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The Book of Householder Koans: Waking Up in the Land of Attachments
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About The Book Of Householder Koans: Waking Up In The
Product Description Zen koans, beginning some 1500 years ago, refer to stories or questions arising in encounters between monks and old Chinese and Japanese masters, and include commentaries designed to help the Zen practitioner awaken. Koans like Hakuin’s What is the sound of one hand clapping? are well-known, and the word koan has even gone mainstream. Thousands of classic koans emerged from the lives of monks living inside a Chinese or Japanese culture, and the commentaries on those koans contain poetic elements and images that have proved challenging for many Westerners. The Book of Householder Koans is a collection of koans created by 21st century Zen practitioners living a lay life in the West. The koans deal with the challenges of relationships, raising children, work, money, love, loss, old age, and death, and come from practitioners across three continents, and with commentaries by two Western teachers. The collection is based on the premise that our lives as householders contain situations rich with challenge and grit, the equivalents of old Zen masters’ shouts or blows meant to sweep the ground right from under their students. They become koans, or koan practice, when they jolt us out of our usual way of thinking, when we’re no longer observers of our lives but plunge in, closing the gap between ourselves and the situation we face. Review "These two extraordinary Zen Teachers offer a cutting-edge immersion into the koans of our actual lives, issue by issue, urging us to plunge in, and be intimate with what actually is, in this very moment. Flowing beneath the surface of these contemporary koans is an ocean of traditional koans and old Buddhist stories and themes, all intermingled with the immediacy of contemporary life. A guaranteed American Zen classic!" —Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, author of Most Intimate: A Zen Approach to Life's Challenges "Radical, useful, and wild, this rich collection of householder koans opens a treasure house of wisdom for all. What a wonderful adventure in the practical mind and heart of true Zen and true life." —Rev. Joan Jiko Halifax, Abbot of Upaya Zen Center “In The Book of Householder Koans Nakao and Marko wonderfully carry into contemporary life the spirit and color of the zen koan tradition in all its mystery and brazenness―and, at the same time, provide a wonderfully wise, knowing, and light-hearted look at how we can live this one precious unrepeatable human life in beauty. The koan stories they provide (submitted by many of their students) are pithy, funny, and perfectly apt for the times we live in. What a lively book!” ―Norman Fischer, poet, Zen priest, and author most recently of The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path “I was blown away by the force of The Book of Householder Koans as it establishes Western Zen as a new center of enlightenment. Roshis Myonen Eve Marko and Egyoku Wendy Nakao present Zen koans, exquisitely digested from everyday life, that retain the ancient and authentic power to stop you in your tracks while they beckon you onward. Read this book, emerging from two female Zen masters’ lifetimes of practice, and enter an intimate world that opens your awareness in relationship, work, and current worldly puzzles.” —Grace Schireson, author of Wild-Ass Zen, Enlightenment Wherever You Are, Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Maters, and Naked in the Zendo: Stories of Uptight Zen, and editor of Zen Bridge: The Zen Teachings of Keido Fukushima “In this wonderful collection, Eve Myonen Marko and Wendy Egyoku Nakao write that Zen is about letting go of our fixed opinions. One opinion about Zen, when it came to this country, is that it is for monks and priests who live in monasteries or as hermits. In fact, most Zen students nowadays are householders who have issues that are different from those of our ancestor monks in China. The training for priests cannot be the same as the training for householders. Householders’ lives
