The Golden Age of Zen: Classic Book on Zen Philosophy Foundations | Meditation, Mindfulness & Spiritual Growth Guide

This is truly a unique book, practically being given away used at Amazon. I bought my original copy many years ago.The author covers the years 638-958 A.D. in China, with each chapter devoted to a single Zen master of the day, comprising a potted biography, quotations from the man's teachings, anecdotes, and John Wu's added interpretation and explanation of some of the more cryptic Zen utterances.The background is always a rural setting, in the mountains of ancient China, at a time when the flowering Chinese Zen Buddhism produced its greatest masters, including the formidable Rinzai (Lin-Chi) founder of one of the two branches of Zen (Rinzai and Soto) which persist in Japan to this day. I myself lived in a Japanese Rinzai monastery (Ryutaku-ji) during my own Zen training.The book is really a must for any student of zen, full as it is of inspiring quotes from these giants of Zen history, although the reader can skip over much of John Wu's own interpretations and explanations - these are understandable as he is a scholar after all, and has done us a great service in collecting virtually the whole zen lineage under one title, complete with lineage chart.My reservations about his comments are fullest in his chapter on the great Lin-Chi (Rinzai) himself. He misses a lot of the master's teaching, and really includes too much of his own ideas. If you read the "Rinzai Roku" ( Book Of Rinzai ), you will find what John Wu has left out, essentially Rinzai's admonition to be independent above all else, and not be "driven around by the deluded ideas of others". How valid such teaching is today, and how profound, in an age when there is so much conformity around us once again, after the consciousness revolution of the Sixties, and its rejection of materialism and herd-like thinking.Nevertheless, the book is a precious gem, illustrating the simple nature-based existence of these great men. You can see the Taoist contribution to Zen in such anecdotes as:A monk asked master Yün-men " Who is my True Self? ", to which he replied"The one who roams freely in the mountainsAnd takes his delight in the streams".