John Stevens: 1947-2025 Read More Image: Masakatsu Agatsu, True Victory Is Victory Over Oneself, by Morihei Ueshiba It is with deep sadness that we share the passing of our beloved author John Stevens. John transitioned peacefully on July 21, 2025. John Stevens was a Zen priest and was a professor of Buddhist Studies and Aikido

Kazuaki Tanahashi Learn More A Reader's Guide to Kazuaki Tanahashi, the poet, artist, activist and modern-day Zen master Related Reader Guides Zen in Japan Early Zen in Japan  |  Dogen: A Guide to His Works Rinzai Zen | Hakuin Ekaku: A Reader's Guide The Samurai and Zen  |  Zen up to the Meiji Restoration  Chan

Patricia Donegan, the great poet, translator, and promoter of haiku, died on Tuesday, January 24th at 6:20pm CST. Her friend Elaine Martin shared the following: "During a recent visit with her brother she stated, 'I go willingly into the sound of the crickets.' Amazing that she uttered such words while moving between confusion, anxiety, and

It is with deep sadness, mixed with appreciation for such a fruitful life, that we share the news that prolific author and a great scholar of East Asian art, Stephen Addiss, passed away on May 11th, 2022. Stephen was a Professor of Art at the University of Richmond in Virginia. A scholar-artist, he has exhibited

Zen in Japan: Up to the Meiji Restoration     This is part of a series of articles on the arc of Zen thought, practice, and history, as presented in The Circle of the Way: A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World.  You can start at the beginning of this

Essential Teachings An Excerpt from Budōshoshinshu Budōshoshinshu and Hagakure are the most influential treatises on samurai philosophy from the Edo period. The two books were written at about the same time and both address the warrior’s role in times of peace. While Hagakure was mostly a secret book of the Nabeshima clan until the twentieth

The Essence of Art An excerpt from The Book of Tea By Kakuzo Okakura Related Books The Book of Tea$14.95 - PaperbackBy: Sam Hamill & Kakuzo Okakura Add to Cart The Book of Tea$12.95 - PaperbackBy: Kakuzo Okakura Add to Cart Striving to Become Art Itself In religion the future is behind us. In art the

The Power of Art This short essay was written in 1987, when no one had any idea whether the Cold War would ever come to an end. We are still in a global crisis, but in another form. The Necessity of Political Art Art in a period of widely-perceived global crisis can never be the

Also see our Reader's Guide to Buddhist Poetry. Many know haiku as a three-line poem, the first and last lines five syllables long, and the second line, seven. But there is much more to what defines haiku, elements more subtle than prescribed syllable counts or line breaks. In fact, Japanese haiku are typically written in

One of the greatest joys for me as an editor at Shambhala Publications is when I work on books by people I have long admired. This was most definitely the case when Shambhala had the good fortune to become William Scott Wilson’s publisher several years ago. I first encountered his work when I was a