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Antonius
10th July 2003, 13:42
Hello Everyone,

Moderator, my apologies if this is not the right location for this thread. I was not sure where it should be placed.

In my ongoing study of the martial arts I am interested in studying Zen to try and further my abilities.

Can anyone suggest any good books for beginning and advanced reading on the subject?

Thanks for the help.

- Anthony
don
10th July 2003, 20:57
Originally posted by Antonius
In my ongoing study of the martial arts I am interested in studying Zen to try and further my abilities.

Can anyone suggest any good books for beginning and advanced reading on the subject?

I don't do Zen...but that didn't stop DT Suzuki from writing hundreds of pages on it, so--

Do you want to study Zen or about Zen? In the even of the latter:

Martin Collcut's Five Mountains for history and perspective on just how the relationship between Zen and Bugei began.

Karl Friday's Legacies of the Sword for more perspective and comment on the influence of MIKKYO (esoteric, as opposed to Zen) Buddhism on Bugei.

Suzuki's Zen and Jpn Culture is pretty much a standard for those waving the Zen banner.

Sato Hiroaki's translation of The Sword and the Mind follows up from there.

Trevor Legget's Zen and the Ways; E. J. Harrison's The Fighting Spirit of Japan: The Esoteric Study of the Martial Arts and Way of Life in Japan.

The exchanges between Keenan and McFarlane in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies from 1989-91.

Flow and Sport by Susan A. Jackson, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Good luck.
Joseph Svinth
11th July 2003, 02:48
Zen on the Internet: http://iriz.hanazono.ac.jp
Gene Williams
11th July 2003, 03:24
If you want to pursue zen as a practice, and perhaps gain a perspective on your martial arts practice, I believe Shunryu Suzuki's book, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", to be about the best thing out there for simple, non-analytical, very practical zen. He also has a second book, "Not Always So", but read Zen Mind first. As a rule, I do not like books about Zen written by Westerners...there are exceptions, but try Suzuki...Shunryu, not D.T., who writes like a Westerner:D