Sat, 16 Aug 2008
Zombie Zen
I passed through the bookstore today and looked at the Buddhist book section. I noticed they were selling Kapleau's "The Three Pillars of Zen" and Blofeld's translation of Huang Po. Both these books are zombie zen. They were good and informative when they were first published, but now they're badly out of date. I've noticed that publishers keep reprinting these old standards. And I guess as long as long as there's a market for them, they'll continue to do so. Someone who's new to Zen won't know what's good and waht's not. I think with very few exceptions anything more than thirty years old should be disregarded. The only two exceptions I can think of are Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" and Shibayama's translation of "The Gateless Barrier." The grand daddy of zombie zen is Dwight Goddard's "Buddhist Bible," a translation of various Buddhist texts that he assembled back in the Thirties. There's no excuse to keep this book in print.
