Zen Flesh Zen Bones

Since I so thoroughly enjoyed The Gateless Gate, I thought I'd investigate Zen literature a bit more.  This collection actually contains four different texts packages together.  

The first is a collection of 101 Zen stories that were originally published in the 13th century as the Collection of Stone and Sand.  While these are all entertaining and enlightening to some degree, the majority of them don't live up to the (extremely high) standards of thought-provoking-ness set by The Gateless Gate.  There are, however, a number of gems in here like Nan-In's cup of tea and Toyo's sound of one hand. 

The second is another translation of The Gateless Gate.  I prefer the version I read earlier because the Yamada Koun translation also provides a second layer of commentary specifically meant to take these koans more accessible to Westerners.  

The third is a reprint of the 10 Bulls or 10 Ox Herding Pictures that are meant to describe the stages of enlightenment.  The drawings reprinted here are those of Tokuriki Tomikichiro, with the verses from Kuòān Shīyuǎn, and commentary from who knows where.  I find this the most appealing of all the maps of enlightenment I've encountered so far, mainly for its simplicity and the sense of everyday mystery in those last few drawings.  Also, I have a solid intuitive sense that I'm working on stage 5 right now: Taming the Bull.

The final bit is a translation of a 7th century BCE Hindu scripture that bears a passing resemblance to the style of the later Zen writings.  However, this text is so old, so terse, and so severed from its context and tradition that it reads much like the fragments we have from the Presocratics.  It's not that you can't see the resemblance, it's just that you're given so little information that it's unclear whether you're drawing most of this connection from the context.   If you want to know more about this remarkably old bit of scripture, you can go down the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra wikipedia rabbit hole.  I mean, who even knew there was such a thing as Kashimir Shaivism?  That is, beyond the roughly 1.3b people for whom this question is not rhetorical.