A punk rocker turned Zen priest gives a modern take on an 800-year-old Buddhist classic. In Japan in 1253, one of the great thinkers of his time died ? and the world barely noticed. That man was the Zen monk Eihei Dogen. For centuries his main work, the?Sh?b?genz?, languished in obscurity, locked away in remote monasteries until scholars rediscovered it in the twentieth century. What took so long? In Brad Warner?s view, Dogen was too ahead of his time to find an appreciative audience. As Warner writes, ?He understood aspects of human nature that we take for granted today but that there weren?t even words for in his time.? In order to bring Dogen?s work to a bigger audience in the West, Warner began paraphrasing the?Sh?b?genz?, recasting it in simple, everyday language. The first part of this project resulted in?Don?t Be a Jerk, and now Warner presents this follow-up volume,?It Came from Beyond Zen. Once again, Warner uses humor and pop-culture references to bridge the gap between past and present, making Dogen?s words clearer and more relevant than ever before.
