The ancient Taoist text that forms the central part of this book was discovered by Wilhelm, who recognized it as essentially a practical guide to the integration of personality.

    Andrew Hudgins imagines himself in the life of a now largely forgotten poet, Sidney Lanier, who served as a soldier for the Confederacy.

    What is the difference, he asks, between good and evil, cruelty and instruction, risk and trust? Against the backdrop of the natural world, Phillips pitches the restlessness of what it means to be human, as he at once deepens and extends a meditation on that space where the forces of will and imagination collide with sexual and moral conduct.

    This is the first book to apply the 2,500-year-old principles of Zen Buddhism to the modern struggle with the vicious cycle of dieting, losing, and regaining weight. From a Buddhist perspective, overeating is a disorder of desire. This book will teach readers how to find freedom from eating problems and the tyranny of desire that triggers them. Filled with concrete, practical exercises and the wisdom of the ages, The Zen of Eating provides, at last, an alternative to ineffective diet programs, products, and pills.

    By building a rude home in the forest and eliminating desire, poet and Buddhist priest Chomei believed he would be spared the anguish that had befallen the townspeople. Yet at the end we find the author consumed with self-doubt, questioning his own sanity and the integrity of his purpose. His voice reaches out from the distant past and speaks directly to our hearts, surprisingly modern and intensely human.Author Biography: Yasuhiko Moriguchi and David Jenkins are writers, teachers, and translators living in Kyoto. Stone Bridge Press is a leading English-language publisher of Japanese literature in translation. Our ROCK SPRING COLLECTION OF JAPANESE LITERATURE features absorbing and important translations of classical and contemporary Japanese fiction and poetry. We believe that literature is a window into culture and society, and an expression of what is most peculiarly, and universally, human.

    Dear Reader, We humans have come to a crossroads in our history: we can either destroy the world or create a good future. The Shambhala Principle offers the principle of basic goodness as a way of addressing the personal and social challenges that we face. Do we, as humans, have confidence in the basic goodness of humanity, as well as of society itself? As a Tibetan lama and spiritual leader, this strikes me as our most compelling global issue.The book revolves around a dialogue with my father, the legendary Ch�gyam Trungpa. Whether his responses were direct or mystical, he continuously returned to the topics of basic goodness and enlightened society. Not only did he show me how I could become confident in their existence through awareness and meditation, he also taught me how basic goodness is a socially viable standard that could stabilize and transform our world.However, this book is not a memoir, or even a message. It is an invitation to readers to reflect on their own basic goodness and the basic goodness of society, and then contemplate the question, Can we rouse our energy and confidence to create a good world that is founded on this principle?I encourage you to join me in this contemplation. --Sakyong Mipham

    The poems expertly gathered here offer all that one might hope for in such spiritual friendship: wisdom, compassion, peacefulness, good humor, and the ability to both absorb and express the deepest human emotions of grief and joy.The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy offers a wide-ranging collection of 129 ancient and modern poems unlike any other anthology on bookshelves today. It uniquely places Buddhist poets like Han Shan, Tu Fu, Saigyo, Ryokan, Basho, Issa, and others alongside modern Western poets one would not expect to find in such a collection—poets like Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, William Stafford, Denise Levertov, Jack Gilbert, Ellen Bass, Billy Collins, and more. What these poems have in common, no matter whether they are explicitly Buddhist, is that all reflect the essential truths the Buddha articulated 2,500 years ago. The book provides an important poetic complement to the many prose books on mindfulness practice—the poems here both reflect and embody the dharma in ways that can’t be matched by other modes of writing. It’s unique features include an introduction that discusses the themes of impermanence, mindfulness, and joy and explores the relationship between them. Biographical notes place the poets in historical context and offer quotes and anecdotes to help readers learn about the poets’ lives. A short essay at the back of the book on “Mindful Reading” helps readers approach the poems from an experiential, non-analytical perspective and illustrates the similarities between meditation and the mindful reading of poetry. Brehm also includes a guided meditation on sound that helps readers appreciate the sonic qualities of poetry and shows how the anthology might be used in ongoing spiritual practice.

    In 1988 Chadwick flew to Japan to begin a four-year period of voluntary exile and remedial Zen education. In Thank You and OK! he recounts his experiences both inside and beyond the monastery walls and offers insightful portraits of the characters he knew in that world—the bickering monks, the patient abbot, the trotting housewives, the ominous insects, the bewildered bureaucrats, and the frustrating English-language students—as they worked inexorably toward initiating him into the mysterious ways of Japan. Whether you're interested in Japan, Buddhism, or exotic travel writing, this book is great fun.

    Each of the eighty-one teachings presented by Taoist scholar and poet Brian Walker are rich with wisdom, mystery, and startling enlightenment.

    It is entirely appropriate that the French Enlightenment is also known as "the age of Voltaire." And if that age ended with a revolution, Voltaire was nothing if not a subversive. His abiding motto was "Écrasez l'infame": "Crush infamy."This encyclopedic anthology acquaints us with Voltaire's mercurial range of expression as well as with the steadfastness of his vision, which might be called the religion of reason. It includes his sardonic comedies Candide and Zadig; the tales "Micromegas" and 'Story of a Good Brahmin"; more than seventy articles from the Philosophical Dictionary that offer heretical definitions of subjects from Adultery to Tyranny; letters written to such correspondents as Frederick the Great and Jean-Jacques Rousseau; selections from The English Letters and Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations, and the long poem "The Lisbon Earthquake." The whole is rounded out with an Introduction by Ben Ray Redman, which distills Voltaire's prodigious oeuvre while summing up the grand picaresque adventure of his life.Cover design by Melissa JacobyPortrait of Voltaire after N. de Largilliere, 1718.Collection Musee Carnavalet, Paris. Photograph: Art ResourceDescription from back coverContentsEditor's introductionSome dates in the life of VoltaireBrief bibliography of works VoltairePhilosophical dictionarySelectionsMiscellanyCandideZadigMicromegasStory of a good BrahminLetters - To Frederick the great - Miscellaneous letters - Selections from the English lettersEssay on the manners and spirit of nations: RecapitulationLisbon earthquake - Author's preface - Lisbon earthquake

    But unlike his two renowned colleagues, Ryokan was a societal dropout, living mostly as a hermit and a beggar. He was never head of a monastery or temple. He liked playing with children. He had no dharma heir. Even so, people recognized the depth of his realization, and he was sought out by people of all walks of life for the teaching to be experienced in just being around him. His poetry and art were wildly popular even in his lifetime. He is now regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Edo Period, along with Basho, Buson, and Issa. He was also a master artist-calligrapher with a very distinctive style, due mostly to his unique and irrepressible spirit, but also because he was so poor he didn’t usually have materials: his distinctive thin line was due to the fact that he often used twigs rather than the brushes he couldn’t afford. He was said to practice his brushwork with his fingers in the air when he didn’t have any paper. There are hilarious stories about how people tried to trick him into doing art for them, and about how he frustrated their attempts. As an old man, he fell in love with a young Zen nun who also became his student. His affection for her colors the mature poems of his late period. This collection contains more than 140 of Ryokan’s poems, with selections of his art, and of the very funny anecdotes about him.

    Brant’s writing [is] taut, terse and concentrated on exposing the fissures that open in the heroine’s confidence and sense of honor... Grounded has a grimly fresh topicality." - New York Times"Propulsive drama... A fascinating exploration of personality, Grounded is, of course, all the more interesting because the subject of drone warfare is so much in the news... Thought-provoking." - Washington Post"Brant’s sharp-eyed, timely script... lets no one off easy; it forces the audience into a greater awareness of our own complicity in America’s drifts. Clap all you want at the end of the play—and you’ll want to clap a lot—but the game stays with you." - Time Out New York"Brant's drama is ready for prime time... Compelling and provocative." - San Francisco Chronicle"I was blown away... Grounded powerfully focuses on the human element... Don't miss it." - The Nation"Gripping... A play that challenges us to consider the moral and mortal conflict that is so much a part of our dangerous world... Delivers quite the gut punch... Grounded could not be much more timely." - Baltimore SunSeamlessly blending the personal and the political, Grounded tells the story of a hot-rod F16 fighter pilot whose unexpected pregnancy ends her career in the sky. Repurposed to flying remote-controlled drones in the Middle East from an air-conditioned trailer near Vegas, the Pilot struggles through surreal twelve-hour shifts far from the battlefield, hunting terrorists by day and being a wife and mother by night. A tour de force play for one actress, Grounded flies from the heights of lyricism to the shallows of workaday existence, targeting our assumptions about war, family, and the power of storytelling.Winner of the 2012 Smith Prize, a 2013 Scotsman Fringe First Prize, and Shortlisted for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award 2013 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 2013.

    This dazzling, New York Times bestselling tribute to the roller-coaster football life of Brett Favre is packed with personal family photos and remembrances, stunning four-color action shots, and inspiring stories of a lifelong love affair with the all-American game.

    Indestructible Truth presents Tibetan Buddhism in its traditional form but also shows how the Tibetan traditions are applicable to the problems and challenges of modern life in the West.In Indestructible Truth, Tibetan Buddhism is introduced not as an exotic religion, but rather as an expression of human spirituality that is having a profound impact on the modern world. In addition, it presents the point of view of meditation and the practice of the spiritual life, paying special attention to contemplative practice and meditation as taught in the Kagyu and Nyingma schools.

    Littlefoot, the eighteenth book from one of this country's most acclaimed poets, is an extended meditation on mortality, on the narrator's search of the skies for a road map and for last instructions on "the other side of my own death." Following the course of one year, the poet's seventieth, we witness the seasons change over his familiar postage stamps of soil, realizing that we are reflected in them, that the true affinity is between writer and subject, human and nature, one becoming the other, as the river is like our blood, "it powers on, / out of sight, out of mind." Seeded with lyrics of old love songs and spirituals, here we meet solitude, resignation, and a glad cry that while a return to the beloved earth is impossible, "all things come from splendor," and the urgent question that the poet can't help but ask: "Will you miss me when I'm gone?