Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn - Kindle edition by Seung Sahn. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn - 

Kindle edition by Seung Sahn. 

Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.









The classic guide for Zen students pursuing the true way.
 
“Somebody comes into the Zen center with a lighted cigarette, walks up to the Buddha-statue, blows smoke in its face and drops ashes on its lap. You are standing there. What can you do?” 

This is a problem that Zen Master Seung Sahn was fond of posing to his American students who attended his Zen centers.
 
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha is a delightful, irreverent, and often hilariously funny living record of the dialogue between Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn and his American students. 

Consisting of dialogues, stories, formal Zen interviews, Dharma speeches, and letters using the Zen Master’s actual words in spontaneous, living interaction, this book is a fresh presentation of the Zen teaching method of “instant dialogue” between Master and student which, through the use of astonishment and paradox, leads to an understanding of ultimate reality.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Consisting of dialogues, stories, formal Zen interviews, Dharma speeches, and letters using the Zen Master's actual words in spontaneous, living interaction with his students, Dropping Ashes onthe Buddha is a fresh presentation of the Zen teaching method of 'instant dialogue' between Master and student that, through the use of astonishment and paradox, leads to an understanding of ultimate reality.

Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn Kindle Edition
by Seung Sahn (Author)


4.4 out of 5 stars 61 customer reviews




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Product details

File Size: 421 KB
Print Length: 258 pages
Publisher: Grove Press; Reissue edition (December 1, 2007)
Publication Date: September 1, 2018
61 customer reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5 stars

Top Reviews

Jim Martin
4.0 out of 5 starsI DON'T KNOW !!!October 28, 2011
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Very interesting read indeed... I found the intermittent cursing to be quite humorous. It's without a doubt - an entertaining, and mind boggling adventure. It makes you feel as if you're right in the classroom, getting smacked with Seung Sahn's stick.

I'd be lying if I said I was able to figure out the various kong-ans, but I'm sure I'm not the only one (I wish there were answers to these riddles, BUT that's probably asking for way too much). However, I did notice that even though I didn't understand the kong-ans that certain things did make more sense as the chapters went on... So, by the end of the book, you have a slightly better understanding than you did at the beginning. This book definitely needs to be reread. Some stories are just plain funny, some are puzzling, and some have a story to tell. *It seems that every other page someone is getting hit hard, hahaha... It's a good thing that hitting is a sign of affection from student to teacher. I've never read a book even close to something like this - it makes you wonder how amazing this man was in person. I subsequently purchased another book from Soen-sa, "Wanting Enlightenment Is a Big Mistake". I want to see how this one fares as well.

I'm hesitant to take a stab at this BUT, if I had to write something that I learned through these pages:

Naturally scriptures, holy reading and their corresponding history are very important (so is growing up and learning all the necessary skills we need to survive in this crazy world). Additionally vital is at some point in our life, we have to stop thinking we know everything. Human beings today are at a point where we just think our way through life. We think we have an explanation for everything --- I think, I think, I think.... We forget our true nature of just feeling or experiencing `things as it is'. Instead of simply experiencing something right in front of our eyes --- we sit, stare, try to break it down and explain it all... With all of this going on, we fail to realize that this precious moment is fleeing from us... What should we do? We must drop everything - `put it all down' and realize these things staring us in the face, every second of every day. We have to lose our overactive mind, and just see with our eyes what is in front of us - appreciate it for what it is, and experience it for all it has to offer...

I can honestly say that after reading this book: what I thought I knew - I DON'T KNOW...

24 people found this helpful

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Mark Sillman
5.0 out of 5 starsHis first and best - a unique bookMarch 16, 2013
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Echoing many other reviewers: this book is great. It's funny, it's. serious. It's the voice of a Korean Zen master who has just arrived in the US (written in 1977), just-learned English, who coins his own idioms to get things across. It does not at all read like a "spiritual" book, or like any other Zen book. It's as though the mind and spirit of Huck Finn were fused with a riddling chessmaster and used to present Zen.

When I first read this -in 1979 - it was like: I've never seen anything remotely like this. I had read 2 or 3 Zen books previously - they seemed interesting but "normal" - whereas this was anything but normal. Only decades later -helped by Seung Sahn's later "Compass of Zen" and some about the Chinese and Korean antecedents - do I see how this fits.

You can read this for the ideas, or the stories, or for the history (as a record of the arrival of a new religion from a very foreign shore). And for practise: his colorful:English expressions (only go straight-don't know) are like "seeds" for meditation, aids to "cut off all thinking". So I found this useful as a meditation guide even though it does not give anything like formal instruction (the group's web site does, though).

This is maybe more useful as a "second" book on eastern spirituality - after a "first" more conventional one. It also some tolerance for certain types of questions: when you see objects are they outside your mind or inside? (But these are meditation seeds, not philosophical treatises.). That's how I came to it - and found it fresh and compelling and unexpected.

11 people found this helpful

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Amy L Reese
5.0 out of 5 starsIn this world, but not of it.September 15, 2013
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Comprised of over a hundred personal letters, lectures, stories and anecdotes, this book is arranged in small chunks that make it easy to set aside, and then come back to later, or devour all at once.

'Dropping Ashes on the Buddha' gives an excellent description of Zen teaching, and the mindsets that come with different levels of understanding within the framework of Zen. It engages in active puzzle solving, using both ancient parables, humor and dharma speeches to convey how to use this puzzling to cut off thinking, and achieve a quieting of the mind. I give it five stars, because it gently explains, in plain English, some very subtle points of experience and understanding that have taken hundreds of masters many years to articulate. It is an enjoyable reading experience, despite the circular and repetitive nature of Zen teaching. I have read this book over and over, at different points in my life, and I have learned many things from it.

I would recommend this book to beginners interested in Zen, and to people who have followed the path for a very long time. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in what Zen has to offer insofar as peace and the prospect of letting go are concerned.

10 people found this helpful

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Edward F.
5.0 out of 5 starsBig SmileNovember 5, 2016
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
I have read other books by Master Seung Sahn before & this might be my favorite. The teachings on striving to maintain a true "don't know" mind & letting go of attachments, while challenging, are very insightful. Reading Master Seung Sahn's words always leaves a smile on my face.

3 people found this helpful

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Rama
4.0 out of 5 starsIt's good, with many toeholds thatSeptember 9, 2015
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Still reading it. I had heard through a podcast interview that this is one of the more accessible books on buddhism. It's good, with many toeholds that, if read carefully, can be picked out. I'm getting the feeling like this is one that will have to be read a few times to really allow the material to sink in. It's a good book and I'm very happy with my purchase.

3 people found this helpful

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Milan Bydžovský
5.0 out of 5 starsOne hundred different stories that are all the sameApril 12, 2017
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
This book made me think about Zen. Now I feel like a dragon with tail of a snake who run after a bone like a blind dog in circles round a keen-eyed lion, swinging my stick in attempts to hit the Moon. I know I should sit, but my leg keep itching so I'm scratching the other one. I opened my mouth and I was wrong.

3 people found this helpful

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