Elegant Failure ─ A Guide to Zen Koans

Zen koans are stories of exchanges between Zen masters and their disciples at the momnet of enlightenment or near-enlightenment. These stories have long fascinated Western readers because of their wisdom, humor, and enigmatic quality. Drawing on over thirty years of practice and teaching, author Richard Shrobe (himself a recognized Zen master) has selected twenty-two cases from The Blue Cliff Record, Book of Serenity, and Wu-men-kuan that he has found to be deeply meaningful and helpful for meditation practice. In Elegant Failure, he provides a wealth of background information and personal anecdotes for each koan that help to illuminate its meaning without detracting from its paradoxical nature. As Shrobe reminds us, "The main core of Zen teaching is the bare bones of what is there. In a certain sense, embellishing a story takes away from the central teaching: Don't embellish anything, just be with it as it is."

Richard Shrobe (Zen Master Wu Kwang) is the guiding teacher of the Chogye International Zen Center of New York and has been teaching in the Kwan Um School of Zen for over twenty-five years. He is one of the first American students to receive transmission from Zen Master Seung Sahn, the Seventy-Eighth Patriarch in his line of dharma transmission, in the Chogye order of Korean Buddhism. Shrobe is a certified Gestalt psychotherapist and instructor with a master's degree in social work. He now lives in New York with his family and has a private practice in psychotherapy. He is the author of Open Mouth Already a Mistake and Don't-Know Mind: The Spirit of Korean Zen.