Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans that will Save your Life

A provocative and playful exploration of the Zen koan tradition that reveals how everyday paradoxes are an integral part of our spiritual journey

Bring Me the Rhinoceros is an unusual guide to happiness and a can opener for your thinking. For fifteen hundred years, Zen koans have been passed down through generations of masters, usually in private encounters between teacher and student. This book deftly retells more than a dozen traditional koans, which are partly paradoxical questions dangerous to your beliefs and partly treasure boxes of ancient wisdom. Koans show that you don’t have to impress people or change into an improved, more polished version of yourself. Instead you can find happiness by unbuilding, unmaking, throwing overboard, and generally subverting unhappiness.

Author and Zen teacher John Tarrant brings the heart of the koan tradition out into the open, reminding us that the old wisdom remains as vital as ever, a deep resource available to anyone in any place or time.

A Zen teacher who has studied koans for thirty years, John Tarrant directs the Pacific Zen Institute, a venture in meditation and the arts, and teaches culture change in organizations. He is the author of several books, including The Light Inside the Dark. He lives among the vineyards near Santa Rosa, California.