“You have to swallow the whole fish,” Zen Master Taizan Maezumi told his students, “and then spit out the bones.” First absorb the tradition, endure the hardships of Zen training, then you can spend the rest of your life separating the real treasure from the culture it came in — learning what you can let go of and what is truly yours.

Spitting Out the Bones is Genpo Roshi’s story of his uplifting, exhilarating, and humbling journey, including the last five years rising from the ashes of his very public fall from grace, and a candid exploration of the challenge of bringing the essence of the great tradition he inherited to life in the West.