Related reading: “The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers”. Both this book and the original Japanese one of 1916, and their respective writers, are the subjects of multiple views about their authenticity and purpose.
Both this book and the original Japanese one of 1916, and their respective writers, are the subjects of multiple views about their authenticity and purpose.
Could you say more about this? The book doesn’t seem to have a Wikipedia page, and it’s not immediately clear what other sources are trustworthy on the subject.
It’s not clear to me either. This may be of interest, although the title of the journal it appears in does not give me confidence in it.
It appears that Yoel Hoffmann (the translator of Hakuin’s book into English) only translated half, the part giving the 281 koans and answers. The half he omitted was (people say) Hakuin’s criticism of the Zen practice of his time.
So, was Hakuin trying to destroy a degenerated system by revealing all the teachers’ passwords that were previously being passed on in secret from one student to another, or (in Hoffmann’s account) was he offering a valuable study aid? That is how Hoffmann presents the material, despite in his introduction translating the title of Hakuin’s book, “Gendai Sojizen Hyoron”, as “A critique of present-day pseudo-Zen”.
There are stormy Reddit threads about the book, but I can’t tell which of the opinionated commenters are monomaniacal crazies and which (if any) have real knowledge.
I have noticed that in several spiritual traditions, including Zen, if you assembled all of the most respected teachers together, then removed anyone who was denounced as a charlatan by another, you would have none left.
Minor correction here: ‘Hakuin’ could not have intended anything by the book, because he died in 1769 and it is his tradition being criticized. All the sources on The Sound of One Hand seem to attribute it to a (still unknown?) pseudonymous Japanese Buddhist author in the 1900s.
Related reading: “The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers”. Both this book and the original Japanese one of 1916, and their respective writers, are the subjects of multiple views about their authenticity and purpose.
Could you say more about this? The book doesn’t seem to have a Wikipedia page, and it’s not immediately clear what other sources are trustworthy on the subject.
It’s not clear to me either. This may be of interest, although the title of the journal it appears in does not give me confidence in it.
It appears that Yoel Hoffmann (the translator of Hakuin’s book into English) only translated half, the part giving the 281 koans and answers. The half he omitted was (people say) Hakuin’s criticism of the Zen practice of his time.
So, was Hakuin trying to destroy a degenerated system by revealing all the teachers’ passwords that were previously being passed on in secret from one student to another, or (in Hoffmann’s account) was he offering a valuable study aid? That is how Hoffmann presents the material, despite in his introduction translating the title of Hakuin’s book, “Gendai Sojizen Hyoron”, as “A critique of present-day pseudo-Zen”.
There are stormy Reddit threads about the book, but I can’t tell which of the opinionated commenters are monomaniacal crazies and which (if any) have real knowledge.
I have noticed that in several spiritual traditions, including Zen, if you assembled all of the most respected teachers together, then removed anyone who was denounced as a charlatan by another, you would have none left.
Minor correction here: ‘Hakuin’ could not have intended anything by the book, because he died in 1769 and it is his tradition being criticized. All the sources on The Sound of One Hand seem to attribute it to a (still unknown?) pseudonymous Japanese Buddhist author in the 1900s.
I think I misinterpreted something as implying that the author had written under Hakuin’s name.