Zen Masters of Japan is the second book in a series that traces Zen's profoundly historic journey as it spread eastward from China and Japan, toward the United States. Following Zen Masters of China, this book concentrates on Zen's significant passage through Japan. More specifically, it describes the lineage of the great teachers, the Zen monk pioneers who set out to enlighten an island ready for an inner transformation based on compassionate awareness.While the ...

Zen Masters of China presents more than 300 traditional Zen stories and koans, far more than any other collection. Retelling them in their proper place in Zen's historical journey through Chinese Buddhist culture, it also tells a larger story: how, in taking the first step east from India to China, Buddhism began to be Zen.The stories of Zen are unlike any other writing, religious or otherwise. Used for centuries by Zen teachers as aids to bring about or deepen the experie...

Ever since Catholic priests from Portugal and Spain entered Japan in the 1500’s on missions to convert the Japanese to Christianity, a quiet transformation has been taking place, beginning among those Jesuit missionaries and spreading into the present day among American and European Catholics, lay and ordained alike. As Rick McDaniel writes in this important book, in seeking to understand the Japanese mind so as to know better how to convert the Japanese to Christianity, these early – and ...