Zen for Americans. Sermons of a Buddhist abbot by Soyen Shaku. Translated by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki. Narrated by Denis Daly.

In a world riddled with irreconcilable conflict among doctrinaire religions, Soyen Shaku's crisp and incisive commentaries on Buddhism come across as particularly engaging. Shaku's eminently reasonable worldview and his skillful exposition of a truly universal definition of divinity and its inevitable necessity are both compelling and difficult to refute. In particular, this collection of discourses probes deeply and revealingly into the fundamental questions that occupy the minds of believers and unbelievers alike: why men cultivate religion in the first place and what the secret of its persistent vitality is.

Contents:

1. Translator's Preface
2. The Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters
3. The God-Conception
4. Assertions and Denials
5. Immortality
6. Buddhist Faith
7. Buddhist Ethics
8. What Is Buddhism?
9. The Middle Way
10. The Wheel of the Good Law
11. The Phenomenal and the Supra-Phenomenal
12. Reply to a Christian Critic
13. Ignorance and Enlightenment
14. Spiritual Enlightenment
15. Practice of Dhyana
16. Kwannon Bosatz
17. Buddhism and Oriental Culture
18. The Story of Deer Park
19. The Story of the Gem-Hunting
20. The Sacrifice for a Stanza
21. Buddhist View of War
22. At the Battle of Nan-Shan Hill
23. A Memorial Address for Those Who Died in the Russo-Japanese War