Books on Zen Buddhism

Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
Zen Teachings of Huang Po
Instant Zen
Chan Whip

Would also recommend the works of Nan Huai Chin in chronological order, if you don't mind Zen mixed with other stuff. He was a recent teacher who was agreed to be enlightened by the Zen school, as well as the esoteric school and Taoist school. He recommended Zen as the best path. His student Bill Bodri is also worth checking out, particularly his book Measuring Meditation.

I know Alan Watts will prob get shat on here but

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First of all, Zen and Buddhism shouldn't be closely associated. Second of all, when people talk about 'Zen', they're referring to that Japanese Cult Buddhism that originated from Eihei Dogen with the whole Zazen prayer-meditation worship. Look up the Chinese Zen masters such as Zhaozhou, Deshan, Linji, Yunmen, Nanquan, etc.

shut the fuck up
hello brothers

Sayings of Lin-Chi
Sayings of Zhaozou
Sayings Huangbo
Sayings of Yunmen
Sayings of Mazu
Original Teachings of Chan
The Blue Cliff Record
Mumonkan (the two aforementioned are required reading, if you can't penetrate even one case in either of them you can't into Zen)
The Book of Serenity
Sayings of Nanquan
Sayings of Foyan
Bloodstream Sermon
Outline of Practice
Hongren's Records
Sengcan's Records

here is the website and page you will want user:

terebess.hu/zen/textindex.html

remember logic won't get you anywhere
hey look religious cultism, some Daoism and one Zen text, funny

*yawn* any buddhism focusing on zazen is simply another form of materialism, no I'm not going to join your breath cult neuron farm

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yes Mazu and LinChi used to beat up old bald heads for shits and giggles

Zen mind beginners mind
Zen and the birds of appetite

You don't have to meditate, in fact thinking that is going to do anything is just an idea.

Go back to /pol/.

go away weeb

Go back to red dit

Western buddhism is some of the cringiest shite I have ever seen

>hey look religious cultism,
you can't tell the difference can you? sad.
basically all those books are legit guides to purification, except the Elvis book not sure about that one

/pol/ likes buddhism, ever since they found Evola
youtube.com/watch?v=pbOgXfMcLoQ

what did the Zen masters say about Christianity and Buddha-Jesus? can you tell me?
>purification
the mirror isn’t dirty maybe you’re spitting on it?

>what did the Zen masters say about Christianity and Buddha-Jesus?
They dont have to say anything about other religions, but that doesnt invalidate other methods and paths. Not sure what you're even asking. But calling Ramana Maharshi or the philokalia "cult like" is retarded. Zen is extremely open and is primarily a methodology of observation, an honest zennist familiar with Maharshi's methods would find them beneficial and effective, not that they had to or should, but if you don't know what you're talking about it's best to remain silent.

>the mirror isn't dirty?
everyone has a dirty mirror when they first start.

>an honest zennisr would find ‘x’ beneficial
do the patriarchs talk about yoga, sin and salvation in god’s kingdom user or do your favorite religious figures talk about these things?
>everyone is
what about you, what do you see?

You can't get more "/pol/" than Burmese Buddhism.

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OP, I would ignore this post and check out D.T. Suzuki's work on Zen Buddhism, as others have said. As far as writers who have introduced Zen to the West go, he was the foremost authority.

>do the patriarchs talk about yoga, sin and salvation in god’s kingdom user
they don't have to for those things to be true and beneficial for mankind.
But just to educate you...
The Ōbaku Zen school, founded in Japan during the 17th century retains the pure land idea of salvation, the need for a savior (Amida Buddha of Infinite Light) and has mindfulness and prayer practices centered around Buddha Amitābha, through recitation of his holy name and various sutras. It's a mix of pure land and zen.

someone who can’t translate primary texts and hadn’t looked at most of them when he wrote his works isn’t an authority on anything. Zen in Japan isn’t Zen the school.

>he couldn't translate...
Suzuki was also a prolific translator of Chinese, Japanese, and Sanskrit literature.

>zen in japan isn't zen the school
zen is japanese
if you want to talk about its chinese roots call it chan, but zen refers to the zen school of japan

late Japanese Zen isn’t anything to do with the Patriarchs or Masters, Pure Land Buddhism isn’t anything to do with a school that doesn’t rely on a single thing (like a savior or prayer). Repeating Amithaba Buddha mantras like an insect chirping in the summer breeze is probably a good way to get punched in the face by a Zen master or embarassed to death. did you know they embarassed a man to death? they cut a cat in half too, and they burned their most important text, the wood blocks, the original blocks were destroyed by the commentator of the text.
>they don’t talk about what’s true or false
so what do you think they talk about user?

which Zen texts did DT Suzuki translate?
>zen is japanese
zen buddhism is Japanese, honest Japanese people know that Zen is the transliteration of Chan which comes from chan’na which is transliterated from dhyana which comes from the Lankavatara Sutra, the meditation school of Mahayana Buddhism in East India, brought to China by an Iranian prince. So when I say Zen, you can do the leg work to understand what’s being implied. Zen buddhism is Buddhism+Shintoism+Warrior Cult spirituality+Zen. That’s different from Zen though obviously, you can’t talk about Christianity while really talking about Thelema or Hermeticism.

>so what do you think they talk about user?
they talk about their fake buddha quotes from their fake sutras.
then they improve their posture and lower their bloodpressure by sitting, and that's all any zen master has ever achieved.

This is a really nice book that contains wisdom from buddhism, taoism and confucianism, they really all say the same thing. Just in different forms.

The Book of Balance and Harmony

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>buddhism, taoism and confucianism
>they really all say the same thing
Wewlad

Speaking of "/pol/", can you get any more "/pol/" than Suzuki?

>wewlad
read the book and see for yourself.

seems like something a Buddhist would do, like a Japanese Buddhist
interesting how the Zen practicioners of the 20th century found time to be militarist right wing zealots while also preaching the Buddha Dharma to their readers. Mishima and Suzuki, what a race, a noble temperate race of wits.

>while also preaching the Buddha Dharma to their readers
You should read some of the sutras where the Buddha explicitly calls a clerico-police state ruled by iron-fisted priest-king ideal.

you should read the Zen texts where Buddha is called a dried turd and Yunmen says he’d like to beat him to death, but then again im not a Japanese Zen Buddhist nor do I think Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism have any intellectual merit so you’re preaching to a wall

Feel free to link these sutras.

>interesting how the Zen practicioners of the 20th century found time to be militarist right wing zealots while also preaching the Buddha Dharma to their readers.
its not surprising since zen is primarily a methodology of observation, not a system of morals, it is even more removed from morality than orthodox buddhism is. It's quite similar to what happened in the upanishads when the war started and the prince realized his family members are among the enemy army fighting him, Lord Shiva said not to fear killing them since all humans are basically dead already, transient phenomena, unraveling as we speak

Read the actual Tripitaka. Don't bother with secondary sources, half of them are new age bastardizations and none of them are wiser than Gotama himself.

Care to elaborate? I never go to "/pol/" and disagree with them on virtually everything.

>Zen is a system
no
>Zen is about observation of political and social mores
no
>Zen prescribes doing whatever the State tells you
then why did Huineng flee the persecution of Zennists?
>its just like this religious text i really like because im unfamiliar with the thing i should be talking about, so here’s an abstraction to distract from my ignorance
no

you still haven’t explained what nationalism, bushido code, emperor cultism, saviors, meditation and prayer have to do with what zen masters talk about. Do they talk about the State as an object of adoration, do they talk about Samurai code?

What is there to elaborate on? Suzuki was a rabid fascist.

"Zen Buddhism" is a blanket term for a number of different cults and new age belief systems.

If you want to learn about Zen then read what the Chinese Zen masters taught. It's that simple.

>Chinese Zen masters
Which ones specifically.

I screencapped this for reference later in life, thank you.

Tang and Song. Mazu’s School, Lin-Chi’s School. Wumen is probably one of the last so stop around the time of his death. All the Patriarchs and also the proto-Chan buddhists but don’t take them too seriously they were still Taoists, it took time to develop into a potent lineage with Mazu

He publicly denounced Nazism.

zen is totally open, there is nothing it can't permeate, embody and take on, but whatever it takes on it does so without attachment and delusion, it knows what its getting into.

>you still haven’t explained what nationalism, bushido code, emperor cultism, saviors, meditation and prayer have to do with what zen masters talk about. Do they talk about the State as an object of adoration, do they talk about Samurai code?
I don't know what you want me to say, there is no contradiction between being an enlightened zen master and also a nationalist, a samurai, a monk, a president, a soldier, a painter, a sexual deviant (Hakuin), etc. You don't have to flee into the wilderness or some hermitage and recite sutras all day. Zen allows you to engage with the world without attachment, and lets not forget zen says very little if anything about morality.

>Suzuki was a rabid fascist.
this is one of his saving graces.

And so did everybody else after they lost.

those chinese mahayana masters were also new age cultists, who fabricated new age scriptures and new age ideas (bodhisattva ideal) compared to their orthodox ancestors within actual buddhism (hinayana/theravada)

Bodhidharma, Sengcan, Huineng, Huang Po, Joshu, Yunmen, Mumon

>Bodhidharma
who's that guy, heard him mentioned a few times

red haired, blue eyed viking who taught chinks how to think properly

youtube.com/watch?v=hbVx0_7YmaE

he's the OG

But Suzuki did it in the 30s.

t. reddit zen

>zen is totally open
there are men who tell lies when they tell truths and there are men who only tell truths even when they lie. i don’t see you as the first nor do i see suzuki
>it takes on everything
availability and permeability are not the same, you might be confusing Daoism with Zen that’s a typical conflation that westerners who admire Japanese Zen make. For instance Christian Zen is probably the least like what Totally Unbounded By Obstruction could be in this age.
>one can be evil
you haven’t read Bodhidharma, Huineng or Zhaozou, or Mazu. They actually do strongly state that not being able to tell the difference is blindness and attaching to one or the other is falsity. So, seeing that Nationalist Fascism is obviously evil and predicated upon killing, a value that’s basically also evil in all Zen and Buddhist and Daoist contexts, seems like one would also not attach to that obvious evil. Zen masters don’t murder people for fun.
>you don’t have to flee into the wilderness
why did the 6th patriarch leave when they beheaded all his friends?
>recite sutras all day
no Zen master recites sutras all day because they have to do anything. i think you were using a saying and then not applying it yourself before, freedom, and now you think that it doesn’t apply when it would be disadvantageous to a view you personally hold and are interpolating into an epistemological-soterilogical alogical school based on a lineage the japanese have nothing to do with at all.
>Zen allows
no
>Zen allows you to engage with the world without attachment
no Zen is seeing the True Self Nature, there is only one activity
>a samurai
no Zen master served in the military after receiving Dharma Seal, no Zen master spent time licking the asshole of Emperors they were afraid of

no zen master taught anything about reading sutras or making offerings to imperial cults and encouraging obedience to the State, at any point, at any time. But of course if you take the skeleton of the zen writings and then twist them into shinto-pure land buddhism with fascist feudalist state values attached as a chimera, you can argue whatever you want if the person you’re talking to: is a weakling, agrees with you, is ignorant or so disinterested in the truth that they’ll let blatant lies stand without challenge

fascism breeds off of those 3 things, weak people, group-think (zen isn’t about groups either, there is a sect, but you don’t get to talk about We), and of course ignorant and disinterested subhumans.

so is zen actually just indoeuropean tradition in disguise like every other single religion in the world?

is zen useless in the modern world then? i can understand the point in a rigid culture where everything is clearly demarcated, but in the current world of degeneration seems like just be piling up more freedom on top of the absolute degeneration that reigns

he was an Indo-Iranian you dumb fucking whigger

>Zen masters don’t murder people for fun.
but they probably would just to make a point

tfw reached enlightenment just by realizing it

Iranian literally means aryan

>you can be evil
never said that, you're assuming being nationalist or a soldier or samurai is evil? you're assuming war is inherently evil? wew. t.brainlet

>Zen masters don’t murder people for fun.
Right. But they can kill people in a dispassionate way, if they have to, in war, or if its their social duty say as police or samurai.

>tfw reached enlightenment just by getting enlightened

Indo-Aryan from India, Bodhidharma was an Iranic not a Nord or a White person from europe. He was a caucasoid with blue eyes.
Why not just read what they said? Do they talk about fucking men and doing opium?
anything to help the person, do you think Emperor Hirohito was helping the Chinese or the Japanese or anyone he conquered when he was murdering them? Or maybe he was just exterminating his enemies and helping himself and his allies?

>So, seeing that Nationalist Fascism is obviously evil and predicated upon killing
HAHAHAHAHHA
he swallowed the dumb goy libshit pill

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>Why not just read what they said? Do they talk about fucking men and doing opium?
didn't they say the books where useless and just to burn them? i'm afraid that if i read them i'll get contaminated and i can't be zen anymore

>do you think Emperor Hirohito was helping the Chinese or the Japanese
he was kind of cute

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just google "Cakkavattisihanada Sutta" and "Dasavidha-rajadhamma", suttacentral has become unusable and deleted like half of their shit so I can't find anything.

Aryan doesn’t mean nordic-germanic white person, ahistorical use of a term doesn’t make a person a different race than they actually were.
>is killing millions of people to expand your empire evil
yes, and I would imagine almost all Chinese mystics would agree with this, you might be reading your own view into this but generally people who pay attention to what Buddha and Laozi said don’t think aggressive expansions genocidal warfare is just or good for the people. Emperors do, but they don’t write books like that do they?
>they can kill people in a dispassionate way
people who think they’re Zen can do lots of things in a “dispassionate” way user, like you’re right now arguing for genocide being a zen teaching in an ostensibly dispassionate way.
>if its their social duty
where do the masters talk about doing social duties like being soldiers in genocidal expansionist wars user? I remember, eat, sleep, shit, wash your bowl. Do laymen have the understanding of a Zen master? Is it smart to call people who know about quantum physics quantum physicists? do people who study a little bit of it as an undergrad get to call themselves quantum physicists if they stop as a senior and go to bomb arabs for the military?

best edition in english of the middle length discourses? i have to read them and it would be nice to have them in paper

>Aryan doesn’t mean nordic-germanic white person
nobody said it did, german tribes were eating their own shit until they got romanized

a mentally ill con artist in pic related, and a monkey screeching at me for not bending over and taking it from the ten other bigger monkeys he’s trapped in his cage with
you need to hear about something before you can reject it right? why not read about it and then burn the bookhas Himmler physiognomy, tiny monster

>where do the masters talk about doing social duties like being soldiers in genocidal expansionist wars user? I remember, eat, sleep, shit, wash your bowl. Do laymen have the understanding of a Zen master? Is it smart to call people who know about quantum physics quantum physicists? do people who study a little bit of it as an undergrad get to call themselves quantum physicists if they stop as a senior and go to bomb arabs for the military?
so is zen just about being a proud pleb basically?

>you need to hear about something before you can reject it right? why not read about it and then burn the book

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BDK America.

I don't think that every cult who uses the word Zen should become a part of the Zen canon.

Does that somehow mean I'm "Reddit"?

>japan, like germany, woke up one day and decided to take over the world! EVIL!
holy shit your reading of history is atrocious, no wonder you have a knee jerk reaction to any sort of "nationalism" and think it involves or necessarily leads to genocide

>people who think they’re Zen can do lots of things in a “dispassionate” way user, like you’re right now arguing for genocide
im not arguing for genocide, you're straight up lying. it's possible to kill in self defense or do you think that's evil too? its possible to protect your nation from enemies, or is that evil too?

>where do the masters talk about doing social duties like being soldiers
there is no reason to be "moral" in Zen
you're totally confused

any notable differences between the chinese Madhyama Āgama and the pali Majjhima Nikaya? didn't even know the chinese version existed

the Aryans of India and Iran aren’t the same population as the other Steppe groups that mixed with WHG’s and EEF’s to make modern Nordics and Germanics. Calling Bodhidharm an Aryan doesn’t mean anything besides his being from ethnic groups that were native to that region, Aryavarta and Iran.

wasn't the word zen invented by the japs? why call chinese zen zen when it's not even a chinese word?

why do they have the same religious elements in tibet then? just as a meme?

We're speaking English. We don't have to use Chinese words. It just so happens that the Japanese are the ones who introduced the lineage of Bodhidharma to the western world.

Why Zen appeals so much to westerners?

>they weren’t doing what they did do because the intention that spurred what they did, which is what you said, which i can’t deny because i can’t lie too much, was in fact different than my straw man
>im not arguing for a genocide
no the Nazis and Japanese were, and that’s why they committed genocides
>its possible to kill in self defense?
yes people kill others and then say its in self defense. that’s possible people would do that and say such things about it.
>is it evil to do and say that
well the killing is evil, the saying it might be too. depends if the person is evil and trying to cover up a crime like genocide and stealing land, or was trying to stop someone from strangling them and they have witnesses who saw them being strangled or nuked or invaded. When the Russians were invaded and then killed the invading Germans that was self defense, when they steam rolled eastern europe, crushing dissent and then raped their way to berlin that seemed like the first kind of “Self defense”
>ignores what i said
you said you can be a soldier, i asked two things: can someone who isn’t an actual thing be the thing without being it because they left to go do something else. the second was, when do zen masters show themselves as being conscripted into the military after they receive the dharma seal? show me an example of them doing this and show an example of them praising nationalism and the emperor and talking about how its zen to do your duty to the state to kill enemies.

if you can’t listen i can’t talk

Zen doesn't challenge their atheistic-liberal-secular-nihilistic worldview they were indoctrinated to have.

they introduced the jap version that according to you is degenerate, why use the same word for the original non-degenerate version then?

"Aryan" isn't even an ethnic denominator you plebs. It means something closer to "noble."

because zen is the ultimate smug religion, a good fit for fedora types

Tibet is next to china and India, they received Zen the same way Japs received their alphabet, by being in proximity. The tibetan talent for Buddhism is probably due to their shamanic religiosity and clandestine lifestyle mixing well with the Buddha Dharma. You won’t find Zen in Iran or Norway though

>killing in self defense is evil and just an excuse people make
Ok I'm done talking to libshit weeabos

this^
same reason Sam Harris masturbates to buddhism