Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice

by Victor Sogen Hori

Zen Sand is a classic collection of verses aimed at aiding practitioners of kôan meditation to negotiate the difficult relationship between insight and language. As such it represents a major contribution to both Western Zen practice and English-language Zen scholarship.

In Japan the traditional Rinzai Zen kôan curriculum includes the use of jakugo, or "capping phrases." Once a monk has successfully replied to a kôan, the Zen master orders the search for a classical verse to express the monk’s insight into the kôan. Special collections of these jakugo were compiled as handbooks to aid in that search. Until now, Zen students in the West, lacking this important resource, have been severely limited in carrying out this practice. Zen Sand combines and translates two standard jakugo handbooks and opens the way for incorporating this important tradition fully into Western Zen practice.

For the scholar, Zen Sand provides a detailed description of the jakugo practice and its place in the overall kôan curriculum, as well as a brief history of the Zen phrase book. This volume also contributes to the understanding of East Asian culture in a broader sense.

Genres: Zen

778 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2003

Reviews

[Thaisa Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zen Sand reminds me of Borges story The Book of Sand, because I never open to the same page twice. They consist of capping phrases that monks carried around (always in secret)--notes on koans, riddles that can't bring realization if answered by the discursive mind, yet bring forth all kinds of thoughts--some discursive, others from more subterranean regions. I've had Zen Sand for over a year, sent to me by a friend who is assistant to Harada Roshi (Priscilla Daichi Storandt, who was instrumental in helping this book come to life--and foolishly tried to read *all* of it or *almost* all of it. Now I just open it, like The Book of Sand, and always find something extraordinary. Some phrases refer to koans I've worked on and recognize while others seem foreign. The phrases are categorized by the number of characters from four-character phrases up to twenty-one-and-more. It's a map that traces the process of immersion in koans. For anyone who practices Rinzai (koan) Zen, it's a treasure chest, but also for people in Soto Zen and people who love the language of poetry and great fiction--language that always comes from silence.