Zen Master Yunmen: His Life and Essential Sayings

A modern Zen classic–reissued with new material- An introduction to the great tenth-century Chinese master, with translations of his key works.

Yunmen Wenyan (c. 864-949) was a master of the Chan (Chinese Zen) tradition whose name is associated with one of Chan’s renowned Five Houses –the five great schools that arose during the Tang dynasty. The Yunmen school is an ancestor of the Zen Rinzai school that was so influential in Japan and that has been one of the formative strains of Zen in America. Yunmen was a simple and very practical teacher–and he shows up as a character in a number of famous koans, in one of which he’s credited with the famous line, Every day is a good day. His primary focus was curing his students of the disease of duality, which he often achieved through a process of questioning that cut through their discursive thinking. This classic introduction to Yunmen provides translations of his numerous talks and dialogues, and it also includes a brief history of Chinese Zen, a biography of Yunmen, and summary of his teaching, along with a wealth of resource materials.