Zen: Its History and Teachings

By: OSHO

Narrated by: OSHO

Only once in the history of human consciousness, says Osho, has a thing like Zen come into being. In Zen: Its History and Teachings, the noted mystic explains that Zen has no rituals, no chanting, no mantras, no scriptures - only short, evocative parables and teachings that make it ideal for the modern man. Using his characteristic humorous, encouraging style, Osho guides through the origins and development of this seminal spiritual tradition that is neither religion nor dogma nor creed. He provides a context for those who have not been born into the Zen tradition, introducing them to its timeless approach to existence, arguing that the only preparation for fully experiencing Zen's power is meditative awareness and presents simple techniques to achieve this awareness.

©1981 OSHO International Foundation (P)2015 OSHO International Foundation

Thick Accent

The narrator’s accent (Indian, I think) was consistently difficult to understand and made me go back 30 seconds quite a bit. I’m sure I missed it misconstrued content frequently.

Difficult to follow with his accent

You will have to have this book listened to with excessive focus and no distraction.

Zen concepts are explored. Difference between knowledge and wisdom.

At the beginning of this Osho talk I had some trouble hearing what he was saying however later on in the speech he became easier to hear. Osho starts off conversations with a silent tone sometimes and for this speech the acoustics might have made it harder to hear. As far as the content I found the beginning of the speech to be hard to comprehend, especially when he was talking about the Zen koans which are meant to be hard to understand, for me it was worse than a puzzle and merely unintelligible nonsense. Moving forward through the speech near the end it actually got really good and thats when Osho mentions that wisdom and love go together just like knowledge and logic. Wisdom is a way of knowing by looking within and knowledge is a way of learning by looking out. This was a tough speech to fully comprehend and likely requires multiple listens to fully integrate.