Sublime

Rinzai Roku (a celebrated Zen text of the T’ang dynasty) and the teachings of Bankei, the seventeenth-century Japanese master who, for me, represents Zen at its best.

Ma-tsu had another notable disciple in Po-chang (720–814), who is said to have organized the first purely Zen community of monks and to have laid down its regulations on the principle that “a day of no working is a day of no eating.” Since his time a strong emphasis on manual work and some degree of self-support has been characteristic of Zen