This volume presents the teachings of the 17th-century samurai, Suzuki Shosan, who became one of Japan's most unorthodox Zen masters. KEY TEACHINGS OF ZEN'S FOREMOST SAMURAI MONK Suzuki Shosan is among the most dramatic personalities on the history of Zen. A samurai who served under the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu in the seventeenth century, he became a Zen monk at age 41 and evolved a highly original teaching style imbued with the warrior spirit. The warrior's life, Shosan believed, was particularly suited to Zen study because it demand vitality, courage, and death'
