In one of America's most distinctive Zen teachers takes a back-to-basics approach to Zen. Glassman illuminates three key teachings of Zen Buddhism, offering line-by-line commentary in clear, direct language: : the Buddha's essential discourse on emptiness, a central sutra of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. "The Identity of Relative and Absolute": an eighth-century poem by Shih-t'ou His-ch'ien, a key text of the Soto Zen school. The Zen precepts: the rules of conduct for laypeople and monks. His commentaries are based on workshops he gave as Abbot of the Zen Community of New York, and they contain within them the principles that became the foundation for the Greyston Mandala of community development organizations and the Zen Peacemaker Order.