Warrior of Zen: The Diamond-Hard Wisdom Mind of Suzuki Shosan

by Suzuki Shosan and Arthur Braverman

Book Overview

KEY TEACHINGS OF ZEN'S FOREMOST SAMURAI MONK

Suzuki Shosan is among the most dramatic personalities on the history of Zen. A samurai who served under the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in the seventeenth century, he became a Zen monk at age 41 and evolved a highly original teaching style imbued with the warrior spirit. The warrior's life, Shosan believed, was particularly suited to Zen study because it demand vitality, courage, and "death energy," the readiness to confront death at any moment. Emphasizing dynamic activity over quiet contemplation, Shosan urged students to realize enlightenment in the midst of their daily tasks, whether tilling fields, selling wares, or confronting an enemy in the hear of battle. Long popular in Japan but little know to the West, Shosan is presented here to Western readers in a sparkling translation and with a comprehensive introduction that brings alive his unique and colorful teaching.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568360312
• ISBN13: 9781568360317
• Release Date: August 1994
• Publisher: Kodansha
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Diamond Hard Wisdom demolishing mental icons

I have to hand it to Arthur Braverman. He manages to find the wonderful characters of Zen who are not in the mainstream, the one's perhaps most of us have never heard of. And when he is done presenting them, one wonders why we never heard of them and sees how much we had missed before they were brought to light. Suzuki Shosan was one of Japan's most startlingly original - even iconoclastic - Zen masters. Arthur Braverman has translated the colorful teachings of this samurai-turned-Zen-Master and thus has given all Zen students a wonderful gift. Suzuki Shosan covers a wide range of human problems for people of all walks of life, and he does so intimately, from his own experience. One of Shosan's cornerstones is the continual awareness of death, an awareness that breaks through or knocks down all that is false. Thank you, Mr. Braverman, for continuing to discover and translate for us some of the best teachers and poets from the past.

Warrior of Zen

This book truly hits the warrior path, zen and death on the head. The book is easy reading yet very well put together. It has a great deal of historical matter in it, not just on Buddhism, Zen and the Samurai but life itself. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Zen, The Warrior's Path and the final stage of our human existence before DEATH!!!

A very different Zen book

If you read books on Zen, and would like an unusual take on things, this book may offer it. Suzuki Shosan was a samurai who resigned to study the "Way". For him, mindfulness of death and general preparedness was the main point. I liked the way, in particular, that he cast aside his "enlightenment experiences" as useless. Sometimes, just when he seems not as deep as some other Zen heros, he surprises you. So: a good, somewhat unorthodox and refreshing read.