Since the dawn of Chan and Zen in medieval China and Japan, members of these schools have enlivened their teaching by creatively adopting and adapting terms, images, principles, poetry, and lore native to their societies. Unfortunately, so much of that cultural wealth has been "lost in translation" that Western practitioners have barely begun to discover and appreciate this extraordinarily rich legacy. In Storehouse of Treasures, second-generation American Zen teacher Nelson Foster makes a series of adventuresome forays into the trove of material laid up by the Dharma ancestors.

Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan and Zen, Nelson Foster, Shambhala, Paperback, 304 pages, $24.95

Nelson Foster began Zen practice under Diamond Sangha founder Robert Aitken in 1972, later becoming his Dharma heir and succeeding him at its Honolulu temple. Today he teaches in this lay lineage mainly at Ring of Bone Zendo in the Sierra Nevada foothills, while also serving East Rock Sangha in New England and making periodic visits to sanghas in Hawai'i. Among his Buddhist publications, the best known is the much-praised anthology The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader.