There are many reasons why Japanese Buddhism took hold in North America. While it is common to identify trends at the global level—the end of World War Two, the dialogue between American and Japanese writers and artists during the Beat Generation, and so on—we too often overlook the individuals who drove the diffusion of diverse traditions and the conversation between East and West.

Soto Zen master Dainin Katagiri Roshi (1928–90), who founded the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in 1972, was one of these people who were uniquely equipped to understand the needs and the culture of the people of America while disseminating Zen teachings with authenticity. He was a prolific writer and his teachings were widely circulated during his life. Last year, a new volume containing his most persuasive thoughts about the nature of existence, the meaning of human activity, and our personal purpose in life—whatever our background or context—was published, titled The Light that Shines Through Infinity: Zen and the Energy of Life.

The book is divided into five parts, each with their own sub-chapters, devoted to big topics: life force and life, practice and enlightenment, body and mind, wisdom and compassion, and peace and harmony. There are too many inspiring passages to quote in one short review, but what this book aims to do is to hold up, in true Zen tradition, a mirror to one’s deepest, most intimate self. Edited by Andrea Martin, a student of the late teacher, this book provides cogent counsel on how “to be with Dharma,” to live “wholeheartedly, constantly trying to be with that stream of great energy.”

Katagiri Roshi equates this “stream of great energy,” a constant theme in this book, with reality or life itself. It is also inseparable from the notion of Dharma, which in his view should not be divided into the two classical definitions of “the principle of how the life of all sentient beings is constructed,” (the Dharma that every Buddha in each world-age discovers and teaches) and “everything in the phenomenal world” (dharmas in Abhidharma philosophy).

He disagrees with this bifurcation of the Dharma by noting: “The phenomenal world is not something separate from the ultimate nature of existence; the phenomenal world includes the ultimate nature of existence. . . . Buddha’s teaching is also called dharma. But Buddha’s dharma is not something different from human life; life itself is Buddha’s teaching. Whether you are conscious of it or not, you are living right in the middle of dharma.”

When we are trying to align ourselves with reality, we are really trying to align our life force with the flowing energies of the cosmos, embracing it joyfully and therefore living authentically and being who we were meant to be. “Real reality is just activity, function, or movement—the universal energy is the point that Buddhism is always interested in.”