A dear friend of mine gave this book as a present when we are all students of Zen. This book is also one of the books in the  Library of  Dai Bosatsu Zendo. The Empty Mirror Book has a lot of impact on all of us, who are doing the same practice. We can relate the story of this Zen student with what we go through.

The book is about a 26 yrs old dutch from Netherland, seeking the TRUTH, landed in one of Zen monasteries in Kyoto, Japan, in 1958. It was narrated with humor and sarcasm.

One of the Reviews on this book:  And he discovers that this quest for meaning is doomed precisely because it is a quest. After being directed to look into a mirror to find his real face, he can succeed in doing so only when he sees that the mirror is empty, like the Zen master whose story he recounts, he learns to “”perform the most astounding feats. If he slept, he slept, and if he ate, he ate.”” The year-and-a-half is recalled with ambivalence — affection, resentment, and confusion. But the book effectively documents one man’s authentic confrontation with his own myths.

Oh, I am still re-reading this book…