Endless Vow: The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa

by Soen Nakagawa, Kazuaki Tanahashi (Translator), Roko Sherry Chayat (Translator), Eido Tai Shimano (Introduction)

Overview

Endless Vow is the first English-language collection of the literary works of Soen Nakagawa Roshi. An intimate, in-depth portrait of the master of Eido Tai Shimano, his Dharma heir, introduces the poems, letters, journal entries, and other writings of Soen Roshi, which are illustrated with his calligraphies. In a postscript, some of his best-known American students—including Peter Matthiessen and Ruth McCandless—reminisce about this legendary figure of American Buddhist history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781570621628
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	06/11/1996
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Soen Nakagawa Roshi (1907-1984) was an extraordinary Zen master and a key figure in the transmission of Zen Buddhism from Japan to the Western world. A man of many faces, he was a simple Japanese monk, a world traveler, a spiritually realized being of the highest order, a poetic genius, a creator of dynamic calligraphy—and a notorious eccentric teacher who, for example, was known to conduct "tea ceremonies" using instant coffee and Styrofoam cups.

Editorial Reviews

The late Soen Nakagawa was indisputably one of the most influential Renzai Zen masters of our era. (His students, Robert Aitken and Phillip Kapleau, to name only two of the better known, are among the leading American teachers of Zen today.) Endless Vow focuses mostly on the poetic works that Soen Roshi himself suppressed during his lifetime. Nakagawa's classic hybung places him in the great tradition of Japanese Haiku masters. Nakagawa's hybung embodies some of the most powerful states of Renzai Zen. That is to say, this is potent reading: transformative and illuminative. For the general reader, the biographical portrait by Shimano introduces the master in more personal terms. But it is the postscript by Roko Sherry Chayat that introduces the reader to Nakagawa's "wild and crazy teaching" methods. This is an integral book for those who would come to know Soen Roshi's role in the transmission of Zen to America; but it is a must for serious students of Zen. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly