In these essays, based on a series of lectures given to the Buddhist Society in London, Dr. Robert Powell is at pains to point out that man can function in two distinct modes of being which are as different from each other as Heaven and Hell. The truth of this statement does not lie hidden away in esoteric works, nor does it require the mind of a scholar to discover. In fact it can be found everywhere, but one must be sensitive to it and able and willing to listen to its intimations.

          The author elucidates in the course of his inquiry that Zen, shorn of its institutionalized practices, is essentially a pointer to an insight into the simple truth of living — a path, yet not of time, that is basically the same as the direct approach which has been so clearly indicated by J. Krishnamurti. "Zen Buddhism can be described as a school seeking to find in the self, rather than in ceremony or doctrine, the path to wisdom, and has as its inner message: the less done, the clearer is reality; the less said, the more direct our apprehension."