Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice by Shunryu Suzuki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I took a Buddhism class in college and this was part of our required reading. At the time, it made no sense to me. This is because this book did not explain how to meditate. Since then, I've read books about how to meditate, I've attempted meditation (hundreds of times at this point), and I've read about consciousness. So now it makes sense. Even so, it was a horrible choice for an introductory Buddhism course with no discussion of meditation. It's also a poor book if you haven't already learned about meditation and attempted it, especially because he doesn't give any explicit directions about meditation beyond sitting in the correct posture. Meditation itself is barely implied. You only know that what he's talking about if you already have a background in it.

There's no explanation of how Zen is a school of (East Asian) Mahayana Buddhism, or that there are even branches of Buddhism with different beliefs. Is zazen just another word for meditation or is there something unique about it? Meditation with no purpose? I can't really figure it out from the text. You will acquire something from this practice but you can't practice it in order to acquire something or it is not zazan? Ah, koans even where we don't expect them. "Intellectually my talk makes no sense." Well, I agree with that.

Despite the name, this is an intermediate or advanced meditation book, with an emphasis on zen practice specifically which like I said is just one kind. There are some interesting thoughts here worth considering. Some of it reminds me a lot of Christianity.

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