Suggested Reading
The following books are highly recommended for beginners in Zen Practice. You may purchase them online or from a bookstore or download them from Amazon.
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Healing Breath
by Ruben Habito
Healing our wounded Earth is not unrelated to healing our own personal wounds. The pains of the Earth and those of the individuals making up our Earth community cannot be separated. Thus the healing of our individual lives can become the basis of the healing of Earth. This book sheds light on Zen as a spiritual path that leads to healing - in the personal, social, and ecological dimensions of our being. If you are seeking a form of spiritual practice that addresses all three of these dimensions or simply seeking to deepen your understanding of the Zen path, it is written for you.
Experiencing Buddhism
by Ruben Habito
This book engages the reader with its story-telling style as it illustrates the principles of Buddhism with concrete examples. Paying special attention to the rise of Buddhist practice in the West, Habito introduces the novice to Buddhist experience in its historical unity and the variety of traditions that reflect its essence. Integrated into Habitos text are five personal accounts by practicing Buddhists: on being a Therevada Buddhist by the Venerable Dhammananda, Dr. Chatsumarn Kabilsing; on being a Zen Buddhist by Jan Chozen Bays; on being a Tibetan Buddhist by Judith Simmer Brown; on being a Pure Land Buddhist by Kenneth Tanaka; and on living the Lotus by Virginia Straus.
Three Pillars of Zen
by Philip Kapleau
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In this classic work of spiritual guidance, the founder of the Rochester Zen Center presents a comprehensive overview of Zen Buddhism. Exploring the three pillars of Zen—teaching, practice, and enlightenment—Roshi Philip Kapleau, the man who founded one of the oldest and most influential Zen centers in the United States, presents a personal account of his own experiences as a student and teacher, and in so doing gives readers invaluable advice on how to develop their own practices. Revised and updated, this 35th anniversary edition features new illustrations and photographs, as well as a new afterword by Sensei Bodhin Kjolhede, who succeeded Kapleau as spiritual director of the Rochester Zen Center. A moving, eye-opening work, The Three Pillars of Zen is the definitive introduction to the history and discipline of Zen.
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
by Shunryu Suzuki
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In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics—from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality—in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. It’s a book to come back to time and time again as an inspiration to practice
Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few."
In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics—from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality—in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. It’s a book to come back to time and time again as an inspiration to practice, and it is now available to a new generation of seekers in this fortieth anniversary edition, with a new afterword by Shunryu Suzuki’s biographer, David Chadwick.