On a hot mountain in India, twenty-five centuries ago, the Buddha gave a sermon without a single word.
He held up a flower. One monk, far back in the crowd, smiled ? and in that wordless exchange, Zen was born.
A Flower Held Up in Silence follows that one flower down the whole length of its journey. Out of India and into the Chan masters of China. Across to the Zen of Japan. Over the widest ocean to the West ? and, at the last, into the great mystics of other faiths entirely: Meister Eckhart in his pulpit, Rumi in his turning, Thomas Merton on a Kentucky street corner. Different centuries, different tongues, different names for God ? and the same flower, held up again and again for the next person to see.
This is not, in the end, a history of a religion. It is the story of a single moment that has never moved ? traced from Vulture Peak to the room you are sitting in right now.
You do not need to know anything about Zen to begin. Whether the tradition is new to you or you have walked beside it for years, the book asks only one thing ? the same thing the flower has always asked. Not whether you can explain it, or agree with it, or believe it. Whether you can see it.
The flower is still up. In the plain light in front of your face. Right now.
From the author of Treading the Path of Zen: Stumbling Through Koans My Way.
