Publisher's Synopsis
Since time immemorial, the language of Zen has been a powerful antidote to the overly intellectual relationship between humans and the immediacies of life. In like manner, Zen philosophy is considered an anti-philosophical philosophy that does not seek to remain in people's minds; rather, it intends to be destroyed in the face of what is, and what is not.
The unfortunate consequences of our intellectual excesses have not only made us human, all too human, but have also led us to overlook our cognitive confines. We now seem pretentiously preoccupied with the question of why things happen, disregarding the actual experience of the happenings that happen. And although the intellect is our only tool for consciously experiencing the world, we sometimes have to brush it aside in order to immerse ourselves in The Experience that exists in the existent, but dwells not in the mind. The Zen riddles contained herein epitomize the eternal conflict between the enigmatic Zen language of the timeless-times and the ever-present human existential angst; a conflict that, as it turns out, is mercilessly ridiculed and satirized by the characters in this work. So, in the hope of awakening the reader to what genuinely concerns our human experience, I welcome you all to the world of Master Grasshopper and the cenobite.
