This book is a sequel to The Zen Canon, which began to explore the variety of influential texts in the history of Zen Buddhism. In Zen Classics that exploration is continued by shifting the focus from the Chinese origins of Zen to the other East Asian cultures where the Zen tradition came to fruition in subsequent eras. Scholars researching Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Zen literature have been invited to survey a single work or genre of works that, because of its power and influence, has helped shape the Zen tradition and cause it to be what it is today. The essays offer careful historical studies of texts that have earned the right to be called classics. The texts are taken from different cultures and different historical periods and fall into a variety of Zen genres.
