Kapleau Philip: Tri stupa zena

Philip Kapleau: The Three Pillars of Zen

Learning, Practice and Enlightenment

Philip Kapleau's study, The Three Pillars of Zen - Learning, Practice and Enlightenment, first published in 1965, is a classic introduction to the history, theory and practice of Zen Buddhism from the perspective of a Westerner, aware of the vast differences between cultures, and the fact that new editions continue to appear and that has been translated into a number of languages. It is a comprehensibly written and accessible overview of an "exotic" and distant worldview and way of life, but accessibility does not come at the expense of thoroughness in the approach and the effort to cover all aspects of Zen living, both theoretical and practical - zazen meditation as a key and irreplaceable daily practice. In addition, Kapleau brings rarely available transcripts of conversations between teachers and individual students, as well as parts of lectures he attended, anecdotes from monastery life, photographs and the like. An entire section of the book is devoted to detailed accounts of lay people, women and men—from Japan and the United States—who describe their experiences in Zen practice, so that we can get a sense of what it means to live a Zen Buddhist way in everyday life. The book also contains a very extensive Dictionary in which Buddhist terms are explained in detail and provide short biographies of important people from the history of Zen Buddhism.

No one but Philip Kapleau could have written this book. His knowledge of Zen comes from thirteen years of diligent training in Japan, including three years in the monasteries of the Soto and Rinzai schools. He knows the Japanese people who collaborated with him to make translations of little-known material flawless. He himself knows the Japanese language well enough to be able to serve as an interpreter for his roshi's conversations with students from the West. Years of training as a court reporter gave him the skill to quickly transcribe those conversations as soon as they were finished. And he has a clear and graceful literary style. Such a collection of talents is unique. It has led to an extraordinary book that will surely occupy a permanent place in the library of Zen literature in Western languages.

Philip Kapleau (1912-2004), American reporter (he wrote reports from the Nuremberg trials and from the trials of Japanese war criminals in Tokyo); during his stay in Japan, he became interested in East Asian cultures and religions, especially in the teaching and practice of Zen Buddhism. Upon his return to the United States, he attended lectures by D.T. Suzuki, a Japanese scholar who had translated numerous Buddhist texts into English. Kapleau lived in Japan from 1953, where he studied the history of Zen Buddhism and eventually ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk. In 1965, he returned to the United States and published his most famous book, The Three Pillars of Zen – Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment. A year later, he founded the Rochester Zen Center, the most famous institution of its type in the country. For the next forty years, he acted as a promoter of women in the West. In addition to the mentioned work, he wrote the following books: The Wheel of Death (1971), Zen: Dawn in the West (1979), To Cherish All Life (1981) and Straight to the Heart of Zen (2001).