ZEN INKLINGS, by Donald Richie. IBC Publishing, 132 pp., 2004 (new edition), 1,400 yen (paper). THE NEW ZEN GARDEN, by Joseph Cali, photos by Satoshi Asakawa. Kodansha International, 87 pp., 2004, 3,500 yen (cloth).

One opens a book by Donald Richie with certain expectations -- namely, that it will be literate and original, the last word on the subject.

This is a tall order for any writer. None of these requisites lend themselves to producing a book on Zen, where there can be no final word. Perhaps that's why Richie has turned to the more subjective terrain of literary narrative as the form best suited to meet his ends for "Zen Inklings," a book of instructive parables, retellings, inventions, aphorisms, saws and sermons.

Richie, without a trace of the pedagogic, conveys to us that the true nature of learning and knowledge can be as pleasurable as poetry, lovemaking or music.