The Book of Householder Koans

Waking Up in the Land of Attachments

Roshi Eve Myonen Marko & Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao

Paperback
978-1-948626-08-8
US $18.95
eBook available
February 2020

Zen koans, beginning some 1500 years ago, refer to stories or questions arising in encounters between monks and old Chinese and Japanese masters, and include commentaries designed to help the Zen practitioner awaken. Koans like Hakuin’s What is the sound of one hand clapping? are well-known, and the word koan has even gone mainstream.

Thousands of classic koans emerged from the lives of monks living inside a Chinese or Japanese culture, and the commentaries on those koans contain poetic elements and images that have proved challenging for many Westerners.

The Book of Householder Koans is a collection of koans created by 21st century Zen practitioners living a lay life in the West. The koans deal with the challenges of relationships, raising children, work, money, love, loss, old age, and death, and come from practitioners across three continents, and with commentaries by two Western teachers.

The collection is based on the premise that our lives as householders contain situations rich with challenge and grit, the equivalents of old Zen masters’ shouts or blows meant to sweep the ground right from under their students. They become koans, or koan practice, when they jolt us out of our usual way of thinking, when we’re no longer observers of our lives but plunge in, closing the gap between ourselves and the situation we face.

Roshi Eve Myonen Marko is the resident teacher at the Green River Zen Center in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts and also a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order. She co-founded Peacemaker Circle International with her husband, Bernie Glassman, linking and training spiritually-based social activists and peacemakers in the US, Europe and the Middle East. She has led street retreats, in which participants live on the streets with no money and wearing just the clothes on their backs, and has been a Spiritholder at the Zen Peacemakers’ bearing witness retreats at Auschwitz-Birkenau since 1996, as well as their retreats at Rwanda and the Black Hills with Lakota elders. During the 1980s and the 1990s Eve worked with the Greyston Network of for-profits and not-for-profits working together in Yonkers, New York, and providing housing, child care, jobs, training, and AIDS-related medical services. Eve authored the YA fantasy, The Dogs of the Kiskadee Hills: Hunt For the Lynx. She was co-editor of Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice (writings of Taizan Maezumi Roshi) and editor of The Dude and the Zen Master. She wrote articles on peacemaking for Shambhala Sun and Tikkun magazines, and appears in the anthology of women Zen teachers The Hidden Lamp. She blogs consistently at www.evemarko.com

Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao is the Abbot Emeritus (1999-2019) of the Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA), having succeeded the late Roshi Bernie Glassman as the third Abbot in 1999. She currently serves as ZCLA’s head teacher and head priest. She ordained as a Zen priest in 1983 and trained with her root teacher, Venerable Taizan Maezumi at ZCLA until his death in 1995. She became a Dharma Successor of Roshi Bernie Glassman in 1996 in Yonkers, NY, and is a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, which promotes spiritually-based social action. Roshi is the co-editor with Roshi Eve Myonen Marko of Appreciate Your Life by Taizan Maezumi (Shambhala 2000), and co-editor with Sensei John Daishin Buksbazen of the newly published editions by Wisdom Publications of On Zen Practice: Body, Breath, and Mind (2002) and The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment (2007).

"These two extraordinary Zen Teachers offer a cutting-edge immersion into the koans of our actual lives, issue by issue, urging us to plunge in, and be intimate with what actually is, in this very moment. Flowing beneath the surface of these contemporary koans is an ocean of traditional koans and old Buddhist stories and themes, all intermingled with the immediacy of contemporary life. A guaranteed American Zen classic!" —Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, author of Most Intimate: A Zen Approach to Life's Challenges

"Radical, useful, and wild, this rich collection of householder koans opens a treasure house of wisdom for all. What a wonderful adventure in the practical mind and heart of true Zen and true life." —Rev. Joan Jiko Halifax, Abbot of Upaya Zen Center

“In The Book of Householder Koans Nakao and Marko wonderfully carry into contemporary life the spirit and color of the zen koan tradition in all its mystery and brazenness—and, at the same time, provide a wonderfully wise, knowing, and light-hearted look at how we can live this one precious unrepeatable human life in beauty. The koan stories they provide (submitted by many of their students) are pithy, funny, and perfectly apt for the times we live in. What a lively book!” —Norman Fischer, poet, Zen priest, and author most recently of The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path

“I was blown away by the force of The Book of Householder Koans as it establishes Western Zen as a new center of enlightenment. Roshis Myonen Eve Marko and Egyoku Wendy Nakao present Zen koans, exquisitely digested from everyday life, that retain the ancient and authentic power to stop you in your tracks while they beckon you onward. Read this book, emerging from two female Zen masters’ lifetimes of practice, and enter an intimate world that opens your awareness in relationship, work, and current worldly puzzles.” —Grace Schireson, author of Wild-Ass Zen, Enlightenment Wherever You Are, Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens and Macho Maters, and Naked in the Zendo: Stories of Uptight Zen, and editor of Zen Bridge: The Zen Teachings of Keido Fukushima

“In this wonderful collection, Eve Myonen Marko and Wendy Egyoku Nakao write that Zen is about letting go of our fixed opinions. One opinion about Zen, when it came to this country, is that it is for monks and priests who live in monasteries or as hermits. In fact, most Zen students nowadays are householders who have issues that are different from those of our ancestor monks in China. The training for priests cannot be the same as the training for householders. Householders’ lives are messy. Roshis Eve and Wendy use the ancient wisdom of Zen to illuminate modern-day practice. Their insight and compassion have provided us with an important collection of koan stories that illustrate how Zen can bring deep insight to all meditators, whether householders, the homeless, women, men, or even ordained priests.” —Roshi Gerry Shishin Wick, spiritual director of Great Mountain Zen Center, and author of The Book of Equanimity: Illuminating Classic Zen Koans

“The only real Zen is the Zen of our actual lived lives. Zen’s koans are stories that take us to where we really live, that show us who we are when we let go of the false stories we’ve been trapped within. The collections of these true stories, which open our hearts, started in China. And China gave us many that we cherish to this day. Others come from Korea and Vietnam and Japan. And now, in The Book of Householder Koans, we are given a selection collected from four Western countries by two preeminent American Zen masters. And this is real Zen. These are the true stories of who we have always been from before the creation of the stars and planets. This is Zen made out of our bones and marrow, our tears and laughter. This amazing book is one of a handful written in this time that will be recalled as classics of our way. If you’ve never practiced Zen, read this book. If Zen has been your way for 40 years, read this book. It opens our way and reminds us of where to find it. The Book of Householder Koans is a direct pointing to our heart’s longing. True stories.” —James Ishmael Ford, author of Introduction to Zen Koans and If You're Lucky, Your Heart Will Break

“The Book of Householder Koans is like a sumptuous feast. The teachings, deep-rooted in Zen practice, bring to the table all the ingredients of our life, including heartbreak, fury, and joy. This book shows us that in each moment there is an opportunity to enter a gate to wakefulness, receptivity, and love. Savor each morsel!”—Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up

“The Book of Householder Koans is a remarkable, inspiring, and ground-breaking book that revolutionizes the age-old tradition of Zen koan practice and plunges it right into the heart of our contemporary, 21st-century lives. As Zen teachers, authors Nakao and Marko have been deeply immersed for decades in the practice of life clarifying itself right in the midst of its most knotty challenges and confusions. Along with 66 new koans gathered from householders around the world, they offer their profound insight and expertise to help contemporary readers spring open even the most seemingly unresolvable of personal, modern dilemmas. Beautifully written with a life-affirming wisdom and spirit, this book will come to be a modern classic that helps us to live with a clarity, freedom, and joy beyond what we had imagined possible. Open the covers, take the plunge!” —Peter Levitt, author of The Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan and One Hundred Butterflies, and guiding teacher of Salt Spring Zen Circle in British Columbia

“A wonderful book on koan comparable with koan books from the Song Dynasty China. Wendy and Eve pull no punches in laying out Zen practice in daily life and the challenges we face in leading a full and inclusive life. In fact, they leave no places to escape to. They deal with everything: relationship, work, family, aging, addiction, emotion, and ambiguity, to mention but a few. I don’t usually read Zen books, yet this one had me riveted from page one. All they left me after reading, was to just do it.” —Roshi Charles Tenshin Fletcher, abbot of Yokoji Zen Mountain Center and author of The Way of Zen

“I wish I’d been able to read the Book of Householders Koans to help integrate practice with my everyday life when I started Zen training. This book is not only for householders, it’s also for everyone. Using both the rich stories of ancient Zen masters and current everyday people, the authors explore the human journey: relationships, raising children, work, illness, old age, death, how to ground spiritual practice. This book is a guide for collective awakening, as if one were sitting in a circle with friends with everyone being heard from—sharing their questions, dilemmas, learnings transparently and intimately. And from that sharing, the reader’s heart-mind-spirit is expanded through the common threads that unite us all, grounded in the everyday, no matter where we are in our life. The wisdom of these two Zen teachers, Egyoku Roshi and Myonen Roshi, is very accessible, encouraging and freeing. I highly recommend this book—it’s a treasure trove, a true find!" —Nicolee Jikyo McMahon Roshi, marriage and family therapist

“This beautiful book is an important resource for Zen in our time. This collection opens our eyes to the koan of our life right now. Easy and fun to read, the householder koans are not just for Zen students, but relatable for all. Maezumi Roshi would encourage his students to study the ancient texts, and then he would say ‘I want you to create the modern Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye).’ Reading the householder koans, I felt that I was encountering a fresh expression of true dharma that maintains the spiritual rigor of old texts. I love these new koans. I love how the layout is reminiscent of traditional koan presentation with verses and comments. And I love how relevant these koans are for our time. The authors are encouraging all of us to create our own householder koans, and I am finding myself seeing koan everywhere. It is a lot of fun and encourages me to see my whole life as spiritual practice. Congratulations to the authors for creating a seminal work. It is a gift for everyone who wants to deepen their appreciation of life.” —Anne Seisen Saunders, Abbot, Sweetwater Zen Center; President, White Plum Asanga

“Amidst the hustle, bustle, and fragmentation of today’s world—taking care of the kids, dealing with disappointments and relationships, facing illness and old age—The Book of Householder Koans reminds us that koans are not separate from our life but are, indeed, the stuff of living and loving. Filled with real-life situations shared by people around the world, this wonderful book takes koan practice to a new level, encouraging us to open to all aspects of daily life and to embrace its richness. This is a book to be savored.” —Diane Rizzetto, author of Waking Up to What You Do and Deep Hope

“Thank you, thank you, thank you…! At last, here is a book that highlights the awakenings of everyday people in the midst of heart-rending, courageous challenges. Grab a copy of The Book of Householder Koans and you will experience a remarkable shift in Zen literature, one that closes the gap between contemporary practitioners and our ancestors. What a revolution in Zen training, and yet how intimately these wise authors, Eve Myonen Marko and Wendy Egyoku Nakao, align to Buddha’s primary teaching—that Buddha nature resides and manifests within each one of us.” —Anita Feng (Jeong Ji), author of the novel Sid, and guiding teacher at Blue Heron Zen Community in Seattle, WA

“The Book of Householder Koans is a collection of ordinary wisdom, in the highest sense of that word—‘ordinary’—wisdom that does not explain, but with knife-edge words points us in the direction of difficult truths. Using the classical form of a Zen koan, with verse, case, and commentary, Eve Myonen Marko and Wendy Egyoku Nakao draw from their deep understanding across years of practice to reveal that the wisdom of ancient Zen ancestors continues to flourish in our modern lives and homes.” —Hozan Alan Senauke, vice abbot Berkeley Zen Center

“To take refuge in Buddhism means to simultaneously go forth onto a path of liberation and to return home. This collection of householder koans represents the heart of intimate practice, of discovering that the lotus flower of enlightenment cannot bloom without the nutrients of the muddy world of attachments. Marko and Nakao bring forth the entangled vines of American Buddhism that give new texture to the Buddha Dharma.” —Duncan Ryuken Williams, University of Southern California professor of religion, and author of American Sutra

“The Book of Householder Koans is a wonderful book for Zen beginners and even intermediate students. It’s sensible, kind, intelligent, and practical, with a wisdom that clarifies the obscure and brings the transcendent down to earth.” —Stephen Mitchell, author of Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness

“Traditional koans speak about Zen monks (and occasionally nuns) waking up in a monastery, far from worldly distractions. These koans are for people living ‘in the world,’ dealing with a small daughter’s out-of-control meltdown in the car, changing an aged mother’s diaper, facing a brother’s ongoing addiction, feeling overwhelmed by electronic communications, or feeling helpless in the face of systemic poverty and violence.

“This book is a great encouragement to me. The authors and all their anonymous contributors remind me over and over that the point is not to rise above these messy difficulties, but to ‘learn to live in the skin of the human being that you are.’ Moments of rage, shame, awkwardness, regret, become, in this collection, dharma gates. Don’t hold back, just be yourself, step up and do what you can do, take care of what’s in front of you, which is the whole world. You can do it! Authors Marko and Nakao—I want to say ‘Eve and Wendy’—are my dharma sisters and yours, sharing their wisdom and experience with affection.” —Susan Moon, lay Zen teacher, author of This Is Getting Old: Zen Thoughts on Aging, and co-author with Florence Caplow of The Hidden Lamp, a collection of koans about women

“This book contains a refreshing way to work with koans, using the everyday dilemmas and tragedies that have deep import for people and reframing them as koans. It could ignite a modern and very relevant Western koan tradition.

“The ancient koans often begin with the phrase, ‘A monk in all earnestness asked . . .’  There are weeks or even years of deep pondering hidden in the phrase ‘in all earnestness.’ The authors of this book have taken the everyday dilemmas that have deep, deep import for their students and reframed them as koans, helping people move from distress to inquiry, and ultimately to a deeper level of understanding of, and equanimity with their lives.” —Jan Chozen Bays, abbot, Great Vow Monastery, and author of Mindful Eating and A Vow Powered Life

"'I'm a householder who wants to be a forest dweller,' I moaned to Roshi Bernie Glassman one day when the responsibilities of parenting, work and caring for the elders in my life all felt too much to bear. 'Just wait for Eve and Wendy's book,' he responded enthusiastically. At last The Book of Householder Koans is here, and I can ease into the reminder that the challenges of my everyday life are not hurdles to overcome...rather, they are the path." —Rev. Barbara Becker, author of the forthcoming Heartwood and dean at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary

"With its sophisticated Zen Buddhist ideas and reflections, this intricate, stimulating collection of koans offers constructive advice that will appeal to those with at least some experience as Zen practitioners." —Publisher's Weekly