Thursday, April 5, 2007

Forget about heaven on earth



Israel's Broadcast University,
which puts out "popular science"-books based on its
lecture series on Army Radio, has produced another excellent volume. Like those that preceded it, "Zen Buddhism: Philosophy and Aesthetics" combines high-level scholarship with a clear style. Its author, Prof. Jacob Raz, has been writing about Japanese literature and Zen for many years. Two of his previous Hebrew-language books, "Crazy Dialogues: Zen Stories" and "Guo-An: A Man in Search of a Bull," deal specifically with Zen. Others, like "Tokyo - Round Trip," "My Brother the Yakuza" and Raz' translation of the poetry of Basho, "The Narrow Road to Oku," are also suffused with Zen philosophy(more...)