By Way of a Personal Introduction

This is the sixth book of words about Zen. My interest in Japanese culture began back in 1950. A Navy reservist, I was called up and assigned to be the neurologist at an Army hospital in Yokohama. Almost a quarter of a century later, my given scientific reason for returning to Japan was to conduct a sabbatical research project in neuropharmacology. It happened that the best place to do this was in Kyoto!

By fortunate links in an unforeseen chain of circumstances, this led to my starting to meditate at Daitoku-ji, a Rinzai Zen temple. My teacher there was an English-speaking Zen master, Nanrei Kobori-Roshi. This became the start of a long interdisciplinary quest to understand the relationships between Zen and the brain.

This book serves as an update on the recent progress along the rapidly expanding, exciting interface between Zen and the neurosciences. I still write from the perspective of a student—of biology, of neurology, and of Zen—awed by the challenges involved in attempting to integrate ancient wisdom with the stimulating new research findings that are arriving every day.