thezensite: miscellaneous non-Zen essays

Christopher Calder: a former Rajneesh disciple gets stuck into his former guru at The Ridiculous Teachings of Wrong Way Rajneesh.

Leonard Cohen:Cohen is a song writer, singer, poet, artist and was ordained as a Zen monk in 1996. This is his home page. A long story on Cohen from Shambala Sun, Sept. 1998 is here.

Brian Greene The Time We Thought We Knew: New York Times essay about time by a professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia: "Like believing the earth flat or that man was created on the sixth day, our willingness to place unjustified faith in immediate perception or received wisdom leads us to an inaccurate and starkly limited vision of reality."

Interview with Julian Barbour: Barbour grapples with time: "My basic idea is that time as such does not exist...there are things that you could call instants of time, or 'Nows'. As we live, we seem to move through a succession of Nows, and the question is, what are they?"

Interview with Thomas Cleary: a very brief interview with the reclusive and prolific translator. Thomas Cleary has translated many Buddhist (and Zen) texts and we thank him for making these texts available to English Zen students. This is not a great interview but there's not much out there about Thomas Cleary.

Avi Sion: Meditations: a spiritual logbook Free online book by Avi Sion on some fundamentals of meditation and some guidance on how to meditate. This is a general book on meditation. Sion also wrote Buddhist Illogic: a critical analysis of Nagarjuna's arguments

Zen Humour

Yes, there is humour in Zen. Try these sites.

do-not-zzz.com: Fun! Click on the Enter button and turn on your speakers.

Haiku for Windows: I don't know who wrote this but it's all over the Web.

Zen Jokes: o.k., some are pretty weak, but that's the nature of jokes, isn't it?

Blue Cliff Record Quiz: 10 koans; can you guess the right answers (according to the quiz creator, mind you) Not to be taken seriously! You can find more Buddhism quizzes here on this site.

Dharma the Cat: an amusing series of cartoons that often hit the mark. Definately worth a look. The early ones are the best.

Koans of the Zen Librarian: Yes, librarians have a zen sense of humour!

The Rootless Root: the Unix koans of Master Foo: a satire on the Gateless Gate as seen by computer geeks. See also the Wikipedia article on Hacker Koans and some examples of AI koans from MIT artificial intelligence lab.

Buddhist Art Sites

A-Z Photo Dictionary of Japanese Buddhism : Mark Schumacher has created a very nice site focussed primarily on Japanese Buddhist iconography and sculpture but has much more than that. This is a good place, for example, to learn about mudras, the various Buddhas in Japanese iconography, a simple history and timeline of Buddhism, a glossary of the various names of the Buddha and considerably more. The site is well illustrated and nicely laid out for easy of navigation. Recommended for extensive browsing.

Daruma Museum Gallery: Dr. Gabi Greve of the Darumamuseum in Japan has created a site with everything one would want to know about Daruma, a folk representation of Bodhidharma.

Dunhuang Art Seen Through the Eyes of Duan Wenjie: this e-book is a translation of selected writings of Wenjie, Director of the Dunhuang Academy and includes photographs and drawings. An excellent resource on this most valuable Buddhist site. The International Dunhuang Project home page is here.

Evolution of the Buddha Image: a nice little article by Prof. P.C. Jain with photos. This is a commercial site. Also available at this site are articles on stupas, Kwan Yin, the origin of the Buddha image, the Eight Auspicious Symbols of Buddhism, and other articles on Buddhism, Hinduism and yoga. All with photos. Worth a browse.

Fa Lian Shakya: is a priest of the Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun. He has some of his art work on the web.

Huntington Library: the link will take you to the archive of Buddhist and Related Art. A fantastic collection for anyone interested in Buddhist art.

Japanese Gardens: the Bowdoin College web site on Japanese gardens. The site will enable you to tour some 24 Japanese gardens, mainly in the Kyoto area, as well as provide information on history, elements of gardens and links to other sites on a similar topic.

Pacific Asia Museum: nice site. This is their home page where you'll find links to Art of Buddhism and Japanese Paintings and Prints

Belinda Sweet's ZenPainting gallery: this is a commercial site but you can view some very nice Zen paintings here, including a few by Hakuin.

Tibetan Museum Society: Nice site promoting Buddhist art from the Himalaya region. Offers online art gallery and shop as well as news about Tibetan art. A non-profit organisation promoting freedom of religious expression and art.
An exhibition of rare tankas by the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies, including photographs and extensive discription is available online here.

The Manyo'an Art Collection of Japanese Art : beautiful online collection from the Gitter-Yelen Art Centre. Well worth a visit here.