An Introduction to the Way of the Buddha: Buddhism for Beginners


Shalu Sharma - 2016
    Here’s what you will learn in this book; you will learn about the Buddha, history of Buddha and Buddhism, teachings of Buddha, about Buddhist philosophy, the 3 universal truths, noble truths, sufferings, eight fold path, divisions of Buddhism, the 5 precepts, how to practice Buddhism and more.Download your book today and learn Buddhism plain and simple.

Oneness: The Destination You Never Left


John Greven - 2005
    The intent of this book is to look afresh at one’s daily experience, to point to something that the mind may have overlooked. It is not pointing to anything new, anything that you can achieve, or anything you can add to yourself. It is not pointing to the good deeds you have done in your life to emphasize what a wonderful person you must be. It is pointing to something so simple, something so obvious, that when it is pointed out and seen, you wonder how it was ever missed. How could the mind have taken something so obvious for granted? How did the mind so easily toss out the valuable jewel in favor of its reflections? You may have been searching for self realization, enlightenment, the Buddha Mind, God, or some other goal implying the same thing. You may have been searching for many years, or you may just be getting started on a search; Whether you’ve been traveling a path for a while or you’re just taking the first step makes no difference. This book invites you to take a look at the space that has been overlooked, to see what is obvious, and to bring that search to an end—right now.

Adventures in Capitalism


Toby Litt - 1996
    Why does Mr Kipling bake such exceedingly good cakes? Is Jeremy Beadle really the devil incarnate? What happens when advertising turns you into a monomaniac? This title allows you to find out the answers.

Entre Nous: Essays on Thinking-of-the-Other


Emmanuel Levinas - 1995
    Exerting a profound influence upon such thinkers as Derrida, Lyotard, Blanchot, and Irigaray, Levinas's work bridges several major gaps in the evolution of continental philosophy--between modern and postmodern, phenomenology and poststructuralism, ethics and ontology. He is credited with having spurred a revitalized interest in ethics-based philosophy throughout Europe and America.Entre Nous (Between Us) is the culmination of Levinas's philosophy. Published in France a few years before his death, it gathers his most important work and reveals the development of his thought over nearly forty years of committed inquiry. Along with several trenchant interviews published here, these essays engage with issues of suffering, love, religion, culture, justice, human rights, and legal theory. Taken together, they constitute a key to Levinas's ideas on the ethical dimensions of otherness.Working from the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Levinas pushed beyond the limits of their framework to argue that it is ethics, not ontology, that orients philosophy, and that responsibility precedes reasoning. Ethics for Levinas means responsibility in relation to difference. Throughout his work, Levinas returns to the metaphor of the face of the other to discuss how and where responsibility enters our lives and makes philosophy necessary. For Levinas, ethics begins with our face to face interaction with another person--seeing that person not as a reflection of one's self, nor as a threat, but as different and greater than self. Levinas moves the reader to recognize the implications of this interaction: our abiding responsibility for the other, and our concern with the other's suffering and death.Situated at the crossroads of several philosophical schools and approaches, Levinas's work illuminates a host of critical issues and has found resonances among students and scholars of literature, law, religion, and politics. Entre Nous is at once the apotheosis of his work and an accessible introduction to it. In the end, Levinas's urgent meditations upon the face of the other suggest a new foundation upon which to grasp the nature of good and evil in the tangled skein of our lives.

Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters


John Stevens - 2001
    Budo Secrets contains the essential teachings of budo's greatest masters of Kendo, Karate, Judo, Aikido, and other disciplines. Timely and instructive, these writings are not just for martial artists—they're for anyone who wants to live life more courageously, with a greater sense of personal confidence and self-control, and with a deeper understanding of others. John Stevens has gathered an eclectic and historically rich collection of teachings that include principles and practice guidelines from training manuals and transmission scrolls, excerpts of texts on budo philosophy, and instructional tales gathered from a number of sources. Since many of the martial arts masters were also fine painters and calligraphers and used brush and ink as a teaching medium, Stevens has included their artwork throughout with explanation and commentary.

Essence of the Dhammapada: The Buddha's Call to Nirvana


Eknath Easwaran - 2013
    Said to be the text closest to the Buddha’s actual words, it is a collection of short teachings memorized during his lifetime by his disciples. Easwaran presents the Dhammapada as a guide to spiritual perseverance, progress, and ultimately enlightenment — a heroic confrontation with life as it really is, with straight answers to our deepest questions. We witness the heartbreak of death, for instance — what does that mean for us? What is love? How does karma work? How do we follow the spiritual life in the midst of work and family? Does nirvana really exist, and if so, what is it like to be illumined?In his interpretation of Buddhist themes, illustrated with stories from the Buddha’s life, Easwaran offers a view of the concept of Right Understanding that is both exhilarating and instructive. He shares his experiences on the spiritual path, giving the advice that only an experienced teacher and practitioner can offer, and urges us to answer for ourselves the Buddha’s call to nirvana — that mysterious, enduring state of wisdom, joy, and peace.

Language and Death: The Place of Negativity


Giorgio Agamben - 1982
    Focusing especially on the incompatible philosophical systems of Hegel and Heidegger within the space of negativity, Giorgio Agamben offers a rigorous reading of numerous philosophical and poetic works to examine how these issues have been traditionally explored. Agamben argues that the human being is not just “speaking” and “mortal” but irreducibly “social” and “ethical.” Giorgio Agamben teaches philosophy at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy. He is the author of Means without End (2000), Stanzas (1993), and The Coming Community (1993), all published by the University of Minnesota Press. Karen E. Pinkus is professor of French and Italian at the University of Southern California. Michael Hardt is professor of literature and romance studies at Duke University.

Tolerance


Hendrik Willem van Loon - 1925
    The history of Tolerance (or the lack thereof) in the history of man as described by one of the best popular historians of all time

Essays on the Gita


Sri Aurobindo - 1922
    A masterly exposition of the pre-eminent hindu scripture, the bhagavad gita itwas after reading these essays, in particular, that in the 1930s presidentwilsons daughter went to sri aurobindo and devoted her life - receiving thename nishtha via his vision in the sri aurobindo ashram at pondicherry index

Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World


Stephen Batchelor - 2017
    However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition? Is there an ethical framework that can underpin and contextualize these practices in a rapidly changing world?   In this collected volume of Stephen Batchelor’s writings on these themes, the author explores the complex implications of Buddhism’s secularization. Ranging widely—from reincarnation, religious belief, and agnosticism to the role of the arts in Buddhist practice—he offers a detailed picture of contemporary Buddhism and its attempt to find a voice in the modern world.

A Monastery Within: Tales from the Buddhist Path


Gil Fronsdal - 2010
    These are tales of transformation and spiritual growth. They delight and challenge as they express different facets of the Buddhist path to liberation in familiar, yet fresh and engaging, ways. These stories can be reread often, each time supporting new reflec- tions on the spiritual life and the possibility of each person awakening to the kindness, clarity and insight available to all of us. A Monastery Within points to how each person can build an inner home for the awakened life.

Validity in Interpretation


E.D. Hirsch Jr. - 1967
    It defines the grounds on which textual interpretation can claim to establish objective knowledge, defends that claim against such skeptical attitudes as historicism and psychologism, and shows that many confusions can be avoided if the distinctions between meaning and significance, interpretation and criticism are correctly understood. It provides perhaps the first genuinely comprehensive account of hermeneutic theory to appear in English and the first systematic presentation of the principles of valid interpretation in any language.Mr. Hirsch, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of Wordsworth and Schelling and Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake.“Here is a book that brings logic to the most unruly of disciplines, literary interpretation. Viewing this subject within the tradition of hermeneutics, Mr. Hirsch is able to trace its origins and development with brilliant insight.  The result is a lucidly systemic and authoritative account of the premises and procedures applicable to the interpretation of a literary text.  Mr. Hirsch has performed a monumental service thereby that of reinstating the credentials of objectivism and defining the limits of the aesthetics of truth.  This study is a necessary took for anyone who wants to talk sense about literature.”—Virginia Quarterly Review“Professor Hirsch demonstrates convincingly that objectivity is attainable in humane studies, and that it is not identified with the subject but with the evidence. A valid interpretation is not necessarily a correct one, but one which is more probably than any other on the basis of existing evidence.  He makes a subtle and important distinction between a text’s ‘meaning’ (which does not change) and its ‘significance’ (which does), and brilliantly relates meaning to understanding (the necessary preliminary to interpretation) and interpretation to explanation…” In short, this is a work which future students of literary theory cannot afford to neglect.”—Notes and Queries

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times


Pema Chödrön - 1996
    A collection of talks she gave between 1987 and 1994, the book is a treasury of wisdom for going on living when we are overcome by pain and difficulties. Chödrön discusses:    •  Using painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage    •  Communicating so as to encourage others to open up rather than shut down    •  Practices for reversing habitual patterns    •  Methods for working with chaotic situations    •  Ways for creating effective social action

The Practice of Everyday Life


Michel de Certeau - 1980
    In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology--to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

Open Sky


Paul Virilio - 1995
    Deepening and extending his earlier work on speed perception and political control, and applying it now to the global ‘real time’ of the information superhighways, he explores the growing danger of what he calls a “generalized accident,” provoked by the breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement.But this is not merely a lucid and disturbing lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy or democracy. Open Sky is also a call for revolt—against the insidious and accelerating manipulation of perception by the electronic media and repressive political power, against the tyranny of “real time,” and against the infantilism of cyberhype. Paul Virillo makes a powerful case for a new ethics of perception, and a new ecology, one which will not only strive to protect the natural world from pollution and destruction, but will also combat the devastation of urban communities by proliferating technologies of control and virtuality.