Four Books on (Zen) Buddhism

Posted on Sun 10 August 2025 in general

I've had an interest in Zen Buddhism since my college years. Initially this was a rather silly and superficial thing: samurai were cool, and they practiced Zen. I think the first Zen-inspired book I read was The Unfettered Mind: Writings from the Zen Master to the Swordsman. Over the years, however, I've read through most of the basic spiritual texts of Chinese culture including the Mencius and the Zhuangzi, which are both fairly deep cuts, and hopefully that gives me a bit more context with which to approach Zen.

Despite having an ongoing interest in Zen most of my exposure to it has been second-hand through books like E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful. On an impulse I bought Haemin Sumin's When Things Don't Go Your Way recently, and this made me interested in learning more about Buddhism as a living, practiced religion rather than as a philosophy. After all, reading through Aquinas' Summa Theologica is not quite the same as attending the average church service.

After reading The Miracle of Mindfulness, which is my favourite of the texts in this article, I attended my first zazen practice session with Dharma Drum Mountain in Taipei. I've also become more committed to practicing sitting meditation on a daily basis. Time will tell if I take up a more serious relationship with Buddhism.

Each of the following texts has a slightly different take on (Zen) Buddhism than the others, but I felt they were all worth mentioning in this article. I very much appreciated The Miracle of Mindfulness and I May Be Wrong for different reasons, but others might be more drawn to other texts.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind; Shunryu Suzuki, 1970

This text is widely known in the West, particularly in the USA, as a classic of Zen literature. I first read it when I was in my late teens or early twenties, although I can't remember my exact age. Most of it went over my head. About half of it still goes over my head, even with a better grasp of Zen philosophy and having practiced more.

On re-read, I took three things from it. The first is that the Japanese Zen traditions are often stricter than the Chan / Seon / Thien traditions, even when they're all from the Caodong / Soto dharma lineage. I asked my meditation teacher about this, and he explained that this may just be a reflection of Japanese culture in Zen practices.

The second thing I took from the text was that Shunryu Suzuki was a rather stern teacher:

When you do things in the right way, at the right time, everything else will be organized. You are the 'boss'. When the boss is sleeping, everyone is sleeping. When the boss does something right, everyone will do something right, and at the right time. That is the secret of Buddhism.

In other places in the text Suzuki makes statements about doing things the correct way and remaining committed to correct practice. The use of the word correct might be a translation issue, but it still gives the text a harder edge than other texts.

The third thing I took from the text was that Shunryu Suzuki was very into philosophy, despite saying:

But whether Buddhism is philosophically deep or good or perfect is not the point. To keep our practice in its true form it the purpose.

Elsewhere in the text he makes statements which are philosophical:

But if you are always prepared for accepting everything we see as something appearing from nothing, knowing that there is some reason why a phenomenal existence of such and such form and color appears, then at that moment you will have perfect composure.

Sukuzi is probably outlining the concept of dependent origination here. While this is an important part of Buddhist doctrine, none of the other texts in this article go into dependent origination in quite such terms. I'm not sure if Suzuki's audience (elite Californians in the 1970s: e.g. a young Steve Jobs) played a role in his presentation. That said, I think the relationship between Western phenomology and Zen is an interesting space to explore, albeit the earlier work of the Kyoto School - recently in translation more often - probably goes a lot further.

The weight of theory in the book contradicts the way that other authors present Zen, and that I was taught to practice; i.e. to not fixate on theorizing, because it leads to distraction. Apparently, mainstream Japanese Zen has a contentious relationship with Suzuki's practice in the US. This doesn't surprise me based on how different Suzuki's approach is to the other two Zen texts in this article. Beginner's Mind is particularly unlike When Things Don't Go Your Way, which makes a special effort to avoid this type of theorizing.

I felt this book would reward re-reading for greater understanding, but that for an extreme deep dive into philosophy-adjacent concepts in Zen, it might be more useful to read texts and articles that are from academic philosophers. It occupies an awkward position as neither a scholarly work nor being as accessible as the other texts in this article.

When Things Don't Go Your Way, Haemin Sumin, 2018

Haemin Sumin is a Seon (Zen) teacher from South Korea who also received an Ivy League education in the US. This book is unusual for a book about Buddhism, as it doesn't dwell much on theory (unlike Beginner's Mind), but is presented as a series of anecdotes from the author's own experiences, interspersed with aphorisms and thoughts. Some of these I found compelling:

By accepting things as they are,
resistance subsides and peace emerges.
In that experience, there is no separate 'I'
that stands apart and experiences peace.
'I' is never needed in peace.
'I' disappears in peace.

Other thoughts are less compelling. One theme that runs through the text is that Sumin spends a lot of time dwelling on success, failure, and status. As such his reflections can be simultaneously alienating and intriguing. He reflects that as a novice, he knew little about Buddhist practice. Years later, on starting his own Buddhist organization, he was a novice again - this time at how to run an organization. While I have heard similar reflections from CEOs before, it's probably not a relatable experience for most people.

But perhaps this is understandable. In the introduction Sumin notes that Buddhist monks in Korea do not receive pensions or guaranteed housing, and therefore have a hard time living up to the ideal of 'non-possession' that's expected in most Buddhist societies. I think that some of the more interesting but also more offputting parts of the text come from Sumin being more engaged with worldly success and achievement than most Zen teachers:

People with great success often suffer distress and anxiety in order to maintain what they have accomplished. Rather than thinking only about what you may gain, forsee what you may lose along with your success. Even if you should realize your overflowing ambitions, success can also harm your health, create distance from your family and friends, and take away all your free time.

Overall, I was reminded of the sermons that we used to receive from the local vicar at my rather provincial Church of England school - moments of spiritual brilliance strewn amongst banalities. Haemin Sumin is a practicing Seon teacher who engages with society rather than retreating from it and so I suppose his position is similar to that of a British vicar.

This is a good book for connecting middle-class life in the twenty-first century with Buddhist teachings, but I found it lacked much of the depth of The Miracle of Mindfulness and Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. This isn't necessarily a flaw: it is a very different and less theoretical work than either of those books. But the real value I got from this book is that it was just interesting enough to get me to pick up The Miracle of Mindfulness a few months later.

The Miracle of Mindfulness; Thich Nhat Hanh, 1975

Of the more 'serious' two texts on this list, I found this one to be the more compelling. The main part of the text is a 1974 letter from Nhat Hanh to Brother Quang, who was a member of the School of Youth for Social Service. This was a charitable organization operating in the Vietnam War era to provide aid to the Vietnamese people caught in the warzone. The rest of my edition (Rider 2020) consists of instructions for meditation, excerpts from the Pali Canon, and an account by James Forest of Nhat Han's travels to America during the Vietnam war.

In the first few pages Nhat Hanh tells a famous story about washing the dishes. The point is that whether washing dishes is a chore or not depends on the mindset of the person washing them. If washing dishes is a chore we have to finish before something else - whether drinking tea, or playing games, or some other fun activity - then it will be a miserable chore. We are focused on the future, which doesn't exist. But if we wash the dishes with focus, and our only thought is washing dishes, we can use that time as an opportunity to practice mindfulness.

Washing dishes is not really the point - the book applies the same principle to many different activities, from walking to eating to drinking tea to resting. The point is that mindfulness - and Buddha-nature - is accessible regardless of the activity we're engaged in. This was the main teaching that our teacher emphasised during the two-day course on meditation I attended.

As far as I'm aware this is the main distinction between Zen Buddhism and other traditions. In Zen, sitting meditation may be one of the most focused forms of practice, but it is far from the sole form. It's not practical for people, even monks, to spend all their time in sitting meditation or prostration. While sitting meditation may be the bread-and-butter of Zen practice, the true practice is found in everyday life.

At the course I attended, we therefore practiced sitting, walking, sleeping, eating, speaking, and prostrating mindfully for two days. I found this useful because I tend to become attached to practicing in a particular way, at a particular time, in a particular place, and our class aimed to break habitual thinking to build mindfulness.

The main text of The Miracle of Mindfulness concludes with a retelling of The Three Questions by Tolstoy, which answers three questions:

  • What is the most important time to act?
  • Who are the most important people to deal with?
  • What are the most important things to do with our time?

It answers them thus:

Remember that there is only one important time, and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion.

The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future?

The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.

I found this text the most useful of the four, and it was the biggest factor in my decision to attend a meditation class. Perhaps it was just a good fit for me: Nhat Han skilfully connects anecdotes, practice, and philosophy without overemphasising any of them. If anything he focuses most on practice, which seems appropriate - Chan (Zen), in Chinese, translates simply to 'meditation'.

It's probably obvious, but this book affected me deeply. I bought the two books at the same time, but I'm glad I read this text first, because it helped give context to I Could Be Wrong by Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad.

I Could Be Wrong; Björn Natthiko Lindeblad, 2020

This is a book by a Swedish man who gave up his role as a corporate economist to become a forest monk for 17 years.

While the English edition of the book is marketed as a self-help guide packed with wisdom, this is not what I took from it - the other texts in this article explore mindfulness in more compelling ways. But this is an excellent memoir of what it's like to be a Buddhist monk. The book is filled with anecdotes about falling asleep while meditating, the awkwardness of running a retreat for air hostesses, and repeatedly declining to take cash from laypeople.

Unlike the other three books in this article, this book does not come from the Chan / Zen perspective. The author was ordained in the Thai Theravada tradition of forest monks. The different cultural and religious flavor of his school comes through strongly in the text, as when he describes Thai monks as spending much of their time smoking and gossiping. The most compelling part of the text is where the narrator talks about the impact that monastic life had on him and his fellow monks, many of whom were Western backpackers and wanderers before settling at the monastery. Over time, he says, monastic life files down the 'hard edges' and traumas of individuals and people learn to live together.

The overall sense I got from this book was that the author enjoyed something that's rare in the West today: growing together with his community over decades. This takes a tragic turn when he makes the decision to leave monastic life, and like the stereotypical ex-convict becomes directionless and depressed for a time. Luckily he recovers and finds happiness in giving talks and interviews about his time as a monk, which formed the source material for this text.

The book has an unusual origin - it was completed and published after the author passed away from a terminal illness. So most of the book was ghostwritten by a close friend of the author.

Along with the misguided marketing approach, this made the book feel a little dishonest - probably through no fault of the author, who by his own confession spent more time being interviewed than working on the original manuscript.

This text is a good account of what becoming a monk is actually like for a Westerner, what expectations might be like for a more senior monk, and the challenges for someone who leaves monastic life. Reading it was what encouraged me to seek out practice as part of the community, and that convinced me that pursuing being a monk was not what I want at this point of my life, although I may become open to a more involved lay practice.

What's Next?

This period of exploring Zen theory and practice has been an interesting one for me, and I intend to continue. There are a few challenges (mostly my dismal Chinese), but that's okay. As my teacher emphasised, the practice is the point. Other than becoming more involved in group practice, I also have a few texts I want to read:

  • The Way of Zen, Alan Watts; I've listened to Alan Watts' lectures, like many people, but have never read any works by this arch popularizer of Zen. While Alan Watts is sometimes mocked as an orientalist, I think this is a bit unfair given that he was writing about Zen over a decade before Suzuki. He's also a near-contemporary of the Kyoto School, who were reconciling Western philosophy with Zen from the Japanese perspective during the war years.
  • The Kyoto School, An Introduction; Robert E. Carter: a scholarly work on the Kyoto School. I've listened to the Philosophize This! episodes on the Kyoto school, and would like to go a bit deeper on their work from an academic philosophy perspective. Ideally I will read the primary sources in translation, although the only volume I could find cost around $100 USD.
  • Questions in the Practice of Buddhism, Master Sheng-Yan of Dharma Drum Mountain. I picked up this book after my meditation classes and found it interesting in clarifying questions of practice. I'm fairly confident in my ability to understand Zen, but practice is much more challenging for me.

I suppose I'd also be interested in forming a reading group, but most likely I'll post about these works here or on Mastodon. Feel free to follow if you're interested in updates on my Zen reading.