Zen Is a Flower

Zen Is a Flower is Hu Lancheng's reading of the Zen classic The Blue Cliff Record, also known by the subtitle New Words on the Blue Cliff Record. Written in the late 1970s while he was living in Taiwan, it follows the original order of The Blue Cliff Record and elucidates one by one the hundred koans versified by the Northern Song master Xuedou Chongxian. Threaded through are characters such as "Cousin," "Brother," and "Sister," whose dialogues, casual talk, and travels turn austere koans into vivid scenes of life and intellectual debate. The book advances the central claim that "Zen was not founded by Bodhidharma; Zen is Chinese thought," recasting Zen from an Indian Buddhist import into a product of Chinese civilization itself, and lays out its "Huaxue" vision across ritual and music, nature, politics, and literature. Combining scholarly reflection with an essayistic style, the prose is light and graceful, carrying a Republican-era elegance between the lines, and many readers regard it as a "Zen-reading" version of This Life, This World. This edition is a simplified-character horizontal single volume in the "Hu Lancheng Works Series," with an introduction by Xue Renming and the author's preface.