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A Bird in Flight Leaves No Trace: The Zen Teaching of Huangbo with a Modern Commentary
Penetrate the nature of mind with this contemporary Korean take on a classic of Zen literature.
The message of the Tang-dynasty Zen text in this volume seems to gain enlightenment, stop thinking there is something you need to practice. For the Chinese master Huangbo Xiyun (d. 850), the mind is enlightenment itself if we can only let go of our normal way of thinking.
The celebrated translation of this work by John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po , introduced countless readers to Zen over the last sixty years. Huangbo’s work is also a favorite of contemporary Zen ( Seon) Master Subul, who has revolutionized the strict monastic practice of koans and adapted it for lay meditators in Korea and around the world to make swift progress in intense but informal retreats. Devoting themselves to enigmatic questions with their whole bodies, retreatants are frustrated in their search for answers and arrive thereby at a breakthrough experience of their own buddha nature.
A Bird in Flight Leaves No Trace is a bracing call for the practitioner to let go and thinking and unlock the buddha within.
The message of the Tang-dynasty Zen text in this volume seems to gain enlightenment, stop thinking there is something you need to practice. For the Chinese master Huangbo Xiyun (d. 850), the mind is enlightenment itself if we can only let go of our normal way of thinking.
The celebrated translation of this work by John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po , introduced countless readers to Zen over the last sixty years. Huangbo’s work is also a favorite of contemporary Zen ( Seon) Master Subul, who has revolutionized the strict monastic practice of koans and adapted it for lay meditators in Korea and around the world to make swift progress in intense but informal retreats. Devoting themselves to enigmatic questions with their whole bodies, retreatants are frustrated in their search for answers and arrive thereby at a breakthrough experience of their own buddha nature.
A Bird in Flight Leaves No Trace is a bracing call for the practitioner to let go and thinking and unlock the buddha within.
376 pages, Hardcover
Published April 30, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 29, 2019
Among my very favorite Zen texts is John Blofeld's translation of "Huangbo Chuanxin Fayao" (黃檗傳心法要), titled in English THE ZEN TEACHING OF HUANG PO. This is an entirely new translation into English of that text, with commentary by a Korean Buddhist teacher (one I'm regrettably not familiar with). From what I can tell it's more accurate than Blofeld's version, and also benefits from more recent Buddhist scholarship, as Blofeld wrote his version in in 1957 or so. It also provides a little more context about many of the more esoteric references in the original text; Zen texts are as in-jokey (if that's the word) as your average episode of "The Simpsons", so it's no wonder they're often forbidding to people who aren't themselves scholars of Buddhism.
So why only four stars instead of five? Mainly taste, and also a nitpick about the organization of the book. I've come to dislike translations of texts where the translation is interspersed heavily with commentary from the author or translator. I get that the whole point of having a Zen text with a commentary is for the commentary to be integral with the text -- there's a tradition of such things going back quite a ways -- but I've also long felt the best treatment for something like this is just to explain the things that will go over the heads of modern readers, and stand back and let the whole thing explain itself. Blofeld did that, and that was part of why his version worked so well: you could sit down and read it more or less straight through, and come out the other end with a fine sense of the meaning of the whole thing.
I'm tempted to put the star back in, though, for something else that this particular format provides: the translation is also interspersed with the original Chinese, something a language nerd like me loves for the mere fact of it. If you don't mind the modern commentary breaking up the text, go ahead and add the star back in.
So why only four stars instead of five? Mainly taste, and also a nitpick about the organization of the book. I've come to dislike translations of texts where the translation is interspersed heavily with commentary from the author or translator. I get that the whole point of having a Zen text with a commentary is for the commentary to be integral with the text -- there's a tradition of such things going back quite a ways -- but I've also long felt the best treatment for something like this is just to explain the things that will go over the heads of modern readers, and stand back and let the whole thing explain itself. Blofeld did that, and that was part of why his version worked so well: you could sit down and read it more or less straight through, and come out the other end with a fine sense of the meaning of the whole thing.
I'm tempted to put the star back in, though, for something else that this particular format provides: the translation is also interspersed with the original Chinese, something a language nerd like me loves for the mere fact of it. If you don't mind the modern commentary breaking up the text, go ahead and add the star back in.
July 26, 2020
Korean Zen branch is very interesting to explore and though while looking at various texts and books released on Buddhism, Chinese and Japanese texts is a majority. So I was very happy to find this book with Huangbo texts and commentaries. It is a tiny piece that you perceive every time reading old masters' texts that might align with the practice or not. Emphasis in this book and overall Korean Zen being on "who is this", "who am I" and so on questions. In the text Huangbo offers explanations to various asks, requests and doubts of government official Pei Xiu + commentaries on these explanations by modern day Korean Zen Master Subul. There is not much to be said about this book, it needs to be read. But who is it who is writing this review?
September 15, 2025
why place a head atop your head?
Put it all down!
I will be reading this again now
Birds chirping
Cars passing
Cat sitting silently
Breathing in and out
Put it all down!
I will be reading this again now
Birds chirping
Cars passing
Cat sitting silently
Breathing in and out
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews