Upside-Down Zen - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Upside-Down Zen write by Susan Murphy. This book was released on 2006-11-13. Upside-Down Zen available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "Upside-Down Zen" invites readers to explore the vivid spirit of Zen Buddhism in fresh ways. Recalling, in another vein, the warm, lyrical style of Lin Jensen's "Bad Dog!, " author Susan Murphy offers a multifaceted take on the spiritual, grounded in the everyday. She uses her skills as storyteller, filmmaker, and poet to uncover the connections between Zen and Western cinema, as well as between Zen and traditions as diverse as Australian aboriginal beliefs and Jewish folktales. In the process, she finds spirituality where it has always belonged -- wherever life is happening. Murphy helps readers make sense of Zen koans, the often oversimplified and misunderstood teaching stories of the tradition, and highlights their wisdom for any reader on the spiritual path. A strong new voice in Western Buddhism, Murphy speaks for the many "unrecorded" women of Zen while bringing a lively, literate approach to a sometimes daunting genre.
Taking the Path of Zen
Taking the Path of Zen - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Taking the Path of Zen write by Robert Aitken. This book was released on 2015-12-15. Taking the Path of Zen available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. There is a fine art to presenting complex ideas with simplicity and insight, in a manner that both guides and inspires. In Taking the Path of Zen Robert Aitken presents the practice, lifestyle, rationale, and ideology of Zen Buddhism with remarkable clarity. The foundation of Zen is the practice of zazen, or mediation, and Aitken Roshi insists that everything flows from the center. He discusses correct breathing, posture, routine, teacher-student relations, and koan study, as well as common problems and milestones encountered in the process. Throughout the book the author returns to zazen, offering further advice and more advanced techniques. The orientation extends to various religious attitudes and includes detailed discussions of the Three Treasures and the Ten Precepts of Zen Buddhism. Taking the Path of Zen will serve as orientation and guide for anyone who is drawn to the ways of Zen, from the simply curious to the serious Zen student.
Red Thread Zen
Red Thread Zen - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Red Thread Zen write by Susan Murphy. This book was released on 2016-10-01. Red Thread Zen available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Love, attachment, the passions, gender, carnality, birth, bodily being, mortality, belonging, suffering, hope, despair, personhood, imagination, vitality, the struggle to be fully human – how do these things dwell wholly in emptiness, how do we reconcile their vivid life with 'no–thingness'? The red (or 'vermilion') thread originally connoted the color of the silk undergarments courtesans were obliged to wear. Most spiritual traditions do their best to distance themselves as thoroughly as possible from such direct and intimate contact with the fact of impassioned human bodily being, if not to declare open war upon the flesh, and the female body that most plainly bears flesh into the world. Spirituality has trouble dealing with the fact that we arrive here covered in blood. But the red thread can never be cut. Why not? Why would no perfectly accomplished saint ever even dream of cutting it? Red Thread Zen will set out to explore every corner of the magnificent koan of being 'still attached to the red thread, or 'line of tears'. This is an argument against the bloodless and socially disengaged form of 'Buddhism' that is generally being gestated in the West, one that shades too readily into the blandest of bland self–help.
Bring Me the Rhinoceros
Bring Me the Rhinoceros - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Bring Me the Rhinoceros write by John Tarrant. This book was released on 2008-11-11. Bring Me the Rhinoceros available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A provocative and playful exploration of the Zen koan tradition that reveals how everyday paradoxes are an integral part of our spiritual journey Bring Me the Rhinoceros is an unusual guide to happiness and a can opener for your thinking. For fifteen hundred years, Zen koans have been passed down through generations of masters, usually in private encounters between teacher and student. This book deftly retells more than a dozen traditional koans, which are partly paradoxical questions dangerous to your beliefs and partly treasure boxes of ancient wisdom. Koans show that you don’t have to impress people or change into an improved, more polished version of yourself. Instead you can find happiness by unbuilding, unmaking, throwing overboard, and generally subverting unhappiness. Author and Zen teacher John Tarrant brings the heart of the koan tradition out into the open, reminding us that the old wisdom remains as vital as ever, a deep resource available to anyone in any place or time.
This Truth Never Fails
This Truth Never Fails - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook This Truth Never Fails write by David Rynick. This book was released on 2012-06-05. This Truth Never Fails available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This Truth Never Fails is a playful yet well-grounded narrative of a year in the life of an unusual Zen master. Far from the silent and detached stereotype of Zen teachers, Rynick writes with disarming humor, offering both the struggles and the joys of ordinary life as opportunities for insight. Anyone looking for inspiration to bring a simple spiritual awareness into their daily lives, and also those interested in finding ways to more deeply integrate faith (in any tradition) with practice will find this book reassuring and encouraging. This book appeals to the broad "mindfulness" and "general spirituality" audiences that transcend any one formal tradition. Leaning toward Anne Lamott's humor, universal spirituality, and Mary Oliver's love of the natural world, Rynick's writing bypasses Zen theory and doctrine. Simple, clear prose illustrates, vividly, an insightful and tender appreciation of ordinary life as the Way itself. Includes a brief "study guide for further inquiry" offering opportunities for personal reflection and exploration on themes touched on in the book.
