Zen Buddhism has a storied history--Bodhidharma sitting in meditation in a cave for nine years; a would-be disciple cutting off his own arm to get the master's attention; the proliferating schools and intense Dharma combat of the Tang and Song dynasties; Zen nuns and laypeople holding their own against patriarchal lineages; the appearance of new masters in the Zen schools of Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and later the Western world. The Circle of the Way brings clarity to this huge swath of history by charting a middle way between Zen's traditional lore and the findings of modern scholarship. In an accessible and entertaining style, it parses fact from fiction while always attending to the greatest interest of contemporary practitioners--the development of Zen doctrine and practice as a living tradition across cultures and centuries.

Circle of the Way : A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World, Barbara O'Brien, Shambhala Publications, Paperback, 328 pp, $19.95

Barbara O'brien has been practicing Zen Buddhism since the 1980s. She works as a journalist, reporting primarily on religion in America. She is the author of Rethinking Religion: Finding a Place for Religion in a Modern, Tolerant, Progressive, Peaceful and Science-affirming World and has written about Buddhism for many outlets including About.com, The Guardian, Tricycle, and Lion's Roar. She blogs about whatever is on her mind at her personal blog, The Mahablog (mahablog.com).

In Appreciation	ix
Introduction: A Zen History?	1
1. Buddhism before Zen	19
2. The Six (or So) Patriarchs	48
3. Zen in the Early Tang Dynasty	83
4. Zen in the late Tang Dynasty	112
5. Classic Zen in the Song Dynasty	128
6. Zen Leaves China: Korea and Vietnam	159
7. Early Japanese Buddhism to Eihei Dogen	181
8. The Establishment of Japanese Rinzai to the Meiji Restoration	214
9. Zen in the Modern World	247
Afterword	281
Index	301