Peter Coyote is an award-winning actor, author, director, screenwriter, and narrator who has worked with some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers. Recognized for his narration work, he narrated the PBS series The Pacific Century, winning an Emmy award, as well as eight Ken Burns documentaries, including The Roosevelts, for which he won a second Emmy. In 2011 he was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest and in 2015 received "transmission" from his teacher, making him an independent Zen teacher. The author of several books, he lives in northern California.
Foreword by Lewis Richmond
PART I
What the Buddha Taught
Introduction: Orientation
1 The Four Noble Truths: Dukkha
2 The Four Noble Truths: Samudaya
3 The Four Noble Truths: Nirodha
4 The Four Noble Truths: Marga, the Eightfold Path
5 Marga Part II
6 An Introduction to the Precepts
7 The Precepts
Part II
Things as It Is Introduction: Infusing the Ordinary
8 What Is This Thing We Call the Self?
9 Form and Ceremony
10 Emptiness and the Heart Sutra
11 Enlightenment: Seeing the Unseen
12 Believing in Nothing
13 The Three Treasures: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
14 The Role of Faith in Buddhist Practice
15 On Time: Host and Guest
16 Fuketsu’s Speck of Dust
PART III
Engaged with Vernacular Zen Introduction: Flashing in the Dark
17 On Anxiety
18 On Busyness
19 Wild Body, Wild Mind
20 Misunderstanding Emptiness
21 Values Not Embodied in Behavior Do Not Exist
22 Karma
23 On Loss: Issa’s “And Yet . . .”
24 Contradictions
25 Buddhist Anarchism
Acknowledgments
Annotated
Bibliography of Further Reading
