The Grass Flute Zen Master

What motivated Sodosan to spend the last twenty years of his life in a temple under the sky a corner of a public park where he taught passersby what it means to be forever young through the funky tunes he played on his grass flute?In The Grass Flute Zen Master: Sodo Yokoyama we are seeking not only a truer understanding of this wellloved monk but of zazen Zen meditation itself. In his search for insights into Sodo Yokoyamas life Arthur Braverman skillfully weaves a tapestry from seemingly disparate threadsthe brief taisho period into which Sodosan was born and where individualism shone; his teachers both ancient and contemporary practitioners of Zen Bhuddism; the monks love of baseball; and the similarities Braverman finds between Sodosan and Walt Whitman who both found the universal in nature.Through conversations with Joko Shibata Yokoyamas sole disciple and careful study of his teachers poetry an intriguing tension between the personal and the universal is revealed. The Grass Flute Zen Master is a meditative examination not of just one life but of many. The lineage of teacher and protege is traced back through generations contemporaries are drawn up from unexpected places and Braverman examines his own long journey in Zen Buddhism; confronting his own expectations and surprising disappointments (the monk lived in a boarding house and later took a cab to his park when he could no longer walk the whole way) and the understanding and acceptance that followed. When you play the leaf Sodosan once wrote youll usually be a little out of tune. Thats where its very charm lies . . .