Case 94, Book of Serenity, by Andrew Sono Tootell

When Joko Beck broke away from the White Plum Asanga to form her own sangha which she named the Ordinary Mind Zen School, she also stopped wearing a robe and also dropped the Koan curriculum and the Jukai ceremony. Barry Magid reintroduced the Jukai ceremony (minus the Buddhist names) and also reintroduced the study of koans. Barry reintroduced the study of koans in the spirit of Soto Zen – using the koans as teaching stories to illuminate different aspects of Zen practice and not as a form of meditation practice aimed at inducing a special spiritual experience. However, more than that, I think one of Barry’s major innovations to contemporary Zen has been to interpret the old koan stories from the perspective of western psychotherapy, thereby instigating a unique sub-genre of utilising koans. In this talk I am going to apply Barry’s style of koan interpretation to Case 94, from the collection of Koans known as The Book of Serenity.

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Case 94, Book of Serenity, by Andrew Sono Tootell is an episode from Andrew Tootell's OzZen Podcast by OzZen.

This episode is 00:31:10 long.

This episode was published on Feb 2, 2026.

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