Hubert Benoit - The Supreme Doctrine - Zen and the Psychology of Transformation

[godnotgod]

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I am happy to announce that the renowned work on Zen by Hubert Benoit: The Supreme Doctrine - Zen and the Psychology of Transformation, is now available free for download in .pdf format. Please click on the link below, then choose 'Save File' to your favorite download location. This should be in every Zennist's library.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...lIGQAQ&usg=AFQjCNFgJTVSJQV1gqwJOY5HujMJd1-KhQ

...from a review of the book:

"Zen is probably the most radical approach to existence devised through human history. Authentic Zen has nothing New Age or feel-good about it: it promises no comfort or self-aggrandizement, only absolute existential salvation, and THAT only have a laborious emptying out of the cup of ego that runneth over.

Most Zen masters refuse to discuss the discipline or explain it. Hubert Benoit takes the opposite, and for intellectually-inclined Westerners, the more accessible path, and discusses Zen in exhaustive detail in terms of psychology and philosophy--especially phenomenology and existentialism. I was skeptical of this approach until I actually read this book. Benoit writes at an extremely high level of abstraction (something quite alien to traditional Zen, which deals mainly in parables) but any experienced meditator will concur that practically every word Benoit writes rings with utter truth and fidelty to the workings of consciousness. He is clearly a man who has absorbed the Zen teachings and then examined the workings of his own mind with unfailing rigor and perceptiveness; he has taken those findings and translated them into language with a care and accuracy that nobody else, to my knowledge, has ever matched. The results are utterly profound."
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Here also is a link to a recap of Benoit's main ideas you might enjoy:


Supreme Doctrine: a recap of Hubert Benoit's main ideas
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Please feel free to post your comments here.

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

Thanks a bunch for sharing this.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Looks like its worth a read. An effective Zen practice is hardly candy coated or comfortable. It's a practice to "tame" an ego that's hideously hard and ruthless.

 

[godnotgod]

Looks like its worth a read. An effective Zen practice is hardly candy coated or comfortable. It's a practice to "tame" an ego that's hideously hard and ruthless.

[FONT=&quot]The Bodhi is not like the tree,[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]
The mirror bright is nowhere shining;[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]As there is nothing from the first,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Where can the dust itself collect?
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Hui-neng[/FONT]

 

[godnotgod]

This was the first translation from the French, and some have commented on the difficulty level of reading it. But there is now a new translation, one by Graham Rooth, that is apparently more coherent. The title of Rooth's translation is The Light of Zen in the West: incorporating The Supreme Doctrine and The Realization of the Self.

Here is a link to the new edition:

The Light of Zen in the West: incorporating The Supreme Doctrine and The Realization of the Self: Hubert Benoit, Graham Rooth: 9781845190156: Amazon.com: Books

 

[Twilight Hue]

[FONT=&quot]The Bodhi is not like the tree,[/FONT] [FONT=&quot]
The mirror bright is nowhere shining;[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]As there is nothing from the first,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Where can the dust itself collect?
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Hui-neng[/FONT]

Must have been a hellava battle.