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Preface The size of the present volume rather obscures the purpose of the original Zen phrase books on which it is based. They were hand-written notebooks small enough for monks to carry around in the vest of their kimono or, perhaps more accurately , to hide there. Before the use of these books was openly acknowledged, Rinzai Zen monks who were engaged in the kõan practice probably kept their phrase notebooks out of sight just as they kept private their sanzen diaries of meetings with the Zen master. There is an old handwritten copy with incense burnmarks on the pages, suggesting that its owner might have had to consult his manual in secret at night, using just the faint glow from a stick of incense to read the characters and dropping burning ash on its pages from time to time. These collections, the product of great and extended spiritual effort, fascinated younger monks, who would make a copy of any notebook a senior monk might let them see. In the course of time, as these notebooks were copied and recopied, more and more phrases were added, so that what started out as secret notebooks ended up becoming an indispensable reference for Zen practice. In time, printers got hold of copies and brought them to a still larger public, until at some point the Zen masters incorporated them into a new practice for ordinary monastic training—the capping phrase. To this day the books used in Japan are no larger than a paperback and still ³t comfortably in the folds of one’s kimono. Translating the original text into English and supplying the necessary background material has transformed what weighed less than 100 grams into the cumbersome tome you now hold in your hands. The title of this book, Zen Sand, was inspired by one of its verses:|:¡ÉÜu Gold—but to sell it you mix it with sand. (7.55) An honest broker would not deceive a customer by mixing pure gold with sand, but in Zen things are different. The awakening itself is pure gold, unde³led by language, “not founded on words and letters.” To be conveyed to others, it has to be mixed with the sand of language. In the Rinzai Zen tradition the practitioner is directed not to try to grasp a kõan by³xing on its words or looking for intellectual explanations. One has to embody the kõan so that self and kõan are one. Once a particular kõan has been completed, the ix x | z e n s a n d rõshi will instruct the practitioner to bring a verse or phrase that captures the insight of that kõan. This phrase is called a jakugo, that is, a “capping verse” or “capping phrase.” Over the centuries handbooks have been compiled to facilitate the search for these capping phrases—sand to be mixed with the golden experience of enlightened seeing. In a sense this book may be considered the godchild of the well-known volume Zen Dust. In addition to presenting a detailed account of the Rinzai kõan practice, the authors of Zen Dust, Miura Isshð Rõshi and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, provided translations for 210 capping phrases that give the reader some hint of their beauty, profundity, and humor. But without a complete translation of one of the traditional jakugo handbooks , which usually contain several thousand phrases, the practitioner who lacks familiarity with Chinese and Japanese is unable to carry on the full Rinzai kõan practice . When Ruth Fuller Sasaki died in 1967, she left behind in her temple of Ryõsen-an, located on the premises of Daitoku-ji, a stack of notebooks with the beginnings of a³rst draft for such a complete translation. Zen Sand takes up where Zen Dust left off and presents the entire contents of two standard jakugo collections. I began this book in 1976 not with the intention of producing a book for scholarly publication but as an aid for my own personal Zen kõan training. That same year, after completing my requirements for a Ph.D. degree from Stanford University, I had asked Kobori Nanrei, the oshõ of Ryõkõ-in, Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, to ordain me as a Rinzai monk and to sponsor me in monastery training. I then began working on a translation of the Zengoshð (Zen Phrase Collection), the capping phrase book in use at the Daitoku-ji monastery. As I had...

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