MUSŌ SŌSEKI (1275–1351), a monk of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism in medieval Japan. Born into an aristocratic family, he entered the religious life at an early age, rose to become head of some of Japan's most influential...

A Chinese and Japanese school of Bsm. which has been described as the revolt of the Chinese mind against the intellectual Buddhism of India. It evolved from the teaching of Bodhidharma, the Twenty-eighth Patriarch of Bsm., who came to China in A.D....

From the Sk. Dhyāna. In Jap., Zen. The Zen Bsm. of Japan derives from the Ch’an Bsm. of China, founded in the sixth century by Bodhidharma and formed into a School by Hung-jen, Hui-neng and their followers in the eighth century. Ch’an...

‘Zen-sitting.’ Zen meditation, usually in the Zen-dō (q.v.). The correct posture is the Dhyānāsana (see Āsana), loosely known as the Lotus posture, in which the sole of each foot is upturned on the opposite thigh. The...

Zen (禪 or 禅) is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism notable for its emphasis on practice and experiential wisdom—particularly as realized in the form of meditation known as zazen—in the attainment of awakening. As such, it de-emphasizes both...

Michael Dibdin is in self-imposed exile. Again. The crime writer best known for his creation Aurelio Zen, the fatalistic Italian policeman for whom "lugubrious" is too cheerful a description, has spent large chunks of his life as an expat. But in 1984, aged 37,...

Stunted imaginations view it as a chore. But engage the senses and the repetitive motion of raking can be a mood lifter -- a mind-and- body exercise that involves more than the slow, laborious movement of decaying plant matter from Spot A to Spot...

As Chris Rock had it, something sure has changed in America when the best golfer is black and the best rapper, white. Rock's choice of words is remarkable: not richest, not most famous, but best. Because there can be no doubt about it anymore, and...

Hong Kong's outspoken cardinal said it was time for the Vatican to take a more uncompromising line toward the Chinese government, which broke with the church more than a half-century ago and has sought to maintain control of Catholic institutions.The Vatican has long indicated that...

The tradition of writing jisei, or "death poetry," when on the verge of death is a perplexing aspect of the Japanese people's calm acceptance of death as a part of life. A thorough understanding of Japanese death poems provides an explicitly accurate depiction of the Japanese attitude towards death and the Zen Buddhist philosophy that helped form this attitude. This analysis draws upon Yoel Hoffmann's book Japanese Death Poems.

Reviews the book Zen and the Beat Way, by Alan Watts. Questions if it is a serious examination of Zen, the Beat Way or anything in particular.