Because words can no more hold the truth than a net can hold water, we use koans. Koans are sayings, or doings, of Zen masters, the patriarchs and Buddha. Take for example the koan: The Sound of One Hand clapping. In its entirety it reads: "You know the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand clapping?" The obvious, intellectual answer is, No sound at all! But then what is this No sound? In other words, is it just silence?If one is to work on this koan, indeed on ...

The basic message of all the Mahayana Buddhist sutras is awakening - what the Zen teacher Bassui called "seeing the wordless sutra." Zen and the Sutras is an accessible study of the major Mahayana sutras as manuals for the practice of Zen. Low's insights and conclusions about spirituality and humanity will both illuminate and inspire, in the way of Zen, in the search for spiritual awakening.

Hakuin Zenji is one of Japan's most celebrated Zen masters. Tradition tells us that he single-handedly revived Rinzai Zen in Japan. He was an artist, calligrapher and writer, as well as being a Zen master. He said that writing is verbal prajna and his writings are vigorous, courageous, and always to the point. The Chant in Praise of Zazen, Zazen Wasan, is justifiably one of his best-known works.

Albert Low, teacher and director at the Montreal Zen Center and dharma heir of Roshi Philip Kapleau, provides an engaging collection of talks, stories and commentaries on Zen. Though the entries range from dharma talks on koans to discussions on Buddhism and Christianity, they all address concrete concerns of our lives and reveal the author's profound insights.

Science has consistently rejected subjective data in science. Undoubtedly the main reason for this is that most scientists consider it to be unreliable and difficult to verify. Our immediate experience is, indeed, often incomplete, distorted, or simply false. Another important reason for rejecting subjective data is the scientist's unconditional commitment to materialism and this automatically precludes the possibility of a consciousness distinct from matter. Most scientists, therefore, be...

The world faces a crisis. Band-aids and patchwork technical solutions are not enough to get us through. Overpopulation, global warming, the clash of cultures and an unsteady financial climate are just some of the causes. We do not face technical, economic or social problems: We face dilemmas, and dilemmas demand creative solutions. Let us think boldly and creatively about the dilemmas that we face, and a new society can be created: a society in which human beings, and not profit, are the c...

“Restoring Meaning: Evolution Revisited” offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins: random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we can’t otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities – our capacity for love, our appreciatio...

Kensho is the Zen experience of waking up to one’s own true nature—of understanding oneself to be not different from the Buddha-nature that pervades all existence. The Japanese Zen Master Hakuin (1689–1769) considered the experience to be essential. In his autobiography he says: "Anyone who would call himself a member of the Zen family must first achieve kensho-realization of the Buddha’s way. If a person who has not achieved kensho says he is a follower of Zen, he is an outrageous fraud. ...

Albert Low's book shows how the religious impulse is expressed by two entirely different kinds of religions: religion as a set of beliefs centered on a unique, dynamic center such as Christ, Mohammed or Buddha, and religion as a quest. Dr Albert Low is the teacher at the Montreal Zen Center and an internationally acclaimed author.

Have you reached a point in your life where the old patterns and habits just don't work anymore?Perhaps it is just a discomfort that you feel, an itch you cannot scratch. Life just doesn't have that same zest it once did. You cannot find satisfaction no matter what you try.Or perhaps life has life presented you with a situation where you are cornered? No matter how you struggle, you cannot go forward and you cannot go backward. Your wife or your husband has just walk out th...

A koan is a saying by a Zen master, the most famous being "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Seemingly incomprehensible, a koan is actually an invitation to think in a new way, a tool to startle the consciousness into enlightenment. Drawing on the views of diverse thinkers from Buddha, to T.S. Eliot to explain the essential concepts of Zen Buddhism, this book is thought provoking reading.

“Creating Consciousness: A Study of Consciousness, Creativity, Evolution, and Violence” is a spiritual & intellectual treasure from Zen Master Albert Low. Creating Consciousness is Low’s profound discussion of the philosophical, religious, and scientific problem of consciousness in relation to evolution, creativity, spirituality, and violence. Low weaves together fresh discoveries from contemporary thinkers with perennial wisdom from premodern religious sources while providing a highly ori...