Book Review: Zen-Beyond all Words

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Zen Beyond All Words is a small treasure chest that is only ninety-four pages long. The gems that shine in its pages are polished with absolute simplicity. When reading it with a quiet mind, the richness of the prose asks one again and again to set the book down, look out the window at the sun, the trees, the leaves; wait, watching.

lt is only in this state of "mindfulness" that what has been read comes alive in the moment of quiet teaching. Yet, refreshingly, the tone is not didactic. There is an authenticity to the author's voice so that one never questions the truth of his observations. lnstead, the reader is offered delicate leather pouches with which to polish one's own perceptions amidst his words of truth.

Author Zen-Master Zensho emphasizes again and again that there is no dogma to subscribe to, no path to follow, nothing whatsoever to do but let go. Even in letting go, there is nothing you consciously do. When a monk eagerly approaches Zen Master Joshu and announces, "Look, I've let go of everything. There is nothing left in my consciousness. What do you say to that?" Joshu unexpectedly replies, "Then throw it away!" The astounded monk responds, "... What's left to throw away?" Joshu answers, "If that's so, you'll have to carry it further." As Zenshoexplains, "The letting go you do will turn into a letting go that holds you back.

You will become prisoners of your 'self-made' letting go. The indestructible mind is present only where there is no attachment." 'Without effort, relaxed, natural. . . Tao flows like the water, when you are in accord with Tao you flow with it." Anything that we add stops the flow, causing our basic human pain. Differentiation is what kills us, for it splits the one who is thinking from the thought, the one who is feeling from the emotion. In a modern-day technological take on Plato's Myth of the Cave, Zensho makes the allusion of life to watching a film that one doesn't stop with one's own thoughts but allows to run unheeded until what we have at the end is the clear light of the white screen.

He says, "lt's like the movie screen in which all projections, forms, images, and movements take place. The mind itself remains untouched, regardless of what happens." So much of human suffering, of seeking, is strained. Zensho's message is that there is nothing to improve: "Everything is good, just as it is...Joy is there once you let go of all you consider important." Such subtlety of sharing is rare - and so refreshingly welcome- where the burdens of doing and straining, attaining and accomplishing abound in the business centers of spiritual enlightenment. "To awaken is to be free of all conditioning. lt's not things you become free of, but rather you become free of the false way in which you view things."

Zen Beyond All Words is a gently unassuming, yet extraordinarily wise little book, highly recommended for those with a fairly mature understanding of the nature of consciousness. This is not a book for beginners, but a quiet, profound gift for those who are willing to approach it with the freshness of Beginner's Mind.

Margit Jacob Bibliothek Journal

Zen-Master Zensho is a German Zen master whose book is the result of a 1992 series of lectures he gave at the Tao Chan Center in Wiesbaden. Even though this is another one of those transcribed books such as we see increasingly from spiritual masters, this one lacks many of the problems inherent in translating speech into text. Indeed, this small volume is a potent mix of Teutonic muscle, Chinese gut and Japanese grip. Its direct, no-nonsense pursuit of enlightenment is shattering and powerful, welcome and calming all at the same time.

Take for example chapter five's "Enlightenment in a Flash," bold instructions regarding the moment of death: "Whoever resists thinking about death is already dead. ..Why wait around for the moment of death? Why not die the mystical death-now! At this instant!" Not so much conversation, Zen Beyond All Words is an instruction set for achieving the "everything-melts-away-harmonious homecoming of your being." Zensho's lectures have an immediacy as they present the teachings of the Chinese masters of Chan Buddhism, Japanese Zen's ancient precursor, with intentive insight. (May)

Publishers Weekly

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