Ebook: Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

Bring Me the Rhinoceros is an unusual guide to happiness and a can opener for your thinking. For fifteen hundred years, Zen koans have been passed down through generations of masters, usually in private encounters between teacher and student. This book deftly retells more than a dozen traditional koans, which are partly paradoxical questions dangerous to your beliefs and partly treasure boxes of ancient wisdom. Koans show that you don't have to impress people or change into an improved, more polished version of yourself. Instead you can find happiness by unbuilding, unmaking, throwing overboard, and generally subverting unhappiness. John Tarrant brings the heart of the koan tradition out into the open, reminding us that the old wisdom remains as vital as ever, a deep resource available to anyone in any place or time.;An impossible question means a journey -- Bodhidharma's vast emptiness : forgetting who you are and making use of nothing -- Zhaozhou's dog : the secret of changing your heart -- Rhinoceros : meeting the inconceivable -- Ordinary mind is the way : the heaven that's already here -- A condolence : call pursuing death into life -- The red thread : connections that desire makes -- Counting the stars : a boring koan -- Out of nowhere, the mind comes forth : light playing on children's faces -- Tortoise mountain wakes up : friendship -- The great way is not difficult : life with and without your cherished beliefs -- The cypress tree in the garden : the trouble with ancestors -- The Bodhisattva's great mercy : a secret kindness working in the dark -- The woman at the inn : are you afraid of this happiness? -- There's nothing I dislike : on avoiding bad art -- The master song man, an Australian koan : finding your song.