Re: OT: zen for beginners

[Jeff Shirkey <jcshirke@verizon.net>]

> How much does he know about Zen already?
>
> When I was 15, the book I kept going back to again and again was  
> "The Zen Experience" by Thomas Hoover.  It's more a history book --  
> charting Zen from its beginnings with the original sutras,  
> Kumarijiva's concept of Void, and Bodhidharma's journey out of India  
> to China.  It explains the philosophical theories while describing  
> the lives and beliefs of each of Zen's Patriarchs as the religion  
> morphed from Indian Mahayana Buddhism, into the North and South  
> schools of Chinese Ch'an, and finally the Rinzai and Soto Zen sects  
> of Japan.
>

If it's history your friend is interested in, you're going to want to  
buy something much more recent than Hoover, for one thing. More  
importantly, you'll want to buy a book with some scholarly merit. Look  
at books by John McRae ("Seeing Through Zen") or Bernard Faure, for  
instance--both Chan/Zen scholars at the top of their field.

My .02

Jeff