Author: Xuyun
Publisher: HarperElement
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Author: Hsuan Hua
Publisher: Buddhist Text Translation Society
ISBN: 1601030355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
Master Hsu Yun (虛雲, alternately romanized as Xuyun; “Empty Cloud”) was a renowned Chan master and one of the most influential Chinese Buddhist teachers of the 19th and 20th centuries. He founded Zhenru Monastery in Jiangxi Province and restored Nanhua Monastery in Guangdong Province, the monastery of the Sixth Chan Patriarch Huineng. At Nanhua Monastery, he transmitted the Dharma-seal of the Weiyang lineage of the Chan school to Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua (then Tu Lun). Over his 119-year lifespan (1840–1959), he witnessed the end of imperial rule in China, the short-lived rise of the democratic republic, two world wars, and the eventual rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Volume One covers Venerable Master Hsu Yun’s birth and enlightenment. Volume Two covers Venerable Master Hsu Yun’s propagation of Buddhism

Author: Lawrence A. Seman
Publisher: WestBow Press
ISBN: 1664252169
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
On a recent trip to Israel he was struck by a simple observation used by the Israeli Guide of an “Empty Cloud” while visiting the Oasis of Ein Gedi. The account of that experience led him to write this personal meditation on how that lends itself to all of the concerns that arise when we say a prayer.

Author: Taigen Dan Leighton
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 146291652X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Cultivating the Empty Field is a modern translation of the core of Chinese Ch'an master Hongzhi's Extensive Record. First to articulate the meditation method known to contemporary Zen practitioners as shikantaza ("just sitting") Chinese Zen master Hongzhi is one of the most influential poets in all of Zen literature. This translation of Hongzhi's poetry, the only such volume available in English, treats readers to his profound wisdom and beautiful literary gift. In addition to dozens of Hongshi's religious poems, translator Daniel Leighton offers an extended introduction, placing the master's work in its historical context , as well as lineage charts and other information about the Chinese influence on Japanese Soto Zen. Both spiritual literature and meditation instruction, Cultivating the Empty Field is sure to inspire and delight.

Author:
Publisher: The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
INTRODUCTION Long before the time of his death in 1959 at the venerable age of 120 on Mount Yun-ju, Jiangxi Province, Master Xu-yun’s name was known and revered in every Chinese Buddhist temple and household, having become something of a living legend in his own time. His life and example has aroused the same mixture of awe and inspiration in the minds of Chinese Buddhists as does as does a Milarepa for the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, remarkable in view of the fact that Xu-yun lived well into our own era, tangibly displaying those spiritual powers that we must otherwise divine by looking back through the mists of time to the great Chan adepts of the Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties. They were great men whose example still inspires many today, but in many cases, we have scant details as to their lives as individuals, outside their recorded dialogues or talks of instruction. The compelling thing about Xu-yun’s story which follows is that it paints a vivid portrait of one of China’s greatest Buddhist figures complete with all the chiaroscuro of human and spiritual experience. It is not a modern biography in the Western sense, it is true, but it does lay bare the innermost thoughts and feelings of Master Xu-yun, making him seem that much more real to us. No doubt, the main thing for a Buddhist is the instructional talks, and Xu-yun’s are rich in insights, but it is only natural that we should wonder about the individual, human factors, asking what life was like for these fascinating figures. After all, holy men are like mountains, while their ‘peaks of attainment’ may thrust into unbounded space, they must rest on the broad earth like the rest of us. That part of their experience - how they relate to temporal conditions - is an intrinsic part of their development, even if the ultimate goal be to ‘pass beyond’ the pale of this world. In Xu- yun’s account we are given a fascinating glimpse into the inner life of a great Chinese Buddhist Master. By the time of his passing, Xu-yun was justifiably recognized as the most eminent Han Chinese Buddhist in the ‘Middle Kingdom’. When he gave his talks of instruction at meditation meetings and transmitted the Precepts in his final decades, literally hundreds of disciples converged upon the various temples where he met and received his followers and, on some occasions, this number swelled to thousands. Such a wave of renewed enthusiasm had not been witnessed in the Chinese monasteries since the Ming Dynasty when Master Han-shan (1546-1623) appeared. This eminent Master had also found the Dharma in decline and set about reconstructing the temples and reviving the teachers, as would Master Xu-yun some three hundred years or so later. Only years before these great gatherings around Master Xu-yun, many of the temples which he was subsequently to use had been little more than ruined shells, decrepit shadows of their former grandeur and vitality, but the Master revived these along with the teachings that were their very raison d’être. Not surprisingly, Xu-yun soon acquired the nickname ‘Han-shan come again’ or ‘Han-shan returned’, for their careers were in many respects similar. Both had shared the ordination name of ‘De-qing’ and both had restored the Monastery of Hui-neng at Cao-xi among others in their times. However, unlike his eminent predecessors in the Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties who had frequently enjoyed official patronage and support from Emperor and State, Xu-yun’s long life of 120 years spanned a most troublesome time both for China and Chinese Buddhism. It was a period continually punctuated by both civil and international conflict, with almost perpetual doubt and confusion as to China’s future and security, one in which general want and straitened circumstances were the order of the day. Xu-yun was born in 1840 around the time of the Opium Wars and by 1843 the Treaty of Nanjing had been signed with the ceding of Hong Kong to Great Britain, the thin end of a wedge of foreign intervention in China’s affairs that was to have fateful and long- lasting repercussions. Xu-yun lived to see the last five reigns of the Manchu Dynasty and its eventual collapse in 1911, the formation of the new Republican era taking place in the following year. With the passing of the old order, much was to change in China. China’s new leaders were not that concerned about the fate of Buddhism and indeed, many of them were inclined to regard it as a medieval superstition standing in the way of all social and economic progress. The waves of modernism sweeping China at this time were not at all sympathetic towards Buddhism nor any other traditional teachings. Needless to say, many of the monasteries found themselves falling on hard times and many others had already been in ruins before the fall of the dynasty. Government support for the Buddhist temples was scanty when not altogether absent. Of course, China’s new leaders had other things on their minds, for besides the frequent famines, droughts and epidemics which ravaged China during these years, there was also the growing threat of Japanese invasion. The Communist Chinese were rising in the countryside, soon to find sufficient strength to take on the Nationalist armies. By the late 1930s, Japanese troops occupied large areas of northern China. It goes without saying that this unfortunate social and political climate hardly offered the best of circumstances in which to embark upon large-scale renewal of the Chinese Buddhist tradition...

Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465541071
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Author: David Mitchell
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307373576
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction Featuring a new afterword by David Mitchell and a new introduction by Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England, to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok, and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781573223331
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
"[Thich Nhat Hanh] shows us the connection between personal, inner peace and peace on earth." --His Holiness The Dalai Lama Nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr. for a Nobel Peace Prize, Thich Nhat Hanh is one of today’s leading sources of wisdom, peace, compassion and comfort. With hard-won wisdom and refreshing insight, Thich Nhat Hanh confronts a subject that has been contemplated by Buddhist monks and nuns for twenty-five-hundred years— and a question that has been pondered by almost anyone who has ever lived: What is death? In No Death, No Fear, the acclaimed teacher and poet examines our concepts of death, fear, and the very nature of existence. Through Zen parables, guided meditations, and personal stories, he explodes traditional myths of how we live and die. Thich Nhat Hanh shows us a way to live a life unfettered by fear.

Author: Anne Nesbet
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 0763688037
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
"Noah Keller has a pretty normal life until one wild afternoon when his parents pick him up from school and head straight for the airport, telling him on the ride that his name isn't really Noah and he didn't really just turn eleven in March ... As Noah, now 'Jonah Brown,' and his parents head behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin, the rules and secrets begin to pile up so quickly that he can hardly keep track of the questions bubbling up inside him: who, exactly, is listening--and why?"

Author: Pema Chodron
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1611808685
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of When Things Fall Apart, an open-hearted call for human connection, compassion, and learning to love the world just as it is during these most challenging times. In her first new book of spiritual teachings in over seven years, Pema Chödrön offers a combination of wisdom, heartfelt reflections, and the signature mix of humor and insight that have made her a beloved figure to turn to during times of change. In an increasingly polarized world, Pema shows us how to strengthen our abilities to find common ground, even when we disagree, and influence our environment in positive ways. Sharing never-before told personal stories from her remarkable life, simple and powerful everyday practices, and directly relatable advice, Pema encourages us all to become triumphant bodhisattvas--compassionate beings--in times of hardship. Welcoming the Unwelcome includes teachings on the true meaning of karma, recognizing the basic goodness in ourselves and the people we share our lives with--even the most challenging ones, transforming adversity into opportunities for growth, and freeing ourselves from the empty and illusory labels that separate us. Pema also provides step-by-step guides to a basic sitting meditation and a compassion meditation that anyone can use to bring light to the darkness we face, wherever and whatever it may be.