The Ceasing of Notions ─ An Early Zen Text from the Dunhuang Caves, With Selected Comments

Among the writings from the Dunhuang Caves, discovered in the mid-twentieth Century, are the Zen equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls?Ancient texts unknown for centuries. The Ceasing of Notions is one such text. It takes a unique form: a dialogue between two imaginary figures, a master and his disciple, in which the disciple tenaciously pursues the master's pity utterances with follow-up questions that propel the dialogue toward ever more profound insights. And these questions prove to be the reader's very own. Soko Morinaga brings alive this compact and brilliant text with his own vivid commentary.

This volume also includes a generous selection from Morinaga's acclaimed autobiography, Novice to Master: An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of my Own Stupidity

Soko Morinaga: (1925-1995) After graduating from high school, he entered Zen practice. He was ordained as a monk by Zuigan Goto in 1948. From 1949 through 1963, he trained in the monastery of Daitokuji and received the seal of Dharma transmission from Sesso Oda Roshi. While actively working in the lay community, delivering talks and writing books and articles, he served as the head of Hanazono University, the primary training university of the Rinzai sect, in Kyoto. He had a longstanding connection with the Buddhist Society of London and traveled there every year to participate in the summer school jointly sponsored by various Buddhist sects. Morinaga Roshi is the author of Novice to Master. He died in 1995.

Martin Collcutt: Martin Collcutt is a professor of East Asian studies and history at Princeton University, where he teaches Japanese intellectual and cultural history. He also has a particular interest in the introduction and development of the monastic practice in Japanese Rinzai Zen. In the 1960s he studied and practiced Zen in Japan and met Morinaga Roshi at Daishuin in Kyoto. Subsequently he served as Roshi’s interpreter on some of his visits to the United States and England. His academic background in Japanese Zen and his personal and longstanding involvement with Morinaga Roshi and his teaching makes Professor Collcutt’s informative introduction a valuable contribution to the understanding of this classic text.

Ven. Myokyo-ni: Ven. Myokyo-ni, Irmgard Schloegl (1921?2007), was trained at Daitokuji monastery in Japan, where for twelve years she worked under two successive masters, Oda Sesso Roshi and Sojun Kannun Roshi. In 1977 she founded the Zen Centre in London. She was ordained in 1984 as the Ven. Myokyo-ni by Soko Morinaga Roshi and became abbess of the Zen Centre’s two training temples, Shobo-an and Fairlight, over which she presided until her death in 2007. Ven. Myokyo-ni translated many important Zen classics from the Chinese and Japanese into English, as The Record of Rinzai and The Discourse on the Inexhaustible Lamp of the Zen School (with Yoko Okuda). She also wrote many instructive books on Zen training?among them, The Zen Way and Gentling the Bull.

Michelle Bromley: Michelle Bromley was a student of Venerable Myokyo-ni for many years. She is an independent editor and translator of Buddhist books into German and English.