Description
Written for spiritual seeker rather than scholar, the translations and commentaries in this book show how the daily chants of the Zen school are guides for our ordinary life. Drawing on her traditional Zen monastery and long experience of teaching Westerners, Venerable Myokyo-ni explains the living meaning behind the texts, and shows how they point out the way to the heart’s liberation. As the chants unfold from the Repentance Sutra to the Four Great Vows, they mirror the heart’s journey towards a full humanity and a life lived in joyful accord with The Great Wisdom Gone Beyond.
The Venerable Myokyo-ni (Mirror of the Subtle Nun) was born Irmgard Schloegl in 1921 in Leitersdorf, Austria. She was awarded her PhD in Geology by Graz University, and arrived in England in 1950 to take up a lectureship at Imperial College London. Having joined Christmas Humphreys’ Zen class at the Buddhist Society, she left for Kyoto in 1960 to train under Oda Sesso Roshi and Sojun Kannun Roshi. Returning to London in 1972, she established the Zen Centre in London where she taught, translated and wrote about Zen. In 1984 she was ordained as a Zen nun and teacher by Soko Morinaga Roshi, and continued to teach and write until her death in 2007. Her posthumous name is Master Daiyu (Great Oak)
