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Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers

Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers PDF Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861716914
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
"The Guys in this Book are my Heroes, and Perle Besserman and Manfred Steger have done a tremendous job of bringing their stories to life. It's important to put a spotlight on the radical, rebellious characters who have shaped the Zen Buddhist lineage. I really like this book."---Brad Warner, Author of Hardcore Zen --

Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers

Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers PDF Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861716914
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
"The Guys in this Book are my Heroes, and Perle Besserman and Manfred Steger have done a tremendous job of bringing their stories to life. It's important to put a spotlight on the radical, rebellious characters who have shaped the Zen Buddhist lineage. I really like this book."---Brad Warner, Author of Hardcore Zen --

The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism

The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism PDF Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834826658
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
Jewish mystics from biblical times to the present have explored the hidden secrets of the Torah in quest of a single goal: to lose the self in the Infinite "No-thingness" (Ein Sof) and be at one with God. In language accessible to the layperson, this Shambhala Guide provides a detailed introduction to the complex world of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. With an extensive background in meditation practice, Perle Besserman emphasizes Kabbalah's spiritual disciplines, grounded in righteous living, devotional practices, and meditation. She discusses the Kabbalistic universe, including the four worlds and ten sefirot; Jewish meditation techniques and instructions for beginning meditation; mystics and teachers from Rabbi Akiva and the Baal Shem Tov to Aryeh Kaplan; the often uneasy relationship between Kabbalah and mainstream Judaism; and applying the ancient wisdom of Jewish mysticism to life in the world of today.

Kabbalah

Kabbalah PDF Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1611806232
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Unraveling the web of ancient traditions hidden in such texts as the Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar, this book traces history and offers an accessible introduction to understanding Kabbalah and its practices. Jewish mysticism has flourished—sometimes brilliantly, sometimes darkly—over five thousand years. This pioneering, popular text on Jewish mysticism was the first written for a general audience, and in it, Perle Besserman offers a lively and accessible introduction to the methods, schools, and practitioners of this intriguing world. She traces the history of Kabbalah through the lives of its illustrious scholars and saints and unravels the web of ancient traditions hidden in such texts as Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar. Running through these pages are the words of the outstanding Kabbalists and mystics—including Simeon bar Yohai, Isaac Luria, Abraham Abulafia, and the Baal Shem Tov—giving instructions on practices ranging from contemplation of the Bible’s secret teachings to ritual, ecstatic prayer, and intensive meditation.

Grassroots Zen

Grassroots Zen PDF Author: Manfred B. Steger
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780804832434
Category : Spiritual life
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Many Zen Buddhist practitioners have come to question some of Japanese Zen's less democratic aspects -- from the strict, male-dominated hierarchies to the racial overtones. At the same time, modern American Buddhists often find it difficult to integrate zazen (seated Zen meditation) with lives of family, work, and social engagement. This book offers a fascinating guide to overcoming both these dilemmas. A study of how one Zen group returned to an ancient Chinese tradition of community meditation practice without a leader or hierarchy, this book also outlines an authentic, grassroots approach, urging people from all walks of life to come together in meditation and the study of dharma. Grassroots Zen focuses on the challenge of truly becoming one with the moment in our frantically paced society; of finding a space for the passing self; and of achieving balance between Zen practice and daily life, as well as individuality in community. A thoughtful and absorbing work, Grassroots Zen is an important book for those seeking a practice that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea

Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea PDF Author: Joshua Horwitz
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472033700
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
Does the gun lobby threaten the democratic institutions safeguarding individual liberty in America?

A New Zen for Women

A New Zen for Women PDF Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 0230610854
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
Perle Besserman's adventures in a Japanese Zen monastery provide the groundwork for this lively, heartwarming narrative of a woman's life in Zen. Engaging in cross-cultural dialogues with nuns and laywomen in India, China, Japan, and more, Besserman dispels the notion that women had nothing to do with the founding and sustaining of Zen. She shows how women continue to transform traditional Zen in new and creative ways, integrating the practice of meditation into their lives. Both informative and entertaining, A New Zen for Women offers a new look at Western women encountering Zen.

Mud and Water

Mud and Water PDF Author: Bassui Tokusho
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861717236
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
The fourteenth-century Zen master Bassui was recognized as one of the most important Zen teachers of his time. Accessible and eloquent, these teachings cut to the heart of the great matter of Zen, pointing directly to the importance of seeing our own original nature and recognizing it as Buddhahood itself. Bassui is taking familiar concepts in Buddhism and recasting them in an essential Zen light. Though he lived centuries ago in a culture vastly different from our own, Zen Master Bassui speaks with a voice that spans time and space to address our own modern challenges - in our lives and spiritual practice. Like the revered Master Dogen several generations before him, Bassui was dissatisfied with what passed for Zen training, and taught a radically reenergized form of Zen, emphasizing deep and direct penetration into one's own true nature. And also like Dogen, Bassui uses powerful and often poetic language to take familiar Buddhist concepts recast them in a radically non-dual Zen light, making ancient doctrines vividly relevant. This edition of Mud and Water contains several teachings never before translated.

Zen Master Who?

Zen Master Who? PDF Author: James Ishmael Ford
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861715098
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
Surprisingly little has been written about how Zen came to North America. "Zen Master Who?" does that and much more. Author James Ishmael Ford, a renowned Zen master in two lineages, traces the tradition's history in Asia, looking at some of its most important figures -- the Buddha himself, and the handful of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese masters who gave the Zen school its shape. It also outlines the challenges that occurred as Zen became integrated into western consciousness, and the state of Zen in North America today. The author includes profiles of modern Zen teachers and institutions, including D. T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, and such topics as the emergence of liberal Buddhism, and Christians, Jews, and Zen. This engaging, accessible book is aimed at anyone interested in this tradition but who may not know how to start. Most importantly, it clarifies a great and ancient tradition for the contemporary seeker.

Long Strange Journey

Long Strange Journey PDF Author: Gregory P. A. Levine
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824858085
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
Long Strange Journey presents the first critical analysis of visual objects and discourses that animate Zen art modernism and its legacies, with particular emphasis on the postwar “Zen boom.” Since the late nineteenth century, Zen and Zen art have emerged as globally familiar terms associated with a spectrum of practices, beliefs, works of visual art, aesthetic concepts, commercial products, and modes of self-fashioning. They have also been at the center of fiery public disputes that have erupted along national, denominational, racial-ethnic, class, and intellectual lines. Neither stable nor strictly a matter of euphoric religious or intercultural exchange, Zen and Zen art are best approached as productive predicaments in the study of religion, spirituality, art, and consumer culture, especially within the frame of Buddhist modernism. Long Strange Journey’s modern-contemporary emphasis sets it off from most writing on Zen art, which focuses on masterworks by premodern Chinese and Japanese artists, gushes over “timeless” visual qualities as indicative of metaphysical states, or promotes with ahistorical, trend-spotting flair Zen art’s design appeal and therapeutic values. In contrast, the present work plots a methodological through line distinguished by “discourse analysis,” moving from the first contacts between Europe and Japanese Zen in the sixteenth century to late nineteenth–early twentieth-century transnational exchanges driven by Japanese Buddhists and intellectuals and the formation of a Zen art canon; to postwar Zen transformations of practice and avant-garde expressions; to popular embodiments of our “Zenny zeitgeist,” such as Zen cartoons. The book presents an alternative history of modern-contemporary Zen and Zen art that emphasizes their unruly and polythetic-prototypical natures, taking into consideration serious religious practice and spiritual and creative discovery as well as conflicts over Zen’s value amid the convolutions of global modernity, squabbles over authenticity, resistance against the notion of “Zen influence,” and competing claims to speak for Zen art made by monastics, lay advocates, artists, and others.

21st Century Yoga

21st Century Yoga PDF Author: Carol Horton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615617602
Category : Hatha yoga
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
Yoga may be rooted in ancient India, but it's morphed into something new in North America today. Precisely what that might be, however, is difficult to say. Yoga is taught everywhere from spas to prisons, and for everything from weight loss to spiritual transcendence. With its chameleon-like ability to adapt equally well to advertising, athletics, and ashrams, contemporary yoga is a fascinating phenomenon that invites investigation. Written by experienced practitioners who are also teachers, therapists, activists, scholars, studio owners, and interfaith ministers, 21st Century Yoga is one of the first books to provide a multi-faceted examination of yoga as it actually exists in the U.S. and Canada today. CONTENTS: Introduction: Yoga and North American Culture - Carol Horton Enlightenment 2.0: The American Yoga Experiment - Julian Walker How Yoga Makes You Pretty: The Beauty Myth, Yoga and Me - Melanie Klein Questioning the "Body Beautiful": Yoga, Commercialism, and Discernment - Poep Sa Frank Jude Boccio Bifurcated Spiritualities: Examining Mind/Body Splits in the North American Yoga and Zen Communities - Nathan Thompson Starved for Connection: Healing Anorexia Through Yoga - Chelsea Roff Yoga and the 12 Steps: Holistic Recovery from Addiction - Tommy Rosen Modern Yoga Will Not Form a Real Culture Until Every Studio Can Also Double as a Soup Kitchen and other observations from the threshold between yoga and activism - Matthew Remski Yoga for War: The Politics of the Divine - Be Scofield Our True Nature is Our Imagination: Yoga and Non-Violence at the Edge of the World - Michael Stone How Yoga Messed With My Mind - Angela Jamison Afterword: The Evolution of Yoga and the Practice of Writing - Roseanne Harvey