Wild Ivy

The spiritual autobiography of Hakuin Ekaku, the Rinzai Zen master who revived the school in eighteenth-century Japan, written in 1766 when he was about eighty. Hakuin tells how, as a child, a sermon on the hells filled him with terror and led him to become a monk. He describes years of doubt, a first awakening that left him proud and self-satisfied, and the harsh treatment he received from his teacher Shōju Rōjin, which drove him to a deeper realisation. Having pushed himself too hard, he fell into what he calls Zen sickness, a collapse of body and mind, and Norman Waddell's English edition continues the story with Idle Talk on a Night Boat, Hakuin's account of how a hermit named Hakuyū taught him the meditation that restored his health. Along the way he insists on the great doubt, on kōan practice and on continued effort after awakening, and criticises teachers who settle for quiet sitting alone.

It is a vivid first-person account of Zen practice, including breakdown and recovery, by the teacher whose methods still define Rinzai kōan training.