Description: This important book will have great appeal for scholars of both traditional, or classical, and modern Zen Buddhism as well as a more general audience of readers interested in Buddhism and Japanese culture. The book brings together two giants of the history of Zen: Linji (Japanese, Rinzai) and Hisamatsu Shin'ichi. Linji was one of the half dozen or so great masters in the classical period of Tang China and is looked upon as the founder of the Rinzai sect in Japan. Hisamatsu was a leading twentieth century master/thinker who lived in Kyoto and was a tremendous influence on the development of the Kyoto school of Japanese philosophy. The translators and editors have translated twenty-two of Hisamatsu's Zen teisho (Dharma talks, in effect, sermons for Zen practitioners) of a classical Zen text, the Record of Linji, the recorded sayings of the Chinese founder of Rinzai Zen.

In Japanese circles Hisamatsu was widely respected as an outstanding lay master and an important reformer of Zen. Given at retreats of the Zen study-practice group that he founded, Hisamatsu's talks on the Record of Linji provide a rich introduction to his religious viewpoint. To date no Zen master's talks on the Record of Linji have ever been published in English, even though the Record is one of the central texts in Zen monastic life, and Zen masters traditionally have expounded on it in talks given to their disciples.

The translators have added annotations for technical terms and textual references in Hisamatsu's talks. They have also edited a short introduction by renowned Zen philosopher Masao Abe and translated a postscript by Seizan Yanagada, recognized internationally as the foremost scholar of classical Zentexts.

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