Robert Aitken

For more than four decades, Robert Aitken Roshi has taught thousands of people the Buddhist practice of Zen meditation, and has led hundreds through their practice of the study of traditional koans. He has authored more than a dozen books, including a celebrated appreciation of Basho's haiku; volumes of commentary on sacred texts; works on ethics, daily life, and social action; and one of the best-loved introductions to Zen Buddhism, Taking the Path of Zen. After a long and remarkable life he will be 91 years old when this collection is published Aitken Roshi offers a collection of 266 short texts. Some are clearly parables; others are simple stories, quotations, memories, and commentaries. Resembling Benjamin Franklin's Almanac or the epigrams of Chamfort as much as it does work from ancient sages, this collection of  miniatures" distills a life devoted to teaching and awareness. Any person living a considered life, whether secular humanist or religious seeker, will find this a book of rich inspiration.

Written 400 years ago by a scholar in the Ming Dynasty, one hundred years after Columbus and around the time Shakespeare completed Henry VI, accomplished scholar and philosopher Hong Zicheng retired from public life and settled down to write an informal compilation of his thoughts on the essence of life, human nature, and heaven and earth. Though he wrote other books as well, only this one has survived thanks largely to its continuous popularity, first in China and later in Japan and Korea. Entitled Caigentan (Vegetable Roots Discourse), this book has been studied and cherished for four hundred years.Terse, humorous, witty, and. above all, timely, this book offers a provocative and personal mix of Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian understanding. It contains 360 observations that lead us through paths as complex, absurd, and grotesque as life itself. While it has been translated into many languages, this comprehensive version will immediately become the standard edition for generations of English readers to come.

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Zen Buddhism distinguishes itself by brilliant flashes of insight and its terseness of expression. The haiku verse form is a superb means of studying Zen modes of thought and expression, for its seventeen syllables impose a rigorous limitation that confines the poet to vital experience. Here haiku by Basho are translated by Robert Aitken, with commentary that provides a new and far deeper understanding of Basho's work than ever before.In presenting themes from the haiku and from Zen literature that open the doors both to the poems and to Zen itself, Aitken has produced the first book about the relationship between Zen and haiku. His readers are certain to find it invaluable for the remarkable revelations it offers.

Having practiced zazen for more than half a century, Robert Aitken sits today as the senior American Roshi, a teacher of broad reputation and consequence, who numbers as his own teachers and associates some of the legendary figures of Japanese and American Buddhism. His serendipitous beginning as a Buddhist resulted from being a civilian prisoner of the Japanese in the Second World War, where he found R. R. Blythe, the great haiku master, and D.T. Suzuki, the most important and popular chronicler of Zen in English, as fellow detainees. After the war he returned to Japan on several occasions to study in traditional monastic settings. He has been a leader of the contemporary move to establish Zen Buddhism in the West and was a founding member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.With material never before collected in book form, The Morning Star includes writings from his first book, A Zen Wave, and from eight collections of essays and poems published over the last three decades. The introduction to this volume offers Robert Aitken's latest presentation of Zen practice, addressing the Great Matter from a historical and personal perspective.

In this collection of twenty-three essays, Robert Aitken retraces the origins of American Zen Buddhism and provides readings of influential texts. Reflecting on death, on marriage, and on Zen practice, Aitken always points out the path to pleasure in the everyday dewdrop world. There is a fine art to presenting complex ideas with simplicity and insight in a manner that both shepherds and inspires. Robert Aitkens Original Dwelling Place: Zen Buddhist Essays succeeds in doing just this, offering twenty-three essays from Americas senior Zen roshi and author of the best-selling, groundbreaking primer Taking the Path of Zen. Just as Taking the Path of Zen is the definitive handbook for Zen practice, the essays gathered in Original Dwelling Place are essential for the light they shed on Aitken Roshis own journey and the effect he has had on American Zen Buddhism. Gathered here are essays about the Zen texts Aitken has studied with avidity and close attention throughout the years; texts that were early and lasting influences. In an opening section entitled Ancestors, Aitken pays homage to the masters who influenced his own development and Zen Buddhism generally.In other meditations, Robert Aitken writes on political revolution and matters of ethics. He helps illuminate the proper use of money, power, and sexual love in a modern world that is often tainted by materialism and decadence. He offers stately meditations on death, on marriage, and on Zen practice, and on taking pleasure in the everyday dewdrop world.

A series of dialogues between an American Zen master and a Roman Catholic monk and hermit shares the personal spiritual experiences of the two men, reveals the belief systems of the two religions, and points out the similarities that lay a firm foundation for a continuing dialogue. Reprint.

Nominated for the Tricycle Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Buddhism in America--a collection of short talks and essays from a renowned meditation teacher. "The inspiration that guided monks and nuns in ancient times is our own deepest incentive as we establish our practice in a world that desperately needs new forms of kinship and love."--Robert Aitken In this inspiring collection, you will find a series of talks and essays that Aitken Rashi has offered his students at meditation retreats during the past two decades. They are arranged according to themes central to all spiritual seekers--attention, emptiness, coming and going, diligence, death and the afterlife, the sacred self, and the moral path. Aitken provides guidance on pursuing religious practice in a lay context, "re-casting the Dharma to include women, jobs, and family." He also charts his own quest to develop a set of moral codes in keeping with Buddhism's basic precepts and honoring the enormous ethical challenges faced in the twentieth century.