Zen and the Art of Insight

Selected and translated by Thomas Cleary

How do you know?

This seems a simple question, but when pursued it can take us to the very limits of rational thought.  The aim of Zen is to show us the way to that very point: where discursive thinking fails and the quantum shift to an entirely new mode of intuitive perception becomes possible.  For two thousand years, the Mahayana Buddhist scriptures known collectively as the Prajnaparamita ("perfection of wisdom") sutras have served as a guide to approaching and transcending the limits of thinking. 

In Zen and the Art of Insight, Thomas Cleary has gathered key selections from throughout the Prajnaparamita literature, accompanying each selection with commentary, to present the key teachings as exercises in learning freedom. 

"The Buddhist teachings on the perfection of insight show how to break out of the shell of cultivated belief and spread the wings of independent vision in the sky of freedom.  These teachings lead the way to from self-projection's bewildering hall of mirrors into the broad daylight of penetrating insight's open, unobstructed space."