Author Description

Dharma Gates Are Boundless offers a unique marriage of rich visual art and thoughtful essays by respected contemporary Soto Zen Buddhist teachers. Vibrant abstract miniatures by M. Winston, a brilliant African-American artist and member of a prison sangha, are paired with ten articles ranging from the scholarly to the deeply personal. Dale Wright, author of Buddhism, What Everyone Needs to Know, says of this work edited by Tonen O'Connor, "Illumination is the best word to describe this wonderful book." The unusual combination of artistic vision and Buddhist insight has also received high marks from Muhammad Isa Sadlon, retired Executive Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum: "The artwork is lush, gorgeous. The book is a great success. Layout, art and essays amplify one another."Asked to respond to the third of the Four Great Bodhisattva Vows, "Dharma Gates Are Boundless, I Vow to Enter Them," Koun Franz, Konjin Gaelyn Godwin, Seigen Hartkemeyer, Daishin McCabe, Enkyo O'Hara, Zuiko Redding, Daigaku Rummé, Jisho Sara Seibert, Brad Warner and Gyokei Yokoyama have recounted their personal experiences of dharma gates, in what Rev. Dr. Daijaku Kinst, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Graduate Theological Union, describes as " words whose honesty and insight inform and transform us."These essays offer us an opportunity to examine how we ourselves understand Dharma or "the truth of how things are," as well as varied perspectives that urge us to look closely at the dharma gates in our own lives. Each painting, by an artist whose work is carried by a well-respected gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and has been shown in New York, invites us to go beyond words and break through into intuitive understanding that rises from limitless depths of color and light. Each reading of the work offers new insights, both visual and literary, into the heart of Zen Buddhism.