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Essays

Hagakure (#2)

All great movements have a beginning which fulfills a need. Peasants, being given no armor or weapons when they were sent into battle, had to copy the “attack and defend” techniques of birds, insects, and animals. This became the beginning of Karate. In Part 2 of her Commentary on the Hagakure, Ming Zhen Shakya discusses how shifts in imperial power forced noble sons into the hinterlands where they became “servants” (samurai) of brutish warlords. They shed the foppishness of fashion and brought the ethos of unflinching loyalty to one’s lord, and this, mingled with the mastery of horse and weapon and the disciplines of Buddhist Meditation and weaponless fighting, became the root which had yet to send its stem up into the political world. This root would gather such strength that when it did break ground, it would define a civilization.

A Father’s Birth (#5)

Deliverance Day finally arrives for Da Shi Yao Xin. In Part V, A Tiger in the Belgian Forest, he tells us how it feels to suddenly become the dad of an adorable tiger cub, a.k.a. his son Eliott.

Hagakure (#1)

Few writers have been so prolific and so eloquent in their love of their country’s traditions as world-class author Yukio Mishima. In Part I of her Commentary on the Hagakure, Ming Zhen Shakya discusses Mishima’s obsession with the Samurai ethic. An expert swordsman, he planned meticulously for his death by hara kiri, but nothing about his final day went as planned; and his death became a travesty of a Samurai’s heroic demise.

A Father’s Birth (#4)

In Part 4 of “A Father’s Birth” Da Shi Yao Xin finally survives all those pre-natal crises and samples the reality of the moment.

Hagakure (#0)

The Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun is proud to reprint Ming Zhen Shakya’s series on the Hagakure, an account of Samurai life in seventeenth century Japan. In this introduction to the ten part series, Shi Ming Zhen tells us how “Hidden by the Leaves” i.e., The Hagakure, came into being and compares Samurai and Zen’s Spiritual disciplines.

A Father’s Birth (#3)

In Part 3 of “A Father’s Birth” Yao Xin Shakya follows the directions to the Athonite Church and experiences a revitalization of an old Zen teaching. He wonders how the Christian Blessing will affect his Buddhist future.

A Father’s Birth (#2)

“Called or not called, God will be there”, C. G. Jung wrote in front of his house. In “Vespers in the Night”, Master Yao Xin Shakya share some words with an Orthodox priest and realizes the importance of names and its mysteries.

A Father’s Birth (#1)

A simple way of living, distant mountains, homemade wine and the scent of incense become a fine scenario for the mistery of life to unfold. In the “A Father’s Birth”, Master Yao Xin Shakya tell us a glimpse of how a new life can change our world.

Commentary on “Words: As Images of God”

“This stone is poor and cheap in price. It is disdained by fools, but it is loved all the more by the wise” an Alchemist said. In this Commentary, Ming Zhen writes about the spiritual and temporal significance of the “Piss Christ”.

Words: As images of God

As the Way of Life says: “Existence is beyond the power of words / To define: Terms may be used / But are none of them absolute”. In “Words: As Images of God”, Yao Xiang Shakya steps into the terrain where words strive to become Real.

Recovering from a Vacation

Vacations, as everyone knows, get us away from pressure. Abbot John discovers another use for duct tape as he flies blissfully high above pressure in “Recovering from a vacation”