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“Taking Zen's lessons seriously need not entail taking Zen's lore literally. After all, the texts of the Zen tradition were not written as academic history books. John Maraldo's judicious and insightful The Saga of Zen History and the Power of Legend makes a compelling case for treating the traditional chronicles and lore of Zen as I do in this book—namely, as soteriological or liberating "legends" rather than as literal accounts of "history" in the modern academic sense uncritically assumed by many modern scholars "who seek only the facts behind the texts and devious motives behind the facts.” — Bret W Davis
Taking Zen's lessons seriously need not entail taking Zen's lore literally. After all, the texts of the Zen tradition were not written as academic history books. John Maraldo's judicious and insightful The Saga of Zen History and the Power of Legend makes a compelling case for treating the traditional chronicles and lore of Zen as I do in this book—namely, as soteriological or liberating "legends" rather than as literal accounts of "history" in the modern academic sense uncritically assumed by many modern scholars "who seek only the facts behind the texts and devious motives behind the facts.