Favorite Reading

Students have asked me what books are my favorite reading. My answer is:

1. My deceased friend, Dr. John Wu’s “The Golden Age of Zen” (published by The National War College of Taiwan, sometimes distributed by the Paragon Book Gallery in New York City). I have earned so much from the delightful tales and quotations that Dr. Wu so faithfully assembled. I don’t know of any other book as broad, for students of ZEN.

2. Paul Rep’s “ZEN Flesh, ZEN Bones,” really four books in one written in Paul’s inimitable way.

3. The “Krishnamurti’s Notebook”, which I carry with me when I travel. Difficult to understand for those who do not have some inner experience. Very redolent of the ‘Womb of Holiness’ (a Taoist expression).

4. Thomas Cleary’s “Timeless Spring”, while limited to Soto ZEN, has many stimulating accounts in it.

5. “The Tiger’s Cave” (almost impossible to find), originally published in England by Rider & Co. Some of my teaching is based on similar sources.

6. “Creativity and Taoism (originally published in hardcover by Julian Press, NYC) by my friend, Chang Chung Yuan. The essence of the deepest, not the popular, Taoism.

7. “The Practice of Zen” by Garma C.C. Chang, who also wrote, from experience, a book on Jua-yen, the deepest Buddhist philosophy of totality, and, from experience, a very valid book on Tibetan Buddhist practice, which is often misrepresented and sometimes confused with Indian Tantra. The tales in the latter part of “The Practice of Zen” are very inspiring to me.

There are, of course, others. I usually carry a book of Kabir’s poems or “The letters of Swami (the real) Ramdas”, now deceased, when I travel. In an earlier edition of the Vital Force (Spring Equinox 1989) I recommended 20 books but you are most apt to find me reading these seven.