Unheeded by family and neighbors, the boy flees as paramilitary militias descend on the village in a murderous rampage. What really happened to the Boy Who Cried Wolf? Was he disemboweled by savage animals and left to die from his wounds? Or did he survive insult and injury to find a better and longer life? The Boy Who Cried Wolf’s Art of Sight: On the Origin of the Speechless, Solomon Black’s radical revision of the familiar folktale, casts him as a visionary, a prophet who foretells impending disaster about to be visited on his home village in an unnamed country.

Very impressive.”Īuthor of One Bird One Stone: 108 American Zen Stories Close to music in the poetic, rhythmic sense of its visual images, this is a gripping and fully realized update of an ancient story, with a sure-footed sense of unity that never loses its way. “A terrific, truly unique and compelling document! An enlightenment story for the dark ages of the 21st century, The Boy Who Cried Wolf’s Art of Sight is incredibly sure of itself as it twists and pokes its way into inventing an intuitive, experimental form that stretches all over but always lands in the right place. Solomon Black’s surprising and lovely book nimbly rises above the heaviness of the world, showing that his own gravity holds the key to lightness.”Īnisfield-Wolf Book Award–winning Kind One “A stunning work, dazzling in its stinging exactitude, marvelous in its zinging intelligence, mobility and light touch. Michael Hotz, president, First Zen Institute of America It was a pleasure for me to see this story presented accurately and with insight into Zen.' This book also reads like a Who’s Who in Zen, featuring Gary Snyder, Alan Watts, Shibayama Zenkei, D. A must-read for those interested in the development of Zen in the West, koan practice in the Rinzai tradition, and the struggles of women balancing practice and life-for those who might, like Ruth, wear earrings for a formal Zen ceremony.

“An incredibly intimate love story between Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Sokei-an, and Zen. Peter Coyote, actor, author, and Zen priest Joan Jiko Halifax, abbot of Upaya Zen CenterĪnd author of Standing at the Edge and Being with Dying Two dozen intimate photographs photos show us two people who aren’t mere historical figures, but flesh and blood people, walking their paths. With lyrical prose, authors Steven Zahavi Schwartz and Janica Anderson bring Ruth and Sokei-an to life. They were married less than a year before Sokei-an died, but Ruth would go on to helm trailblazing translations in his honor and to become the first foreigner to be the priest of a Rinzai Zen temple in Japan. One made his way to the West and the other would find her way to the East, but together they created the First Zen Institute of America and helped birth a new generation of Zen practitioners: among them, Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, and Burton Watson. Sokei-an was one of the first Zen priests to come to America he brought the gift of the Dharma to the United States but in 1942 was put in an internment camp. Ruth was an American with a privileged life, even during the height of the Great Depression, before she went to Japan and met D. Ruth Fuller Sasaki and Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki: two pioneers of Zen in the West. Explore two lives-and a relationship-that profoundly shaped American Zen.

Steven schwartz author