Ebook: Embracing Mind: The Zen Talks of Kobun Chino Otogawa

Kobun Chino Otogawa was an instrumental figure in the transmission of Zen to America and it's evolution within our culture. When Eijeiji, one of Japan's two head temples, sent a classically educated trainer of monks to help establish the forms of the first Zen monastery in the US, they were unaware of the depth of his faith in Buddha nature - that we are already enlightened and the purpose of practice is to find buddha within our selves. Arriving as a young man in the midst of a social revolution, Kobun seemed to resonate in perfect time with the evolution of American Zen. With a refined ability to embody exquisite form and an emphasis on boundlessness, in this paradox, Kobun practiced Zen with intuitive creativity like Miles Davis played jazz.

Although he came to assist Shunryu Suzuki at the San Francisco Zen Center, Kobun was enamored by the way Zen, unfettered, blossomed in new soil and he followed it wherever it grew. For Kobun, Zen was not an institution, but the elemental nature of every aspect of our lives and existed in myriad forms. Kobun founded four temples, taught Buddhism at Stanford and Naropa University, demonstrated and taught calligraphy and archery, spoke at events and met with sitting groups in their living rooms and hiked the wilderness with the people he mes. When Steve Jobs launched Next computer, Kobun was listed as it's spiritual director. However Zen spoke to a person, be it as a religion, a practice, and aesthetic, or a guiding principle, Kobun wholeheartedly believed in it's Buddha nature and followed that path with creativity and grace.

Kobun, who believed that no institution could contain nor offer complete insight into the nature of zen, also never bothered to write a book to explain what Zen is - especially as was captivated by momentous change. The wide-ranging talks in this book began as sesshin talks, instructions given to students while in the midst of a weeklong period of intensive sitting. Together they offer an insight into the Zen of Kobun Chino Otogawa, containing both his perspective on the forms and teachings of Zen and his emphasis that Zen is revealed not so much in the sutras as it is the everyday.