People | WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN? Aug 5, 2017
Zen monk Seigaku: A life with less can be so much more
by Verena Dauerer
Japanese monk Seigaku lives a Zen life with as little money as possible in Berlin.
Travel Apr 14, 2017
Among the monks: Dipping a toe in Zen at Shinshoji Temple
by Steve John Powell
When was the last time you sat in silence, without fretting about the things you ought to be doing or gazing at a screen of any kind? When was the last time you didn't think anything at all? If this is something you do regularly, ...
Food & Drink | TOKYO FOOD FILE Apr 1, 2017
Hayashi: Ponder the sound of one man slurping
by Robbie Swinnerton
The ticket machine at the door to Hayashi looks more like a Zen riddle than a method of ordering noodles. The columns and rows of buttons stand empty and blank, mocking all illusion of choice: egg or no egg; standard or extra grilled pork (options ...
Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Nov 5, 2016
'Crooked Cucumber': The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki
by Stephen Mansfield
Shunryu Suzuki, author of the influential "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind," is credited with introducing Zen to the West and founding California's first Zen Buddhist monastery. Crooked Cucumber, by David Chadwick.468 pagesHarmony, Nonfiction. In David Chadwick's biography of Suzuki, "Crooked Cucumber," he mentions an incident that deftly ...
Commentary / Japan Sep 1, 2016
The usefulness of Zen in management culture
by Didier Andre Guillot
Zen should be an integral part of educational curricula and an inspiring driver of business practices.
Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Aug 6, 2016
Reading Zen in the Rocks
by Stephen Mansfield
The powerful ambiguities of dry landscape arrangements, the inevitable questions they raise in relation to what constitutes a garden, the profundity of concepts and principals, many of them deriving from Taoism and Zen, never fail to baffle the uninitiated. Francoise Berthier, a professor of ...
National / History | THE LIVING PAST Jul 16, 2016
'Zen's sudden awakening to the truth beyond reason, beyond language'
by Michael Hoffman
Rabbi Zusia tramped through his native Poland — this admittedly is an odd way of introducing a story about Zen — collecting money to ransom Jews unjustly imprisoned, victims of the rampant anti-Semitism then prevailing. At a wayside inn he saw birds in a ...
Books Jul 2, 2016
Black Illumination: Zen and the poetry of death
by Eugene Thacker
On a winter morning in 1360, Zen master Kozan Ichikyo gathered together his pupils. Kozan, 77, told them that, upon his death, they should bury his body, perform no ceremony and hold no services in his memory. Sitting in the traditional Zen posture, he ...
Lifestyle Jun 21, 2016
In space-tight Japan, how to live like a minimalist
by Megumi Lim
Fumio Sasaki's one-room Tokyo apartment is so stark friends liken it to an interrogation room. He owns three shirts, four pairs of trousers, four pairs of socks and a meager scattering of various other items. Money isn't the issue. The 36-year-old editor has made a ...
Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Nov 7, 2015
'The Book of Tea' is a transcendent view of life, art and Japan
by Stephen Mansfield
To those unfamiliar with his name, Okakura Kakuzo was a pivotal figure in trying to make sense out of the clash between Western innovation in Japan and Oriental tradition. Self-exiled from the emerging modernism of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), Okakura traveled to India, China, ...
Books / Reviews | ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES Jul 18, 2015
'Mystical Realist' Eihei Dogen's 13th-century writings
by Matt Treyvaud
Eihei Dogen (1200-53), founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, is a key figure in the intellectual history of Japan, but for many centuries his work was not widely read. This changed in 1926, when the publication of Watsuji Tetsuro's "Shamon Dogen" ("The ...
National Feb 27, 2015
Monk uses experience with acting to spread Zen teachings in Berlin
by Toshihisa Onishi
A 34-year-old Japanese Buddhist monk and actor who is living in Berlin is trying to teach his students there "how to apply Zen wisdom to modern life." Seigaku, who was born Seitaro Higuchi in Yonago, Tottori Prefecture, in January 1981, became an actor when he ...