. If Buddha nature really does pervade the universe, it’s got to be expressed in the languages of this continent, too. Nonetheless, there are some words from Sanskrit, Japanese, etc. that are now loan words in English, and you’ll still run into lots of other Asian words in Buddhist literature and conversation. Here is a glossary to help.
Anuttara samyak sambodhi—The truth, reachable by meditation.
Bodhi awakening—The wisdom of a Buddha.
Bodhichitta—Literally, “awakening heart-mind”—The aspiration to attain buddhahood for the sake of all beings.
Bodhidharma—Brought Dhyana/Chan/Zen from India to China in 6th century CE. “Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?” is a common Zen question.
Bodhisattva—Literally, “awakening being,” one who makes a conscious vow to wake up in order to work for the liberation of all beings. It is the ideal of the Mahayana.
Buddha—Awakened One, a title of the historical person Shakyamuni Gautama after he was enlightened 2,500 years ago in Northern India.
Buddha-dharma—Teachings of the Buddha; more generally, the manifestation of true nature in all phenomena.
Buddha nature—Our essential nature; the place in each sentient being that connects with the vastness.
Chan—Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit dhyana, meaning “meditation,” and the umbrella name for a whole range of Chinese schools that emphasized meditation practice. The origin of the koan tradition. Pronounced zen in Japanese.
Dharani—A magical spell.
Dharma—Has three levels of meaning: teachings, particularly Buddhist ones; principles or laws, in the sense of the way things are; and individual phenomena subject to the law of cause and effect.
Gatha—A verse or prayer.
Hara—Center in the lower abdomen three finger-widths below the navel that is the locus of spiritual power and the focus of breath in Chan/Zen meditation. Also called tanden or tantian.
Heart-mind—In Chinese and Japanese, the same character is used to mean both “heart” and “mind,” and they are perceived as a unity.
Hinayana—Literally, “small vehicle.” A pejorative term referring to the earliest Buddhist teachings that predate the Mahayana, and to contemporary traditions based on those teachings. More properly referred to as Theravada, the Way of the Elders. The traditions of South Asia are mostly Theravadan, as is Vipassana and Insight Meditation in the West.
Jukai—Literally, “to give/receive the precepts.” The Japanese name for the Ceremony of Taking Refuge in the Bodhisattva Way, also known as lay ordination.
Kalpa—An extremely long time; an eon of millions of years.
Karuna—Compassion.
Katsu or Kwatz—A Rinzai shout, which demonstrates the enlightenment of the shouter.
Kensho—Literally, “seeing into one’s true nature.” Realization in Rinzai Zen.
Kinhin—Literally, “sutra walk.” Walking meditation.
Koan—Chinese gongan; literally, “public case.” A story, quote, or phrase taken as the object of meditation, to which one responds in an intuitive, nondualistic way.
Mahasattva—Literally, “great being.” A bodhisattva who could assume buddhahood but defers nirvana in order to remain in the world and liberate others, and more generally, a title of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and enlightened beings of all kinds.
Mahayana—Literally, “great vehicle.” A second wave of Buddhist thought that began about 500 years after Shakyamuni’s death, which introduced the bodhisattva ideal. The traditions of East and Central Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, Mongolia, etc) are Mhayana, as are their successors in the West.
Maitreya—The buddha of the next age, the buddha to come. A loving presence, s/he waits in Tushita Heaven, promoting and protecting the Dharma.
Mantra—A sacred sound or phrase that is repeated because of its meaning or as a form of concentration.
Metta—Lovingkindness.
Nirvana—Literally, “extinction.” In the Mahayana, it refers to extinction of dualistic views, leading to a direct experience of the identity of relative and absolute.
Prajna—A particular kind of wisdom, insight into the true nature of things; penetrating clarity.
Prajna paramita—Usually translated as “highest perfect wisdom.”
Pure Land—An afterlife paradise, particularly for devotees of Amitabha (Amida) Buddha.
Rinzai—Japanese pronunciation of the name of the Chinese teacher Linji, who is credited as the founder of the koan school in Chan. The school of Zen he founded is now one of two main schools of Zen.
Roshi—Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese Laoshi, “old teacher.” Traditionally a title of respect that in the West has come to mean a Zen teacher who has received transmission.
Samadhi—States of deep, one-pointed concentration during meditation.
Samsara—The cycle of birth and death; the phenomenal world.
Sangha—Community, traditionally the monastic community around the Buddha, then the community of both monastics and laypeople, now sometimes community including all sentient beings.
Satori—Synonym for kensho.
Sensei—A title of respect for a teacher of any discipline that in the West has come to mean a Zen teacher who has not yet received transmission.
Sesshin—Japanese term for a traditional Zen meditation retreat.
Shakyamuni Buddha—Literally, “Sage of the Shakyas.” The historical Buddha of our age, who lived and taught in Northern India about 2,500 years ago.
Shunyata—Sanskrit for the vastness, often translated as emptiness. Also, the empty nature of everything, meaning that things are interdependent and empty of independent nature.
Soto—The other major Zen school (see Rinzai); it emphasizes shikan taza (just sitting) and ceremony.
Sutra—Scripture purported to have been spoken by Shakyamuni Buddha himself, though many were written after his death and attributed to him.
Tathagata—“Thus come” or “thus gone,” a title of the Buddha. By extension, the thusness or suchness of things.
Theravada—The Way of the Elders, sometimes called the Hinayana.
Transmission—When a Roshi recognizes someone else as a Roshi, indicating the unity of their minds. According to Zen mythology, there is a direct mind-to-mind chain of transmission from Shakyamuni Buddha to the present.
Tripitaka—The Buddhist canon.
Upaya—Skillful means; how you actualize wisdom and compassion in the world.
Vajrayana—Literally, the adamantine or diamond vehicle. Tibetan Buddhism, the third vehicle of Buddhism, which synthesizes aspects of Theravada, Mahayana, and the indigenous Bon religion of Tibet.
Zazen—Seated meditation.
Zen—Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese chan, which was itself a transliteration of the Sanskrit dhyana, meaning meditation. The two major schools of Zen in Japan and the West are Rinzai and Soto.
Zendo—Meditation hall.
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