The Compass of Zen (Shambhala Dragon Editions): Sahn, Seung: 9781570623295: Amazon.com: Books
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The Compass of Zen (Shambhala Dragon Editions) Paperback – Unabridged, October 28, 1997
by Seung Sahn (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars 95 ratings
A simple, exhaustive—and often hilarious—presentation of the essence of Zen by a modern Zen Master of considerable renown
In his many years of teaching throughout the world, the Korean-born Zen Master Seung Sahn has become known for his ability to cut to the heart of Buddhist teaching in a way that is strikingly clear, yet free of esoteric and academic language. In this book, based largely on his talks, he presents the basic teachings of Buddhism and Zen in a way that is wonderfully accessible for beginners—yet so rich with stories, insights, and personal experiences that long-time meditation students will also find it a source of inspiration and a resource for study.
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Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Zen Maste Sahn is the well-known director of the Kuan Um School of Zen. Active as a teacher in the West for 30 years, Sahn originally wrote this text in the 1970s, as a guide for students with an interest in the fundamentals of Buddhists teaching from a Zen perspective. Much of the Zen teaching with which Westerners are familiar has come from Japanese lineage, but this work has a fresh, Korean Zen slant. For an introductory text, however, Walpole Rahula's classic What the Buddha Taught (Grove, 1987) is probably better. A large part of this volume is given to transcriptions of talks, resulting in repetition and a lack of focus. Viewed as one person's heartfelt expression of his understanding of the teachings, however, this has much to offer. Recommended for academic and public libraries with extensive collections in the areas of Buddhism and Zen.?Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll. Lib., N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"An entertaining and even amusing survey of the varied flavors of Buddhism appears in The Compass of Zen, by Seung Sahn. Based upon his talks, this book presents the basic questions in many short, accessible chapters woven around anecdotes and dialogues. From the Four Noble Truths to the Five Human Dreams, this book seems to cover the whole mathematics of insight."—Michael Sims, Bookpage
"Like two arrows meeting in the air, this extraordinary book meets the mind point. Please relax and enjoy it."—Joan Halifax, author of The Fruitful Darkness
About the Author
Zen Master Seung Sahn (1927–2004) was the first teacher to bring Korean Zen Buddhism to America, having already established temples in Japan and Hong Kong. In 1972 he came to the United States and started what became the Providence Zen Center, the first center in what is now the Kwan Um School of Zen, which now includes more than eighty centers and groups worldwide. His students called him Dae Soen Sa Nim, "Great Honored Zen Teacher," and he was the 78th Zen master in his line of dharma transmission in the Chogye order of Korean Buddhism. His books include The Compass of Zen, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, Only Don't Know, and The Whole World Is a Single Flower: 365 Kong-ans for Everyday Life.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Buddhism The Purposes of Buddhism
First attain enlightenment, then instruct all beings.
Many centuries ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates used to walk through the streets and marketplaces of Athens, teaching his students. He would say to them, "You must understand yourself! You must understand yourself! You must understand yourself." Then one day a student said, "Sir, you always say we must understand ourselves. But do you understand your self?"
"No, I don't know myself," Socrates replied. "But I understand this 'don't know.'" This is very interesting teaching. Buddhist practice points at the same experience, because most human beings pass through their lives without the slightest sense of what they are.
We understand many things about this world, but we don't understand ourselves. So why do human beings come into this world? Why do we live in this world? For love? For money? For respect or fame? Do you live for your wife, husband, or children? Why do you live in this world? If someone asked you these questions, you might very well answer, "I live for my children. I live to earn enough money for them, or maybe just to have a good life." Most people think like this. They live only for their family, for some fleeting social respectability, perhaps to enjoy art or to get some powerful position. Everyone wants to have a good situation for themselves. If you look at this world very closely, it is easy to see that most people eat and sleep and live merely for their own personal happiness. Yet these things are not the real purpose of human beings' life. They are just temporary means for living in the world. If human beings cannot find out who they are, how can they ever be truly happy? The Buddha came from a royal family in India some twenty-five hundred years ago. He was a prince, named Siddhartha Gautama. He had a very good situation. In the palace he had everything he wanted: good food, good clothes, many beautiful women, a high seat, and a very good position. He was the son of the king, and someday he would inherit a powerful kingdom. That's very wonderful! But inside, Siddhartha was very unhappy, because he could not understand who he was. He could not understand life or death. He was deeply saddened that all beings must eventually get sick, grow old, and die. This gave him a big question about his own nature and the nature of all beings. "What am I? I don't know. . . ." At that time in India, the Brahmin religion of Hinduism was followed by nearly everyone. But Brahmanism could not give the young prince the correct answer to his burning question. So he was even more unhappy. "Why do human beings come into this world? Why do we eat every day? What am I?" He ate food, but there was no taste. Heard music, but it gave him no pleasure. The beautiful palace became like a prison.
One night, Siddhartha left the palace. He left his family, his beautiful wife, and his infant child, cut off all his hair, and became a monk. Then he went to the mountains. For six years he practiced very, very hard. "What am I? Don't know . . ." He courageously kept this question with one-pointed determination. Then one morning, while sitting in meditation under the Bodhi tree, he saw the morning star in the eastern sky. At that moment--BOOM!--Siddhartha and this star completely became one. He realized his true substance. He realized that his mind was the universe--infinite in time and space--and the whole universe was nothing other than his own mind. He realized there is no life and no death. Nothing ever comes or goes. We say that he woke up and attained his true nature. He completely attained human consciousness: he saw that when ignorance appears, mind appears. When mind appears, desire appears. When any kind of desire appears, life and death, coming and going, happiness and sadness all appear. By completely keeping a don't-know mind one hundred percent--only go straight, don't know--the Buddha saw how to completely stop this endless cycle. He attained complete liberation from the eternal round of birth and death in which all beings trap themselves. He completely attained his correct way, he attained truth, and he attained the correct kind of life he should lead. The name for that is enlightenment. But this truth that the Buddha attained was a very high-class realization. How could he make it function to help this suffering world? When he got enlightenment, the Buddha perceived all sentient beings being born, suffering, and dying; being born again, suffering, and dying; being born, again suffering, and again dying in an endless round of torment. He saw billions upon billions of beings caught in the beginningless cycle of birth, old age, sickness, and death, wandering around and around and around and around, nonstop, only following their desire, anger, and ignorance. The name for this is samsara. "I want this. I want that. I like this. I don't like that." When he attained enlightenment, the Buddha perceived every sentient being in a terrible state of suffering. It was a condition to which they had become so accustomed that it seemed normal. How would anyone ever believe what he had seen? "How can I teach this to other people?" he thought. It was like a man with a very high-class Ph.D. trying to teach little children what he'd learned: how would they ever understand? Sentient beings were so controlled by their desire minds, and so attached to their suffering way, he wondered if anyone would ever connect with this teaching. Sutras say that for several moments the Buddha doubted whether he should attempt to teach this. Perhaps people would have laughed at him, or worse, killed him for his heretical insight. The Buddha saw all this too. He could have stayed in this nirvana, his enlightenment, a state of infinite stillness and bliss, and never come out.
But the Buddha had profound compassion for sentient beings. He got up from his seat under the Bodhi tree, he left the stillness and bliss of nirvana, and he went into the contentious cities and towns to teach human beings. He left his "good situation." He did not attach to stillness and quiet. He did not attach to his bliss. He did not stay in nirvana, a state where there is no suffering or life or death. The Buddha returned to the noisy, fractious world to save all beings from suffering by showing them that it was possible to completely attain their own original nature, just as he had done. His enlightenment experience was not for him alone. That is a very important point. The characters for that are dae ja, dae bi: Great Love and Great Compassion. The Buddha attained enlightenment, which means that he attained his great function and the function of all beings. This was the beginning of Buddhism in this world.
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Product details
Item Weight : 1.27 pounds
Paperback : 394 pages
ISBN-10 : 9781570623295
ISBN-13 : 978-1570623295
Product Dimensions : 5.96 x 1.1 x 8.94 inches
Publisher : Shambhala; 1st Edition (October 28, 1997)
Language: : English
ASIN : 1570623295
Best Sellers Rank: #105,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#468 in Other Eastern Religions & Sacred Texts (Books)
Customer Reviews:
4.8 out of 5 stars 95 ratings
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seung sahn zen master master seung compass of zen zen buddhism zen practice dharma talks wonderful book recommend this book zen center reading this book book i have read book is like buddhism book books on zen understanding buddhist teachings profound words
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Swervelette
5.0 out of 5 stars Would love an audio versionReviewed in the United States on March 6, 2019
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I love this book and have read it multiple times; I would love to see an audio version on Audible.com so I can listen while commuting.
2 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Zen2Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2020
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Great product - will buy this again.
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Dan
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book to explained Zen Buddhism!Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2020
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I’ve made Zen my way of life and have read dozens of book the subject, the Compass of Zen is the best intro to Zen teachings, concepts and philosophy that I have ever seen!
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John E. Chadwick
5.0 out of 5 stars This is all you need to knowReviewed in the United States on October 18, 2004
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Having read "Dropping Ashes on the Buddha" for years and letting it sit with me for years, this book was like a key opening a door to my mind and letting in a stream of light. This is all the book you will ever need. Sure, you can study theories, stats, and philosophies for decades but in the end, zen master SS will cut to the bone and explain how simple everything is. And you will wonder why in the world you have been making it so difficult.
This book covers all the angles. It gives you history, examples and the rest. But mostly, it gives you a compass to make sure that you are on the right track. After reading a chapter or three on a regular basis, you will succumb to the basic simpleness of the message and it will start to slowly dawn on you. Little by little, how simple things can really be, if you just "Don't know".
17 people found this helpful
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Evagelos Kavouriadis
5.0 out of 5 stars Great insights on ZenReviewed in the United States on May 24, 2020
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I really liked this view - it brought to life some important Zen teachings that were too abstract for me in the past. I highly recommend it.
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Will Corsair
4.0 out of 5 stars Will Change Your Life.Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2014
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A student in a class I was teaching told me about this book. He's from Korea originally, and is part of a Zen group in, of all places, Oklahoma City.
The author is a Zen master from Korea, and he writes with a direct, light-hearted style that is clear and not at all intimidating or overwhelming. I found myself very drawn to what he was offering.
The book is a transcription of his many Dharma talks, so the text is sometimes a bit choppy. However, that doesn't detract from how well the book is put together. It will change the way you see the world and maybe how you live your life.
2 people found this helpful
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bruno Mithout
5.0 out of 5 stars a highly readable, often humorous way of teaching Buddhism ...Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2016
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a highly readable ,often humorous way of teaching Buddhism.
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Blu3yy
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome,Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2018
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Great read..thank you.
Clear Zen..right there in front of you, clear as day..clear as the cold air after a snow storm.
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Richard the Taijigerheart
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterclass in compassion and awareness...Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 29, 2019
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The pages of this valuable book are flooded with the precious wisdom, joyful personality and great humour of this true Master of Korean Zen.
Now that Seung Sahn has passed on, nowhere else can be found so directly communicated the living evidence of the fullness, vitality and playfulness of genuine Zen spirit.
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S. G. Walter
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on buddhism I've come acrossReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2010
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I would very strongly recommend this to anyone interested in buddhism. It is especially useful if you have come to buddhism through one of the other schools (e.g. Tibetan buddhism, Theraveda) and are wondering how all the different schools relate to eachother. Seung Sahn devotes large sections to Hinayana buddhism, Mahayana buddhism and demonstrates how they all point ultimately in the same direction - hence the compass.
If you read this book, you should be able to use it as a compass to make sure you head in the right direction at all times and don't get sidetracked by the peculiarities of any one way of teaching.
The only negative point I have about this book is the introduction (or possibly the foreword, I can't remember which at the moment); apparently written by Seung Sahn himself, it seems strangely out of character with the rest of this book and his other teachings. So I would skip the intro and jump into the book.
I would also recommend his other books, and if you are particularly interested in Zen practice and teaching, then Dropping Ashes on the Buddha shows how the compass is used in practice, and is also a very fun read into the bargain.
Update 10 years on:
The Compass was really the last book I read on self-help, Buddhism, philosophy etc. Since then I haven't had any questions that weren't already answered. I have actually forgotten most of what is in the book, but it doesn't matter - my compass was set back then and it still points me in the right direction now.
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Michael Rhodes
5.0 out of 5 stars It is a real compass!Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 19, 2013
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Having studied philosophy at degree level, and read a host of alternative / quantum / new age / spiritual texts, I have to say this is among the very few most enlightened, clear and useful books I have ever read. The author is clearly beyond genius - words fail me! I would recommend this book to everyone, reading it has been a turning point in my life.
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Daniel H.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great insiteReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 26, 2020
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Very well written book, only wanted to read a few pages but ended up reading for an hour as it's so captivating.
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Bryn T.
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic ResourceReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2013
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This is one of the best books on Zen I have seen so far - and I have read quite a few!
Probably not easy without some background in Buddhist thinking, but a very worthwhile read.
Highly recommended.
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