Capturing in verse the ageless spirit of Zen, these 150 poems reflect the insight of famed masters from the ninth century to the nineteenth. The translators, in collaboration with Zen Master Taigan Takayama, have furnished illuminating commentary on the poems and arranged them as to facilitate comparison between the Chinese and Japanese Zen traditions. The poems themselves, rendered in clear and powerful English, offer a unique approach to Zen Buddhism, compared with which, as Lucien Stryk writes, the many disquisitions on its meaning are as dust to living earth. We see in these poems, as in...

This is a selection from among the most significant texts in the body of Buddhist literature, culled especially for readers who want a rich, varied, and comprehensive collection in one volume, and includes translations from Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Lao. For the benefit of the newcomer to Buddhism--and to facilitate the use of this volume in an academic context--the pieces are arranged in chronological order and each chapter is preceded by a separate commentary. In addition, there is a comprehensive description of life in India at the time of the Buddha and an outline of...

Charles Darwin s foremost biographer, Janet Browne, delivers a vivid and accessible introduction to the book that permanently altered our understanding of what it is to be human. A sensation on its publication in 1859, "The Origin of the Species "profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin s seminal work is nearly as controversial today. In her illuminating study, Browne delves into the long genesis of Darwin s theories, from his readings as a university student and his five-year...

Lucien Stryk's poetry is made of simple things -- frost on a windowpane at morning, ducks moving across a pond, a neighbor's fuss over his lawn -- set into language that is at once direct and powerful. Years of translating Zen poems and religious texts have helped give Stryk a special sense of the particular, a feel for those details which, because they are so much a part of our lives, seem to define us. Stryk's poetry is neither an attempt to surpass these details nor an attempt to give them significance. It is an activity that exists among them, as ordinary -- yet as important -- as breath....

Koyashi Issa (1763-1827), long considered amoung Japan s four greatest haiku poets (along with Basho, Buson, and Shiki) is probably the best loved. This collection of more than 360 haiku, arranged seasonally and many rendered into English for the first time, attempts to reveal the full range of the poet s extraordinary life as if it were concentrated within a year. Issa s haiku are traditionally structured, of seventeen syllables in the original, tonally unified and highly suggestive, yet they differ from those of fellow haikuists in a few important respects. Given his character, they had to....

Haiku at its best is an art in which the poet takes a natural, most ordinary event, and without fuss, ornament or inflated words makes of it a rare moment sparely rendered, crystallized into a microcosm which reveals transcendent unity. Small wonder haiku has a growing audience throughout the world.
In all arts music, painting, dance, theatre change has come with that startling moment of dissatisfaction when the artist upends complacency, shocks the old to its foundations, and emerges with clear vision. He has had the courage to rescue his art from dullness. Two of Japan s Great Four of...

Written over a career that spans five decades, "And Still Birds Sing" is the masterwork of a major voice in American poetry.
Bringing together his previously collected poems as well as the three books published since then, a sampling of his renowned translations of haiku, and a generous number of previously unpublished new poems, this latest collection by poet and translator Lucien Stryk is evidence of the popular and critical acclaim for an important contributor to twentieth-century letters.
Stryk s work offers an intimate autobiography, at the same time giving a strong sense of the...

In a thoughtful and perceptive introduction, Stryk sets the stage for an appreciation of what Basho's poetry has to offer, sketching his life, his times, his spirit. For most of his life Basho was a recluse. He lived on the outskirts of Edo (Tokyo) in a hut shaded by an exotic banana tree (the Basho). When he traveled, he relied entirely on the hospitality of temples and fellow poets. His poems were strongly influenced by the Zen sect of Buddhism and its ideals of lightness, detachment, and appreciation of the commonplace. Basho aspired to and achieved unity of life and art, his poems become...