Victor Sōgen Hori

"Zen Sand is a classic collection of verses aimed at aiding practitioners of koan meditation in negotiating the difficult relationship between insight and language. As such it represents a major contribution to both Western Zen practice and English-language Zen scholarship.". "In Japan the traditional Rinzai Zen koan curriculum includes the use of jakugo, or "capping phrases." Once a monk has successfully replied to a koan, the Zen master orders the search for a classical verse to express the monk's insight into the koan. Special collections of these jakugo were compiled as handbooks to aid in that search. Until now, Zen students in the West, lacking this important resource, have been severely limited in carrying out this practice. Zen Sand combines and translates two standard jakugo handbooks and opens the way for incorporating this important tradition fully into Western Zen practice." "This impressive compendium of texts central to Zen practice offers a wealth of information not only to students of Zen or Buddhism in general, but to anyone interested in the history and culture of East Asia."--BOOK JACKET.

"Buddhism in the Global Eye focuses on the importance of a global context and transnational connections for understanding Buddhist modernizing movements. It also explores how Asian agency has been central to the development of modern Buddhism, and provides theoretical reflections that seek to overcome misleading East-West binaries. Using case studies from China, Japan, Vietnam, India, Tibet, Canada, and the USA, the book introduces new research that reveals the permeable nature of certain categories, such as "modern", "global", and "contemporary" Buddhism. In the book, contributors recognize the multiple nodes of intra-Asian and global influence. For example, monks travelled among Asian countries creating networks of information and influence, mutually stimulating each other's modernization movements. The studies demonstrate that in modernization movements, Asian reformers mobilized all available cultural resources both to adapt local forms of Buddhism to a new global context and to shape new foreign concepts to local Asian forms."--