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Rating: 
Summary: The Height of Zen Training
Review: ***Note*** This is an update of a review I wrote in 1999 ......
Few of us have the opportunity to retreat into an actual monastic way of life for years and years in order to sink into the nature of Zen experience. Therefore, many branches of Zen, with their emphasis on monastic methods, are often somewhat anachronistic amid the modern world of busyness, speed, information, and seemingly continual bombardment from every direction. Hubert Benoit's Zen and the Psychology of Transformation goes back to the impetus of Zen--a philosophy called Chan that derived in China in the 7th century from an illiterate philosopher named Hui Neng--in order to offer a form of Zen that is fully possible in the context of modern life. Chan is not centered in sitting meditation, or in traditional zazen techniques, but rather simply in a restful type of introspection that leads one directly to the core of Zen experience. Benoit details the mechanics of this introspective life in poetic and technical form, and in a way that leaves one with a clear and simple knowledge of how one is to live one's life according to the restful life of Zen.
Hubert Benoit, like the Greeks and other thinkers before him, was a philosopher dedicated to the study of nature-as-a-whole. Often such thinkers choose to conduct such an expansive study through a single, chosen aspect of nature. The Greeks used, among other things, Logos. Modern physicists often use atoms, as did the Greek Democritus. Modern biologists use such vehicles as the cell, the macromolecule, or evolutionary theory. For some modern mathematicians, the fractal or the topological structure is used. In many ways, these areas overlap one another. The mind is another instrument that can be adopted for this study. To Benoit, as to many modern thinkers, the mind is simply another aspect of nature, much like an insectile or anthropoid form, or much like a cause, an effect, a black-hole singularity, a volume of space, an atom of light, or a duration of time--all different aspects of nature. Benoit's vehicle for investigating the mind--and therefore morphology of reality--was not biology, math, or physics, but Chan Buddhism, the earliest form of Zen; however, he dabbled also with Western Philosophy, the Greeks, conceptual science, and other areas in order to carry out his very personal, rational-inquiry. Benoit has nearly nothing to do with the popular, degenerate form of Buddhism commonly known as "American Zen" or "Western Buddhism," which is one of the main engines of the New Age Movement. Chan, being the original form of Zen, is nearly unrecognizable to the rest of the modern, socially-oriented Buddhist forms. It is however, very much aligned with archaic Taoism, as invented by Lao tsu.
Chan, in its ancient form, is bent on enlightenment. Yet it simultaneously claims that enlightenment does not exist. Contradictions such as this abound in Chan, and to the outsider, initially Chan will appear to be a wholly nihilistic, anti-social philosophy replete with allegorical tales of violence and destructive insanity, self mutilation and self torment, and monks lambasting each other even to the point of death. These elements are of no consequence to the serious student of Chan.
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Summary: May change your life
Review: Benoit is brave to get to the heart of Zen in a way that is not usually done by Chan masters. Excellent translation by someone who knows the stuff, who himself is an authority onthe subject.
This book simply tells you how to look at your true nature. That's all. Each chapter is independent of other and approaches this difficult task of looking within from fresh angles.
Only problem is that it requires some prerequisite in the subject or at least an honest and deep desire to know who you are.
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Summary: Ancient Zen for the Modern World
Review: Few of us have the opportunity to retreat into an actual monastic way of life for years and years in order to sink into the nature of Zen experience. Therefore, many branches of Zen, with their emphasis on monastic methods, are often somewhat anachronistic amid the modern world of busyness, speed, information, and seemingly continual bombardment from every direction. Hubert Benoit's Zen and the Psychology of Transformation goes back to the impetus of Zen--a philosophy called Chan that derived in China in the 7th century from an illiterate philosopher named Hui Neng--in order to offer a form of Zen that is fully possible in the context of modern life. Chan is not centered in sitting meditation, or in traditional zazen techniques, but rather simply in a restful type of introspection that leads one directly to the core of Zen experience. Benoit details the mechanics of this introspective life in poetic and technical form, and in a way that leaves one with a clear and simple knowledge of how one is to live one's life according to the restful life of Zen.
Rating:
Summary: A profound classic!
Review: I have read this book several times over the course of five or so years; a rare occurence for me. The fact that Aldous Huxley writes the foreword should speak volumes in itself. In Huxley's own words this profound classic seeks to break through all that "obstructs the flow of life and grace and inspiration." A challenging read, but I doubt that you would regret having this book in your life. Consider it yeast!
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Summary: Excellent stuff, but be prepared
Review: This book attempts to put Zen into the realm of western thinking. It has the right stuff. Unfortunately, it is sometimes very difficult to read and comprehend. Perhaps it is the translation from French, but I found the phrasing, punctuation, and some of the vocabulary very cumbersome. Take a look at the excerpts on this page to see a sample of the style. Nonetheless, this book is a must read for anyone seriously investigating What Is. There are many diamonds here, but you will need a pick and shovel.
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Summary: Grandmother Zen
Review: This is one of the clearest and most helpful Zen books. Although you will have to read it serveral times, Benoit is a true Zen 'grandmother'.
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Summary: Grandmother Zen
Review: This is one of the clearest and most helpful Zen books. Although you will have to read it serveral times, Benoit is a true Zen 'grandmother'.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent stuff, but be prepared
Review: Zen is probably the most radical approach to existence devised through human history. Authentic Zen has nothing New Age or feel-good about it: it promises no comfort or self-aggrandizement, only absolute existential salvation, and THAT only have a laborious emptying out of the cup of ego that runneth over. Most Zen masters refuse to discuss the discipline or explain it. Hubert Benoit takes the opposite, and for intellectually-inclined Westerners, the more accessible path, and discusses Zen in exhaustive detail in terms of psychology and philosophy--especially phenomenology and existentialism. I was skeptical of this approach until I actually read this book. Benoit writes at an extremely high level of abstraction (something quite alien to traditional Zen, which deals mainly in parables) but any experienced meditator will concur that practically every word Benoit writes rings with utter truth and fidelty to the workings of consciousness. He is clearly a man who has absorbed the Zen teachings and then examined the workings of his own mind with unfailing rigor and perceptiveness; he has taken those findings and translated them into language with a care and accuracy that nobody else, to my knowledge, has ever matched. The results are utterly profound. Indispensable for anybody interested in Zen or the expansion of consciousness.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the profoundest book ever written on Zen
Review: Zen is probably the most radical approach to existence devised through human history. Authentic Zen has nothing New Age or feel-good about it: it promises no comfort or self-aggrandizement, only absolute existential salvation, and THAT only have a laborious emptying out of the cup of ego that runneth over. Most Zen masters refuse to discuss the discipline or explain it. Hubert Benoit takes the opposite, and for intellectually-inclined Westerners, the more accessible path, and discusses Zen in exhaustive detail in terms of psychology and philosophy--especially phenomenology and existentialism. I was skeptical of this approach until I actually read this book. Benoit writes at an extremely high level of abstraction (something quite alien to traditional Zen, which deals mainly in parables) but any experienced meditator will concur that practically every word Benoit writes rings with utter truth and fidelty to the workings of consciousness. He is clearly a man who has absorbed the Zen teachings and then examined the workings of his own mind with unfailing rigor and perceptiveness; he has taken those findings and translated them into language with a care and accuracy that nobody else, to my knowledge, has ever matched. The results are utterly profound. Indispensable for anybody interested in Zen or the expansion of consciousness.
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