But six weeks later, a second examination revealed there was no cancer -- he had won "a reprieve from death." Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell in a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing and began a journey of 15,000 kilometers into the remote mountains and ancient forests of Sichuan in southwest China. The result of this epic voyage of discovery is Soul Mountain.Bold, lyrical, and prodigious, Soul Mountain probes the human soul with an uncommon directness and candor and delights in the freedom of the imagination to expand the notion of the individual self.

    Liu Pei, the legitimate heir to the Han throne, elects to fight for his birthright and enlists the aid of his sworn brothers, the impulsive giant Chang Fei and the invincible knight Kuan Yu. The brave band faces a formidable array of enemies, foremost among them the treacherous and bloodthirsty Ts'ao Ts'ao. The bold struggle of the three heroes seems doomed until the reclusive wizard Chuko Liang offers his counsel, and the tide begins to turn.Romance of the Three Kingdoms is China's oldest novel and the first of a great tradition of historical fiction. Believed to have been compiled by the play-wright Lo Kuan-chung in the late fourteenth century, it is indebted to the great San-kuo chi (Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms) completed by the historian Ch'en Shou just before his death in 297 CE. The novel first appeared in print in 1522. This edition, translated in the mid-1920s by C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, is based on a shortened and simplified version which appeared in the 1670s. An Introduction to this reprint by Robert E. Hegel, Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Washington University, provides an insightful commentary on the historical background to the novel, its literary origins and its main characters.

    Boldt has helped thousands of readers find personal satisfaction in their work and personal lives. Now he applies these principles to the subject of abundance: How do we achieve material wealth without sacrificing our souls?In The Tao of Abundance, Boldt applies ancient wisdom to modern times, presenting eight guiding principles from Taoist philosophy geared to help readers make practical life changes that will bring them a truer and deeper sense of abundance. Boldt encourages readers to strike a balance between material and spiritual wealth--not to favor one over the other--and argues that increased material wealth comes as a natural byproduct of psychological fulfillment. With exercises designed to help readers find their own balance between societal demands and their own deepest desires, this helpful, inspiring book offers the chance to experience a new feeling of abundance in all aspects of life.

    Set in a poor village in Henan province, it is a deeply moving and beautifully written account of a blood-selling ring in contemporary China. Based on a real-life blood-selling scandal in eastern China, Dream of Ding Village is the result of three years of undercover work by Yan Lianke, who worked as an assistant to a well-known Beijing anthropologist in an effort to study a small village decimated by HIV/AIDS as a result of unregulated blood selling. Whole villages were wiped out with no responsibility taken or reparations paid. Dream of Ding Village focuses on one family, destroyed when one son rises to the top of the Party pile as he exploits the situation, while another son is infected and dies. The result is a passionate and steely critique of the rate at which China is developing and what happens to those who get in the way.

    In addition to new information provided throughout this classic study, the new Part Six, "Deng Xiaoping and the Origins of Chinese Capitalism: 1976-1998," analyzes the country's uneasy relationships with democracy, socialism, and capitalism. Meisner incisively displays the contrasts between China's speech and actions regarding these subjects. Retaining the elegance, lucidity, fairness, insightfulness, and comprehensiveness he is known for, Meisner moves far beyond his previous work to paint a never-before-seen portrait of the political and social realities of China on the brink of the millennium, and the global implications of its rise to economic and political power.

    He might have been referring to the sixteenth-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was tried by two Inquisitions and burned at the stake in Rome in 1600.Bruno's most representative work, Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast), published in an atmosphere of secrecy in 1584 and never referred to as anything but blasphemous for more than a century, was singled out by the church tribunal at the summation of his final trial. That is hardly surprising because the book is a daring indictment of the corruption of the social and religious institutions of his day. The "triumphant beast" signifies the reign of multifarious vices. Cast in the form of allegorical dialogues, Bruno's work presents the deliberations of the Greek gods who have assembled to banish from the heavens the constellations that remind them of their evil deeds. The crisis facing Jove, the aging father of the gods, is symbolic of the crisis in a Renaissance world profoundly disturbed by new religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas.Arthur D. Imerti, former head of the Department of Foreign Languages at the New School for Social Research in New York City, provides a brilliant introduction to the philosopher who dared to voice his audacious theories of nature, religion, and history.

    Combining the traditional and the contemporary, Stone Boy and Other Stories contains ten works of short fiction that illuminate Buddhist themes and Vietnamese culture.

    A Compact yet thoroughly informative series on philosophical and religious topics, written with the general reader in mind.

    His "Shiji," or "Records of the Grand Historian," documents the history of China and its neighboring countries from the ancient past to his own time. These three volumes cover the Qin and Han dynasties.

    Iamblichus' biography is universally acknowledged as deriving from sources of the highest antiquity. Its classic translation by Thomas Taylor was first printed in 1818 and is once again brought to light in this edition.During Iamblichus' life, the depth and sublimity of his writing and discourse attracted a multitude of associates and disciples from all parts of the world. The Emperor Julian wrote of him, "that he was posterior indeed in time, but not in genius, to Plato," and all the Platonists who succeeded him honored him with the epithet of "divine."Iamblichus' account of the life of Pythagoras begins with the great philosopher's birth on the island of Samos, his youth, and his wide renown in Greece. It briefly covers his early travels and his studies with the philosophers Anaximander and Thales, his twenty-two years of instruction in the temples of Egypt, and his initiation into the Egyptian and Babylonian mysteries. The later life and work of Pythagoras are richly elaborated, with humorous and profound anecdotes illustrating his philosophy and providing a unique view of community life under his tutelage in Crotona.Included are excerpts from his teachings on harmonic science, dietetic medicine, friendship, temperance, politics, parenthood, the soul's former lives and many other topics. The book also contains substantial sections on the Fragments of the Ethical Writings (the work of very early Pythagoreans) and the Pythagoric Sentences.Sage of Samos, initiate of the mysteries, and transmitter of the ancient wisdom, Pythagoras was a pivotal figure in all of Western philosophy and thought. His life is as much an example for us today as it was for his students nearly twenty-five centuries ago.

    So taught the great Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969), founder of the Japanese martial art of Aikido. Aikido is a disciple Ueshiba called the “Art of Peace.” It offers a nonviolent way to victory in the face of conflict, and he believed that Aikido principles could be applied to all the challenges we face in life—in personal and business relationships, as well as in our interactions with society. These succinct and pithy teachings are drawn from his talks and writings. The collection is compiled by the renowned modern Aikidoist John Stevens, a disciple of Ueshiba.

    It is also a book about the often amusing and sometimes painful counterpoint between worldliness and holiness in Isherwood’s own life. Sexual sprees, all-night drinking bouts, a fast car ride with Greta Garbo, script-writing conferences at M-G-M, and intellectual sparring sessions with Bertolt Brecht alternated with nights of fasting at the Vedanta Center and a six-month period of celibacy and sobriety. Seldom has a single man been endowed with such strong drives toward both sensuality and spirituality, abandon and discipline. . . . In these pages, Isherwood has reinvented the spirit of devotion for the modern reader."  Edmund White, New York Times Book Review"This book is a humbling tribute to someone who revealed to Isherwood inner grounds for spiritual awareness." Alan Hollinghurst, New StatesmanA major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) is the author of Down There on a Visit, Lions and Shadows, A Meeting by the River, The Memorial,  Prater Violet, A Single Man, and The World in the Evening, all available from the University of Minnesota Press.

    This literature, Asian as well as Western, weaves together the strands of different traditions to create a novel hybrid that brings Buddhism into alignment with many of the ideologies and sensibilities of the post-Enlightenment West.In this book, David McMahan charts the development of this "Buddhist modernism." McMahan examines and analyzes a wide range of popular and scholarly writings produced by Buddhists around the globe. He focuses on ideological and imaginative encounters between Buddhism and modernity, for example in the realms of science, mythology, literature, art, psychology, and religious pluralism. He shows how certain themes cut across cultural and geographical contexts, and how this form of Buddhism has been created by multiple agents in a variety of times and places. His position is critical but empathetic: while he presents Buddhist modernism as a construction of numerous parties with varying interests, he does not reduce it to a mistake, a misrepresentation, or fabrication. Rather, he presents it as a complex historical process constituted by a variety of responses -- sometimes trivial, often profound -- to some of the most important concerns of the modern era.

    This monumental collection compiles history's greatest written works, from the ancient classics to more recent masterpieces. Great Books of the Western World contains 517 works from 130 of the most renowned minds throughout history. Volumes 1 and 2 comprise the Syntopicon®, a unique guide that enables you to investigate a particular idea and compare the perspectives of different authors. The Syntopicon organizes thirty centuries of thought into 102 Great Ideas, subsequently divided into topics and subtopics to effectively explore the different viewpoints over time. Authoritative, accurate, and complete, this collection represents the essential core of the Western literary canon

    This collection of translations of the classical Zen poets of China, Japan, and Korea includes the work of Zen practitioners and monks as well as scholars, artists, travelers, and recluses, ranging from Wang Wei, Hanshan, and Yang Wanli, to Shinkei, Basho, and Ryokan.