Zen Edge

by Alexander Eliot

"Alexander Eliot is one of the sun philosophers who values the light that men and artists live by." - Time Among the crop of books on zzen in Western languages, veryy few give the real taste of zen. The majority, it seems, have more the stink of Zen in varying concentrations, whether the product is the work of a scholar, roshi, popularizer, translator, convert, or sometimes practitioner. They are all discolpred by some form of egoism, whether personal, cultural racial, or religious. While the taste of Zen may be difficult to explain precisely, being a subtle but vivid perception it is a kind of cleansing experience, the showing of particularities, the freeing of passions in pure form the joyful lightening of body and mind. The book does not provide fast and easy answers, as some called Zen works purport to do, but it does explore in all its fascinating dimensions what it means to be truly human - the felt pain and joy, thee confusion and exhilaration, the tragic and the comic.

136 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 1976