Even now, nearly two decades after his death, Osho’s books continue to sell in the hundreds of thousands, and his website receives over a million hits every month. His host of admirers simply increases with every succeeding generation. Here, Osho brings to life many of mankind’s most influential religious and spiritual leaders from a variety of cultures, including Krishna, the Buddha, and Jesus; poets such as Lao Tzu and Rumi; philosophers from Pythagoras and Socrates to Heraclitus and Nietzsche; and great thinkers of more recent times, including Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, and Kahlil Gibran. Osho uses their lives and knowledge to guide the reader in a profound journey of spiritual discovery and wisdom
An extraordinary and beautifully illustrated exploration of the medieval world through twelve manuscripts, from one of the world's leading experts. Winner of The Wolfson History Prize and The Duff Cooper Prize. A San Francisco Chronicle Holiday Book Gift Guide Pick! Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is a captivating examination of twelve illuminated manuscripts from the medieval period. Noted authority Christopher de Hamel invites the reader into intimate conversations with these texts to explore what they tell us about nearly a thousand years of medieval history - and about the modern world, too. In so doing, de Hamel introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, and collectors. He traces the elaborate journeys that these exceptionally precious artifacts have made through time and shows us how they have been copied, how they have been embroiled in politics, how they have been regarded as objects of supreme beauty and as symbols of national identity, and who has owned them or lusted after them (and how we can tell). From the earliest book in medieval England to the incomparable Book of Kells to the oldest manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, these encounters tell a narrative of intellectual culture and art over the course of a millennium. Two of the manuscripts visited are now in libraries of North America, the Morgan Library in New York and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Part travel book, part detective story, part conversation with the reader, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts allows us to experience some of the greatest works of art in our culture to give us a different perspective on history and on how we come by knowledge.
Thomas Pakenham's beautifully illustrated, bestselling book of tree portraits. With this astonishing collection, Thomas Pakenham produced a new kind of tree book. The arrangement owes little to conventional botany. The sixty trees are grouped according to their own strong personalities: Natives, Travellers, Shrines, Fantasies and Survivors. From the ancient native trees, many of which are huge and immeasurably old, to the exotic newcomers from Europe, the East and North America, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE TREES captures the history and beauty of these entrancing living structures. Common to all these trees is their power to inspire awe and wonder. This is a lovingly researched book, beautifully illustrated with colour photographs, engravings and maps - a moving testimonial to the Earth`s largest and oldest living structures.
In a radical departure from her urban life, Ann Turner buys a piece of remote Vermont land and sets up a tent home in deep forest. She’s trying to escape an unending string of personal disasters in Boston; more, she desperately wants to leave behind a world she sees as increasingly defined by consumerism, hypocrisy, and division. As she writes in her journal, “There’s got to be a more honest, less divided way to live.” She soon learns she was mistaken in thinking a kindly Mother Earth would grant her wisdom and serenity in her new home. The forest confronts her with unanticipated dangers, aching loneliness, harsh weather, instinctive fears, and unsettling encounters with wild animals. It’s beautiful, yes, but life in the woods is never easy. When necessity requires her to start work as a farmhand, she quickly realizes that she held similarly childish illusions about small farms. Under the stern tutelage of Diz Brassard, the farm’s sixty-year-old matriarch, and the gentler guidance of Earnest Kelley, an Oneida Indian friend of the Brassards, she discovers what hard work really means. Ann faces her predicament with determination, but there’s a lot to learn—about the Brassard family, about dairy farming, and about herself. If she is to succeed in her new life, she must become as tough and resilient as the rural community she lives in. She must also learn to accept love—even if it arrives in the most unexpected forms. On Brassard’s Farm is a tale of personal struggle, sweeping transformation, and romantic love. Author Daniel Hecht tells of Ann Turner’s quest for a better life with unsparing honesty and gentle humor. Through its portrayal of the unrelenting labor and harsh pragmatism of farming, On Brassard’s Farm reveals the deep durability of rural life and offers a much-needed affirmation in a changing and uncertain world.
This book will change your mind forever about that "useless" meeting you are forced to attend. Paul Axtell emphasizes that meetings are vital to the work of successful organizations--we need to master the skill sets for designing, leading, and participating in meetings. A consultant with more than 30 years in the business, Axtell outlines 8 strategies with a host of compelling ideas you can put into action immediately. This is a book for the manager who recognizes that meetings are at the core of the work you do, the supervisor who wants to be wonderful to work for, the employee who wants to contribute as much as possible, the project leader who wants every team meeting to add velocity to the project. Meetings are essential. So let's make them work.
EXACTLY A MONTH HAS ELAPSED since I finished the first series of my writings—just that period of the flow of time which I intended to devote exclusively to resting the parts of my common presence subordinate to my pure reason. As I wrote in the last chapter of the first series, I had given myself my word that during the whole of this time I would do no writing whatsoever, but would only, for the well-being of the most deserving of these subordinate parts, slowly and gently drink down all the bottles of old calvados now at my disposal by the will of fate in the wine-cellar of the Prieuré, and specially provided the century before last by people who understood the true sense of life. Today I have decided, and now I wish—without forcing myself at all, but on the contrary with great pleasure—to set to work at my writing again, of course with the help of all the corresponding forces and also, this time, with the help of the law-conformable cosmic results flowing in from all sides upon my person from the good wishes of the readers of the first series. I now propose to give a form understandable for everyone to everything I have written down for the second series, in the hope that these ideas may serve as preparatory constructive material for setting up in the consciousness of creatures similar to myself a new world—a world in my opinion real, or at least one that can be perceived as real by all degrees of human thinking without the All and Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, p. 1236 slightest impulse of doubt, instead of the illusory world which contemporary people picture to themselves. And indeed, the mind of contemporary man, of whatever level of intellectuality, is only able to take cognizance of the world by means of data which, whenever accidentally or intentionally activated, arouse in him all sorts of fantastic impulses. And these impulses, by constantly affecting the tempo of all the associations flowing in him, gradually disharmonize the whole of his functioning, with such sorrowful results that it is impossible for any man, if he is able to isolate himself even a little from the influences of the established abnormal conditions of our ordinary life and is willing to think about it seriously, not to be terrified—as, for example, by the shortening of our life with each decade. First of all, for the ‘swing of thought’, that is, for establishing a corresponding rhythm for my thinking and also for yours, I wish to follow somewhat the example of the Great Beelzebub and imitate the form of thinking of one highly respected by him and by me, and perhaps already, brave reader of my writings, by you, if of course you have had the daring to read through to the end all of the first series. That is to say, I wish to introduce at the very beginning of this writing of mine what our dear-to-all Mullah Nassr Eddin1 would call a ‘subtly philosophical question.’ I wish to do this at the very beginning because I intend to use freely, both here and in my later expositions, the wisdom of this sage, who is now recognized almost everywhere and upon whom, it is rumoured, the title of ‘The One and Only’ is soon to be officially conferred by the proper person. And this subtly philosophical question may already be sensed in that sort of perplexity which is bound to arise in the consciousness of every reader of even the very first paragraph of this chapter, if he compares the many data on which his firm convictions about medical matters are based with the fact that I, the author of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, after the accident which nearly cost me my life, with the functioning of my organism not yet fully re-established owing to the incessant active effort Mullah Nassr Eddin, a legendary figure in numerous countries of the Near East, is an embodiment of popular wisdom.
A collection of whimsical true encounters between famous and infamous individuals describes the unlikely meetings of Marilyn Monroe with Frank Lloyd Wright, Michael Jackson with Nancy Reagan, and Sigmund Freud with Gustav Mahler.
KRISHNA DAS, JOHN DAVID, RAM DASS, MOOJI, RAM CHARAN, USHA, GANGAJI, MICHAEL BARNETT, ISAAC SHAPIRO, GANGA, MUKTI, ANDREW COHEN. Touching life stories by twelve spiritual teachers from USA, Europe, Australia and India. In a deeply honest and authentic way, each of them shares their inspiring paths. The book is a deep dive into the mystery of life, encouraging us to follow our inner navigation, our intuition. The spontaneous flow of the interviews takes us on unexpected journeys guided by existence. We witness miraculous adventures and blissful times as well as confusion and pain. The deep longing and perseverance for truth leads each of them to a spiritual master, to Papaji, Neem Karoli Baba, Osho, Nannagaru. The profound relationship between teacher and student radically changed their lifes and transformed the seeker to a teacher in their own right. A wonderful collection of vivid and colorful pointings to Truth, that inspire us to deeply trust, that every moment on our path is absolutly the right moment.
Meetings should matter. No one wants to be called in for a meeting that could've been an email. No one wants to sit in a meeting where everyone's distracted or talking over each other. If you're going to attend or lead a meeting, don't you want it to...well, matter? Meetings are a chance to initiate a conversation with your teammates. You can communicate information with them that wouldn't have the same hold digitally. You can foster new relationships with your coworkers, and learn from their new ideas and perspectives. So why do so many people dread meetings? Because they're doing them all wrong. Change the way people think about meetings. Transform their opinions by holding a meeting that is efficient and productive, that is open and communicative, that is useful and important. Revolutionize the definition of a meeting. Learn to make them matter. Paul Axtell affirms the importance of meetings, and he redesigns them using the vital foundation of conversation. With real-life examples and actionable advice, he shows you how to design meetings for results, lead them to achieve agendas that move projects forward, and even allow time for building the relationships that make working together in a remarkable way possible. Based on his award winning efficiency training, this book will revolutionize the meeting—moving it from that dreaded obligation to a powerful way to get things done in business and in life.
