Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Nyogen Senzaki
Zen Buddhism conveys its profound and powerful truths through epigram, parable and brief, enigmatic and often amusing stories of the masters. In addition to 101 Zen Stories, this volume contains The Gateless Gate, a collection of koans or puzzles that students used to attune their minds to enlightenment, and 10 Bulls, and illustrated account of a bull-hunt which symbolizes the ascending stages of awareness. In Centreing, an ancient Sanskrit text at the roots of Zen, Shiva offers '112 ways to open the invisible door of consciousness'.
Zen can never be summed up in a bible or definitive body of doctrine, but for anyone seeking the inspiration and illumination of Zen wisdom, these classic texts make the ideal place to start.
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Zen and the Art of Dealing with Difficult People by Mark Westmoquette
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This is a guide to applying the teachings of mindfulness and Zen to the troublesome or challenging people in our lives. Perhaps you can see there’s often a pattern to your behaviour in relation to them and that it often causes pain – perhaps a great deal of pain. The only way we can grow is by facing this pain, acknowledging how we feel and how we’ve reacted, and making an intention or commitment to end this repeating pattern of suffering.
In this book, Mark Westmoquette speaks from a place of profound personal experience. A Zen monk, he has endured two life-changing traumas caused by other people: his sexual abuse by his own father; and his stepfather’s death and mother’s very serious injury in a car crash due to the careless driving of an off-duty policeman. He stresses that by bringing awareness and kindness to these relationships, our initial stance of “I can’t stand this person, they need to change” will naturally shift into something much broader and more inclusive. The book makes playful use of Zen koans – apparently nonsensical phrases or stories – to help jar us out of habitual ways of perceiving the world and nudge us toward a new perspective of wisdom and compassion.
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Practical Zen Yoga by Julian Daizan Skinner
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Based in the Buddha’s mindful perception of the universality of change, the embodied spiritual path of Zen yoga aligns us with the seasons – not only the cycles of the year but the seasons or phases of human life, and also the seasons of change within the individual spiritual journey in “Spring is perfectly spring; it is also transforming into summer.” Daizan invites you to join him on the Zen journey of the ‘middle way’, finding balance on the physical, energetic and emotional levels and approaching the dawning and stabilisation of awakened awareness. Interviews with a range of Zen yoga practitioners underline that this is a practice you make your own. Attitudes of curiosity, kindness and adaptability underpin the work making this a book that’s transformative for any age and body type.
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Entangling Vines: Zen Koans of the Shumon Kattoshu
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Thomas Yuho Kirchner (translator); Foreword by Ueda Shizuteru
xxxiii, 236 pages, hardbound in black boards with silver lettered spine and front panel;
First Edition published by the Tenryu-Ji Institute for Philosophy & Religion, Kyoto, 2004.
Condition: Clean, unmarked text pages, tight binding - a like new, apparently unread copy in like dust jacket.
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