ekaku

Following his earlier partial edition of this extraordinary work, Wadell has now completed the entire text. Presented here in its entirety, Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn: The Zen Records of Zen Master Hakuin leads the reader through the master’s guide to liberation. Hakuin, the most important Rinzai master to appear in Japanese Zen, reestablished the rigorous koan-style of the great Ch’an masters of Sung dynasty, revitalizing its training practices while teaching in an obscure temple near Mount Fuji. In his final years Hakuin took the unusual step of overseeing the collection and publication of his Zen records, a sourcebook outlining the path of ultimate liberation for future generations. This is the voluminous result, which he titled Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn. His teaching is elusive, suggestive, and poetic; a web of sometimes mysterious stories that encourage continual self-examination and urge the student to an all-out effort to realize the path of true realization that lies beyond the words.

In Complete Poison Blossoms, Hakuin offers a rich sense of the day-to-day life of practice in his temple Shoin-ji. It contains his comments on koans and key Zen texts, considers the teachings and deeds of his predecessors in the Dharma, assaults his students’ presumptions, and encourages ever-deeper enquiry beyond any present stage of satori, or enlightened insight. The book comprises some 450 individual pieces, the majority in verse, ranging in length from four line poems to essays sufficiently long to have been published as independent texts. This translation augments the 450 pieces with clarifying introductions and background context, detailed notes explaining Hakuin’s references and allusions, and annotations that were written down during lectures by Hakuin’s own students in their copies of the text. The rich tapestry of meanings and stories interwoven into Hakuin’s words come to life with a growing sense of what he is really talking about, as the reader begins to contemplate the very illusions of mind that stand in the way, at once, of understanding Hakuin and of discovering the true nature of reality.