The Art of Caring: Zen Stories

The Art of Caring: Zen Stories Review

These short stories are based on zen writings and inspired by the writings of Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. The stories were written in an effort to explore the relationship of Buddhist thinking to modern culture in the West with both comical and serious results. These are for the most part original stories although a couple are loosely based on traditional zen stories... and some are not entirely about zen, either. But they were a lot of fun to write and hopefully the reader will find them fun to read as well as getting something of value from them.
Some of these stories examine the nature of death in the midst of life while others celebrate life in the midst of death, for one is never far from the other. We are born to die and we die to be born. The face that was ours before our parents were born lurks between the words and the actions that we call our life. In order to discover that face it is necessary to forget most that we've been taught and to ignore the rest.
Some learned scribes take this to mean that we must kill all desire, all thought, all reason, and many zen stories play upon this facet of knowledge. Other just as learned scribes regard desire and thought as necessary routes to the high places of the mind where it is believed wisdom resides. The middle way leads between these extremes... by paying attention to but not killing thought, by cultivating desires without doing away with them, we are able to navigate the treacherous waters of the id finally coming to our destination.