No Barrier: Unlocking the Zen Koan - A New Translation of the Zen Classic "Wumenguan" (Mumonkan)

Rating:
Summary: Republished as _Unlocking the Zen Koan_
Review: Readers/buyers may want to know that this book has been republished as _Unlocking the Zen Koan_. Here's what I said about it in a review under its new title:

This translation of and commentary on the well-known Wumenguan/Mumonkan is one of Thomas Cleary's finest works. (I also think highly of his _Dhammapada_.) As reviewer David Johnston has noted in his excellent and accurate review [under the other title], it will clear up plenty of the misconceptions about Zen encouraged by people who (deliberately or otherwise) profit from obfuscation. And Cleary's commentary -- based on some thirty years of experience with the koans themselves -- will provide valuable guidance that those professional obfuscators would probably prefer that you not have.

There are plenty of books out there that purport to be about Zen, but as far as I can tell, only a handful of them are genuinely helpful over the long haul -- Reps's _Zen Flesh, Zen Bones_, Kapleau's _Three Pillars_, Suzuki's _Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind_, the other Suzuki's _Introduction to Zen Buddhism_, maybe Alan Watts's _The Way of Zen_ and Stephen Mitchell's _Dropping Ashes on the Buddha_. Cleary's Wumenguan belongs on the shelf next to these.

Cleary insists (correctly) that Zen is not anti-intellectual or anti-reason ("not blind to causality"), and it doesn't encourage the practitioner to dissolve one's mind (or the world) into undifferentiated mush. On that basis alone, probably half the "Zen" books currently in print can be tossed directly into the trash.

Rating:
Summary: Without Thinking Good, Without Thinking Evil
Review: This is a wonderful work. The translations are poetic and the comments very illuminating. Read and follow rigorously the instructions in the forward and you will learn something about Zen mind. It is permanenly on my shelf of most important references.