This compilation of Buddhist biographies, teaching and transmission stories of
Indian and Chinese Chan (Japanese ‘Zen’) masters from antiquity up to about the
year 1008 CE is the first mature fruit of an already thousand year-long spiritual
marriage between two great world cultures with quite different ways of viewing
the world. The fertilisation of Chinese spirituality by Indian Buddhism fructified
the whole of Asian culture. The message of this work, that Chan practice can
enable a free participation in life’s open-ended play, seems as necessary to our own
time as it was to the restless times of 11th century Song China.
Volume I (Books 1 - 3) is the first of a full translation of this work of thirty books.