A Life of Huang Po by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

If you are following our Zen Masters series over on Spiritual Nirvana, you may like to know that the Life of our 5th Zen master, Huang Po, is now getting underway.

Huang Po was interesting in a number of respects. He coined the concept of “original mind”. He was also the master of Lin Chi, or Rinzai, after whom one of the major Japanese schools of Zen is named.

Method is the central principle in Zen. Moreover, no Zen master placed so great an emphasis on the method of awakening — as opposed to the practice of doctrinal forms — as did Huang Po.

You can find links to the four previous biographies in the Archive section in the sidebar.

Start reading the life of Huang Po.

A Life of Bodhidharma by John M Evans. The Zen Masters Series.

For all those readers following the Zen Masters series over on our webtitle, Spiritual Nirvana, we’re now starting the third : A Life of Bodhidharma.

Following on from the lives of Bankei and Dogen, we now go right back to the first days of Zen — then known as Ch’an in China after the tea plant which monks used to keep themselves awake during meditation. Bodhidharma is reputed to be the founder of this now venerable school of Buddhism, which down to this day has an elaborate tea ceremony.

It is said he arrived in China from South India around the time of King Arthur in the West. From his practice of sitting for hours staring at a wall, the whole Zen movement takes its cue.

Read : A Life of Bodhidharma — Part One.

A Life of Dogen by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

The sixth and final part of the life of Zen Master Bankei is now up on our Spiritual Nirvana site. To catch up with the serial go here.

We are continuing this series with a master whose name looms large in Zen history. It is the aristocratic priest, Dogen (1200-1253), renowned for introducing the Soto Zen school into Japan. His philosophic writings on Being-Time are said to foreshadow the work of Einstein and quantum physics.

He was a master of words as well as Zen and one of the greatest writers in all Buddhism. Although little known now outside a small circle of Zen scholars, his legacy has lived on, especially in the West through Shunryu Suzuki, a recent Abbot at the San Francisco Zen Center.

Start reading here

I’ve just heard that Douglas Harding died last night. Anyone who follows the outer edge of spiritual philosophy — as I do — will know Douglas as The Man With No Head, after a famous book he wrote ages ago.

It’s a strange concept and takes a bit of work to get your head around, so to speak. But a moment’s insight indicates that everyone has a head except us. We appear to look out from one, but we can’t actually see it. We seem to be floating in a void slightly above a headless body.

That was the basis of Douglas’s thesis and teaching method over at headless.org.

Even stranger to tell is that I got this news from Dave Winer’s site, Scripting News. In a million years I would never have guessed that he would be into the extended mind and headlessness. But you can never know with these Californian types. Even the intellectuals have the second sight down there it seems. It could be a whole new career for him when he finally retires from developing Web 2.0 stuff. Let’s hope so. Dave Winer without a head would be a real spectacle.

Our commiserations to all Douglas Harding’s supporters.

If you’re interested in practical paths to Enlightenment, you should head over to our Spiritual Nirvana site, where a new series on Zen masters is kicking off with Bankei, a 17th-century master who, in his day, enjoyed the status of a rock star.

We’ll be serializing biographies of the major, early masters by John M Evans — yours truly — over the next few weeks, each in six or so parts. The first three on Bankei are up, so go and take a look.

I was going to say, “Not to be missed”, but then remembered I wrote it, so I’ll make do with “Catch it if you can”.

Start reading here.