The Placeless Abode - by David Radin (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Awaken to an awareness that's already inside you

The Placeless Abode weaves together five dharma talks delivered by Yoshin David Radin at the Rinzai-ji Zen Center of Los Angeles--his teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi's home temple. Structured like the sesshin, or Zen retreat, from which the material arose, each day's talk is followed by other writings that reflect and deepen the themes addressed.

The book invites readers to question the fundamental delusion of selfhood, explore the nature of death, and examine the mind's tendency to misidentify itself as form. Radin writes and speaks with a rare combination of piercing insight and compassionate humor, reflecting his deep training and decades of teaching experience. The central message--awakening to the awareness that is already present--is rendered with striking simplicity, allowing readers from diverse backgrounds to resonate with its truth and meaning.

The tone is warm, poetic, and direct, offering a rare accessibility to the often paradoxical teachings of Zen.

Review Quotes

For the author's earlier books:

"These short discourses by an old Zen priest facing his possible imminent death are relaxed and friendly in tone, but not really casual. They speak directly to the heart of human suffering, the confusion that comes from not understanding what is clearly available for us to feel directly and be liberated." --Sylvia Boorstein, co-founding teacher, Spirit Rock Meditation Center

"Life is amazing when we step out of our thoughts, our selves, and become the mystery alive to itself. With kindness and Zen directness, Yoshin opens the gate of simplicity and invites us to live here, awake, free." --Jack Kornfield, author of No Time Like the Present

"Yoshin David Radin makes Zen completely available." --Norman Fischer, poet, Zen priest

"This is a wonderful book. It is simple. It is clear. But, bottom line, Yoshin Radin speaks to us from the heart of the matter. I highly recommend it." --James Ishmael Ford, author of Zen at the End of Religion

"With warmth, humor and gentle authority, Zen master Yoshin David Radin shares the fruits of decades of intimacy with the mind to invite us home to the heart." --Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy

"Sitting with this book is like sitting with a roshi and having the wisdom within you mirrored back to you in a way that shatters everything that keeps you from knowing who you are and aren't." --Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author of The Tao of Solomon

About the Author

Yoshin David Radin is a Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, and writer, and the abbot and founder of the Ithaca Zen Center in upstate New York, where he has taught for four decades. In 1976, he began Zen practice with Joshu Sasaki Roshi, was ordained a monk in 1983, and received the title of Oshō in 1989. Radin's teachings have been shared in various forms--his writings have been published in Tricycle magazine, adapted into spoken word and music projects, and collected in titles such as Love Songs of a Zen Monk, May It Be So (produced by Leonard Cohen), Deathbed Lullaby, Ever Since I Met You, and I Am With You. His most recent book, A Temporary Affair, was also published by Monkfish (2023). He lives in Spencer, New York, with his wife, Zen nun and Sufi Sheikha Marcia Radin.