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Hakuin Ekaku was one of the great thinkers of Zen Buddhism, and his hymn “The Song of Zazen,” composed around 1760, is a poetic encapsulation of his philosophy. “In his day, Hakuin was to Japanese Zen what the Beatles were to rock ’n’ roll in the 1960s,” writes Lahn of the poet. “He was a radical reformer, reinvigorating the active practice of Zen, both within the monasteries and among the common folk.” Even so, the ideas contained within the poem are not inherently Buddhist: The author argues that Hakuin’s meditation on suffering and wisdom speaks to people across cultures and faith traditions. With this book, Lahn seeks to bring Hakuin’s poem to that wider audience, demystifying its sometimes-enigmatic verses and applying them to his own modern concerns. As the author explains, the poem “takes away far more than it gives,” helping readers shed the cumbersome ideas and emotions that get in the way of accessing the deeper truth of being. “The Song of Zazen” is not a lengthy poem—the translation by Norman Waddell that Lahn works from is only 43 lines long—but each short stanza is given its own elucidating chapter. The author’s prose is empathetic and accessible, supplementing Hakuin’s spare lines with relatable analysis. Here, he illustrates Hakuin’s insistence on the necessity of suffering with an example from his own life, when he became reliant on crutches after injuring his foot: “After a while, the nurse told me I could wean off the supports and walk freely again despite the pain. Although it was growth and progress, I found myself reluctant to experience the pain of a healing foot as well as go without the nice attention and sympathy the crutches and cane brought me.” It’s an unexpectedly breezy work, and Lahn is correct that one need not be a Buddhist to appreciate the simple, if unintuitive, wisdom that Hakuin and his poem offer.

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