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Published by Shambhala, 1996, softcover, illustrated, 178 pages, condition: very good.
Endless Vow is the first English-language collection of the literary works of Soen Nakagawa Roshi. An intimate, in-depth portrait of the master of Eido Tai Shimano, his Dharma heir, introduces the poems, letters, journal entries, and other writings of Soen Roshi, which are illustrated with his calligraphies. In a postscript, some of his best-known American studentsincluding Peter Matthiessen and Ruth McCandlessreminisce about this legendary figure of American Buddhist history.
I just love this book -- it can be read in a day, and there is absolutely no reason for it to be any longer. It's an arrangement of some of the haiku that Soen Nakagawa wrote throughout his life, along with diary excerpts. I love how he explains that it was reading Shopenhauer as a depressed college student that was the catalyst for committing his life to the buddhadharma. I love that the Japanese emperor declared poetic themes for each year ("green," "mother," "islands"), and SN comments, "We should respond to this with our original voice, through...haiku or other works we are engaged in." I love his insistence on universality, his openness to what was new to him, and his protection of what was genuine about tradition. One can see how passionate a meditator can become about the world and its people. The introduction by SN's dharma heir Eido Shimano Roshi, who still teaches in upstate NY, is profound in itself. ES Roshi shows how fully human SN was, and how he continually saw and created beauty, which SN defined as that which is unrepeatable -- like the afternoon you will spend reading this book!
