Zen Master Tales

Stories from the Lives of Taigu, Sengai, Hakuin, and Ryokan

By: Peter Haskel

Narrated by: Brian Nishii

Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

A lively collection of folk tales and Buddhist teaching stories from four noted premodern Japanese Zen masters: Taigu Sochiku (1584–1669), Sengai Gibon (1750–1837), Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1769), and Taigu Ryokan (1758–1831).

Zen Master Tales collects never-before-translated stories of four prominent Zen masters from the Edo period of Japanese history (1603–1868). Drawn from an era that saw the “democratization” of Japanese Zen, these stories paint a picture of robust, funny, and poignant engagement between Zen luminaries and the emergent chonin or “townsperson” culture of early modern Japan. Here we find Zen monks engaging with samurai, merchants, housewives, entertainers, and farmers. These masters affirmed that the essentials of Zen practice—zazen, koan study, and even enlightenment—could be conveyed to all members of Japanese society in ordinary speech, including even comic verse and work songs.

In his introduction, translator Peter Haskel explains the history of Zen “stories” from the tradition’s Golden Age in China through the compilation of the classic koan collections and on to the era from which the stories in Zen Master Tales are drawn. What was true of the Chinese tradition, he writes—“its focus on the individual’s ordinary activity as the function, the manifestation of the absolute”—continued in the Japanese context. “Most of these Japanese stories, however unabashedly humorous and at times crude, impart something of the character of the Zen masters involved, whose attainment must be plainly manifest in even the most humble and unlikely of situations.”

©2022 Peter Haskel (P)2022 Shambhala Publications

ENJOYABLE

All different tales and all delightful and enjoyable.
The tales shed a light on “old Japan”. If you let your imagination go, you can feel and see the scenes described.
I highly recommend this book.
Mr. Brian Nishi is an outstanding narrator!
My thanks to all involved, JK.

Great stories

Very well audio quality and good voice. Was time well spent, especially if you committed to zen study.