When Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was published in 1972, it was enthusiastically embraced by Westerners eager for spiritual insight and knowledge of Zen. The book became the most successful treatise on Buddhism in English, selling more than one million copies to date. Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness is the first follow-up volume to Suzuki Roshi's important work. Like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, it is a collection of lectures that reveal the insight, humor, and intimacy with Zen that made Suzuki Roshi so influential as a teacher.
The Sandokai-a poem by the eighth-century Zen master Sekito Kisen (Ch. Shitou Xiqian)-is the subject of these lectures. Given in 1970 at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the lectures are an example of a Zen teacher in his prime elucidating a venerated, ancient, and difficult work to his Western students. The poem addresses the question of how the oneness of things and the multiplicity of things coexist (or, as Suzuki Roshi expresses it, "things-as-it-is"). Included with the lectures are his students' questions and his direct answers to them, along with a meditation instruction. Suzuki Roshi's teachings are valuable not only for those with a general interest in Buddhism but also for students of Zen practice wanting an example of how a modern master in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition understands this core text today.
"An opportunity to peer even more deeply into Suzuki Roshi's Zen mind and ponder the true meaning and value of recognizing the non-dual in our ordinary lives. The repartee with his students is by itself a great and unexpected gift, reviving that charming voice and warm wisdom we grew to know and love so well through Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"-Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are and coauthor of Everyday Blessings
"Suzuki Roshi's gentle wisdom shines through these intimate talks on the Sandokai. I am grateful to Mel Weitsman and Michael Wenger for their labor of love."-Robert Aitken, author of Taking the Path of Zen and Original Dwelling Place
"Buddhists and lovers of Buddhism who have read and reread Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind over the years, as well as those who are just discovering the wisdom of this wonderful, profound teacher for the first time, will welcome this new book of lectures on Zen training as a gift we did not expect to receive. Branching Streams should be read slowly and savored."-Rita M. Gross, author of Buddhism After Patriarchy
"Through the poetry of knowing and doing, Shunryu Suzuki points out a path of practical wisdom for Americans today, in a voice so close at hand it can touch their inner experience of the interdependence of existence, open their ears to hear its harmony of difference and sameness, and awaken their willingness to be true to its mystery."-Stephen Tipton, co-author of Habits of the Heart
"A wonderful manifestation of Suzuki Roshi's fresh insights and teachings--small, pithy, wild nuts delicious to anyone who chooses to taste them."-Peter Matthiessen "Muryo Roshi," author of Sal Si Puedes (Escape If You Can)
"These 13 talks provide a succinct overview of Suzuki's views on enlightenment, suffering, the big mind, the dangers of dualistic thinking, and the futility of knowing in the head what Zen is. . . . This is an essential resource for all devotees of Suzuki Roshi."
