Author Quoted | Philip Kapleau |
Title Quoted | three pillars of Zen : teaching, practice, and enlightenment / comp. & ed., with transl., introd. & notes, by Philip Kapleau ; forew. by Huston Smith |
Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1965/10/03 |
Imprint | Tokyo : Weatherhill. c1965 |
Quotation | I was especially interested in your account of [your friends' involvement in] the session at Pendle Hill. Who was the Roshi? Yasutani? There is a good new book out with a lot of material by and on him. (Three Pillars of Zen, by P. Kapleau "¦ Best recent book on Zen I have seen.) But from the way you speak of it, this session sounds a little irresponsible, if people are thinking of suicide. What occurs to me is that most Americans and especially intellectuals are hardly prepared to meet Zen head-on, and I think every American who wants to know something of Zen had better begin with a long study and meditation on the basic principles of Buddhism, the four "Nobl" Truths and the skandhas. Otherwise Zen will be dangerous. This concerted rush for "attainment" under pressure will, I am convinced of it, give most Americans a completely pathological grasp of Zen, something quite the opposite of what it really is "¦ |
Quotation Source | The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1985, p. 518-19 |
Letter to | Linda (Parsons) Sabbath |
Notes | |
Link to Merton's Copy |
43216
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