When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer. “Give me the best piece of meat you have,” said the customer. “Everything in my…

Yamaoka Tesshu was a tutor of the emperor. He was also a master of fencing and a profound student of Zen. His home was the abode of vagabonds. He had but one…

Keichu, the great Zen teacher of the Meiji era, was the head of Tofuku, a cathedral in Kyoto. One day the governor of Kyoto called upon him for the first time. His…

A Zen master named Gisan asked a young student to bring him a pail of water to cool his bath. The student brought the water and, after cooling the bath, threw on…

A monk asked Fuketsu, “Without words or without transgressing silence, how can one be unmistakably one with the universe?” Fuketsu said, “I often think of March in Konan (Southern China). The birds…

Tetsugen, a devotee of Zen in Japan, decided to publish the sutras, which at that time were available only in Chinese. The books were to be printed with wood blocks in an…

Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labour with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds and pruning the trees. The pupils felt sorry to…

Two monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were once traveling together down a muddy road. It was raining heavily in those parts. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk…

During the Kamakura period, Shinkan studied Tendai six years and then studied Zen for seven years; then he went to China and contemplated Zen for thirteen years more. When he returned to…