Afterzen: Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear

Front Cover
Macmillan, Mar 8, 2001 - Biography & Autobiography - 208 pages

In Afterzen, van de Wetering provides unorthodox solutions to a collection of classical koans found in Walter Nowick's The Wisteria Triangle. Van de Wetering gives them his own distinctive touch of humor, down to earth reality, and tough spirituality in the context of meeting and adventures with personalities "collaged from bits and pieces of teachers and fellow students who kindly came my way."

In this third book of the trilogy, van de Wetering is at his accessible, honest, funny, and genuinely spiritual best.

 

Selected pages

Contents

THE GOODBYE KOAN
1
WHAT HAPPENED TO HARRY?
19
WHO THE HELL WAS BUDDHA?
31
SIXTY ZEN MASTERS CANT BE WRONG
39
JOSHU AND THE OLD WOMAN
49
THEN CARRY IT ALONG
57
SEEING INTO YOUR NATURE AND OTHER PASTIMES
67
BAD COP GOOD COP
81
TOMORROW NOBODY HAS HEARD OF BUDDHA
107
GURUS WAFT IN AND OUT ONLY THE NOTGURU IS REAL
115
999 WAYS OF NODIRECTION
121
ITS THE ONLY WAY RIMPOCHE COULD STAY HERE
137
THE MASTERS FEET TURN RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR HEAD
151
DREAMS
163
THREE NICE THINGS
173
EMPTINESS IS FORM
181

THERE ARE LOTS OF LITTLE ENDS
91
LIBERATING WESTERN THINKING
99
THE KOANS
189
Copyright

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About the author (2001)

Janwillem Van de Wetering was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands on February 12, 1931. He traveled extensively, both geographically and philosophically, his adventures ranging from being a motorcycle gang member to a Buddhist, a real estate salesman in Australia to an exporter in Holland. He was a police officer in Amsterdam from 1966 to 1975 and his crime novels featuring detectives Grijpstra and De Gier were based on his experiences. He also wrote a trilogy based on the time he spent at a Japanese Zen Buddhist monastery and wrote children's books about a porcupine named Hugh Pine. In 1984, he received the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. He died on July 4, 2008 at the age of 77.

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