  While it seeks neither to define Zen nor answer its most famous koan (a riddle unanswerable by conventional thinking, in this case the sound of one hand clapping), this bestselling little book with 437,000 copies in print possesses a maverick Zen spirit that points to a different way of looking at the world.
With each page featuring a quote, phrase, story, koan, haiku, or poem, Zen Companion combines the feeling and format of a meditation book with 2,500 years of wisdom-from Lao-tzu and Groucho Marx, William Carlos Williams and The Little Prince, D. T. Suzuki and Walker Percy, the Buddha and the Bible, Einstein and Gertrude Stein. It's a celebration of intuition: "If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark"-St. John the Cross. Individuality: "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought."-Basho. Uncomplicated nature: "Among twenty snowy mountains/The only moving thing/Was the eye of the blackbird."-Wallace Stevens. Childlike spontaneity: "Goodnight stars. Goodnight air."-Margaret Wise Brown. Irreverent paradox: "Wakuan complained when he saw a picture of bearded Bodhidharma: 'Why hasn't that fellow a beard?'" And above all, the simple pleasure of life lived in the moment. "Chop wood, carry water."
A compilation of quotes, phrases, stories, koan, haiku, poetry, and other words whose maverick Zen spirit point to a different way of looking at the world. Schiller's work combines the feeling and format of a meditation book with 2,500 years of wisdom, from Lao-tzu to Gertrude Stein.This book doesn't presume to define Zen, but instead to offer a taste of Zen's way of looking at the world: where the best moment is now, where things are what they seem to be, where we see with the refreshing directness of a child and not through eyes grown stale from routine. The sayings, poems, parables, stories and other words that follow have been chosen for their power to suggest, and also for the surprising pleasures of their language. Some are serious, some irreverent, some beautifully evocative. Some might be puzzling--when words are used not to communicate an idea, but as tools to plant a wordless truth, some pretty strange things can happen. (from the author's introduction) Excerpted from The Little Zen Companion. Reprinted with permission by Workman Publishing.
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