Entangling Vines: A Classic Collection of ZEN Koans - Hardcover

"A masterpiece . . . It will be our inspiration for 10,000 years, not just as itself but as a model for translations of other classics." --Robert Aitken, author of "Taking the Path of Zen" and "The Gateless Barrier"

""Entangling Vines" is a wonderful book, a book to take if you are planning to be shipwrecked on a desert island; it is the book I open every day, and teach from every day. It's surprising, lucid, scholarly, alive, unassuming and it goes deep. Stories, questions and conversations, catalysts for the transformation at the core of Zen." --John Tarrant, author of "Bring Me the Rhinocerous and Other Koans That Will Save Your Life"

"An excellent translation of an important collection." --Taigen Dan Leighton, in "Japanese Journal of Religious Studies"
"An invaluable Japanese Zen record of pithy koans that summon us into a dynamic immediacy with life itself. Rigorous intellectual speculation and one's usual schemes will not suffice: only daring and the resiliency of one's Zen sinews might set one free!"--Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, Zen Center of Los Angeles

""Entangling Vines" is useful in providing supplementary koans in the early and middle stages of the koan path, yet it is truly a peerless way of extending koan study beyond its formal conclusion. Working with the koans of "Entangling Vines" is a challenging and joyous enterprise at all stages of the Way. Of special note are the koans from Japanese sources, hitherto hard to find among our overwhelmingly Chinese koan inheritance."--Ross Bolleter, author of "Dongshan's Five Ranks"

"A masterpiece . . . It will be our inspiration for 10,000 years, not just as itself but as a model for translations of other classics." --Robert Aitken, author of "Taking the Path of Zen" and "The Gateless Barrier"

""Entangling Vines" is a wonderful book, a book to take if you are planning to be shipwrecked on a desert island; it is the book I open every day, and teach from every day. It's surprising, lucid, scholarly, alive, unassuming and it goes deep. Stories, questions and conversations, catalysts for the transformation at the core of Zen." --John Tarrant, author of "Bring Me the Rhinocerous and Other Koans That Will Save Your Life"

"An excellent translation of an important collection." --Taigen Dan Leighton, in "Japanese Journal of Religious Studies"
"A wonderful book, a book to take if you are planning to be shipwrecked on a desert island; it is the book I open every day, and teach from every day. It is surprising, lucid, scholarly, alive, unassuming, and it goes deep."--John Tarrant, author of Bring Me the Rhinoceros and Other Koans That Will Save Your Life

"This book summon us into a dynamic immediacy with life itself."--Wendy Egyoku Nakao, Abbot of the Zen Center of Los Angeles

"Anyone who plays in the fields of koan introspection will welcome this book."--Melissa Myozen Blacker, coeditor of The Book of Mu

"Working with these koans is a challenging and joyous enterprise."--Ross Bolleter, author of Dongshan's Five Ranks

"A masterpiece. It will be our inspiration for 10,000 years."--Robert Aitken, author of Taking the Path of Zen and The Gateless Barrier

The most contemporary of the ancient koan collections?representing centuries of refinement by Zen masters working with their students, Entangling Vines, a translation of the Shumon kattoshu, is one of the few major koan texts to have been compiled in Japan rather than China. Indeed, Kajitani Sonin (1914?1995) former chief abbot of Shokoku-ji and author of an annotated, modern-Japanese translation of the Kattoshu, commented that ?herein are compiled the basic Dharma materials of the koan system.” Most of the central koans of the contemporary Rinzai koan curriculum are contained in this work. Kirchner’s careful annotation of each koan makes this a brilliant introduction to Buddhist philosophy.