Appalachian Zen

Winner of the 2023 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Prize for MemoirThis luminous memoir combines the hardscrabble setting of Appalachia with the spiritual wisdom of Shunryu Suzukis classicZen Mind, Beginners Mind.Amazing and intense. A unique, entertaining, and valuable contribution to the Dharma literature,Appalachian Zenaddresses a part of the Western Dharma world that hasnt received much attention: class. Rev. Sumi Loundon Kim, Yale University, author ofBlue Jean BuddhaandSitting TogetherAppalachian Zendescribes a journey we all take, one that Buddhism calls seeking our true home. Edgy, lyrical, and lovingly rendered, this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania mill-town trailer park grew upsurrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief, violence, and passionate yearningto become something improbable: a Buddhist minister teaching Zen. Author Steve Kanji Ruhl takes readers on an adventure of discovery, roving far from the Appalachian Mountains of central Pennsylvania on a footloose Zen pilgrimage to Japan and beyond.Featuring vivid firsthand accounts of spiritual seeking and teaching in Japanese temples, as well as forays to Tokyo and Hiroshima, the alleys of Kyoto, Amish cornfields near the Susquehanna, and a monastery in the Catskills,Appalachian Zenincludes robust historical sketches, rapt nature passages, and cultural references ranging from Proust to punk rock. Throughout the book, Ruhl engages Buddhist themes of awakening and the death of the self by confronting the lives and deaths, including two by suicide, of his loved ones. This provocative memoir tells how itfeelsto practice Zen, and to move toward a life of hard-won forgiveness, healing, and freedom.