The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

D. T. Suzuki

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  The theme is American Zen. Appropriately perhaps this issue is in virtual e-mag format only due to Buddhist centres (our main outlet for printed mags) still being closed.  

It was a transformative dialogue... Zen Buddhism encountered American culture in full flood in the dynamic fifties and sixties. Neither were ever the same again. Especially in the hands of maverick scholar D. T. Suzuki Zen entered the modern world and was re-expressed in western-friendly terms. This ancient path was shorn of ritual and ethical rules and expressed in terms of the Romantic path of the rebel artist seeking authentic inner experience free from the straight-jackets of tradition, social rules, conventional religion and mundane philosophies. Many artists took up the baton and as a result American and world culture were subtly but deeply transformed in a dynamic encounter between American letters, visual arts and what was taken as the essence of Buddhism. From John Cage, to Beat poets Ginsberg & Snyder plus Abstract Expressionist painters such as Mark Tobey... many of the most iconic figures of American arts are on these pages. Contents includes:

* The Crack of Vision: Buddhist influenced poetry in North America – Pound to Snyder.

* Fine new poetry from Dhivan, Rachel Jagger, Penny Hope, Paramananda, and others.

* Rothko: Horizons, Emptiness and Perfect Vision by Donal Mac Erlaine

* Fascinating abstract art from Abhayavajra at his Suffolk studio.

* Interview with Peter Cavaciuti, a modern master of zen brush painting based in Cambridge.

* Zen and Abstract Expressionism.

* Ginsberg and the Beats – a personal memoire of 50s California from Acarasiddhi.

* Gary Gach on Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest.