"The relations between eastern and western cultures have long been a neglected topic, and this careful and intelligent look at a small but significant part of those relations is most welcome."--Thomas McEvilley, author of The Shape of Ancient Thought "How wonderful that Jacquelynn Baas has seen the light of the Buddha's smile shining from faraway Asia into the realm of the art of modern times in what we think of as the West! . . . Her work reveals how some of our most influential artists explored and expressed the sophisticated perceptions and joyful energy emanating from the realm of Buddhist Asia."--Robert A. F. Thurman "As a Buddhist scholar and artist I welcome this thoughtful and richly detailed study of how many aspects of Buddhism have stimulated, invigorated, and enriched Western arts over the past 150 years."--Stephen Addiss, author of The Art of Zen "A crucial contribution to modern art studies, this high-spirited text surveys Western artists awakened by the wisdom of the East, from Monet and Duchamp to O'Keeffe to Martin. It is a thoughtful book about thoughtful artists, their values and their visions, with a lot to offer general readers and specialists alike."--Charles Stuckey, Associate Professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Insights and strategies for claiming victory over fear, from “one of the most remarkable and brilliant teachers of modern times” (Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart) Many of us, without even realizing it, are dominated by fear. We might be aware of some of our fears—perhaps we are afraid of public speaking, of financial hardship, or of losing a loved one. Chögyam Trungpa shows us that most of us suffer from a far more pervasive fearfulness: fear of ourselves. We feel ashamed and embarrassed to look at our feelings or acknowledge our styles of thinking and acting; we don’t want to face the reality of our moment-to-moment experience. It is this fear that keeps us trapped in cycles of suffering, despair, and distress. In Smile at Fear, Chögyam Trungpa offers us a vision of moving beyond fear to discover the innate bravery, trust, and delight in life that lies at the core of our being. Drawing on the Shambhala Buddhist teachings, he explains how we can each become a spiritual warrior—a person who faces each moment of life with openness and fearlessness.
Stay calm, steady, and composed through the ups and downs of life with yoga poses, relaxation techniques, meditations, and lessons on how to manage stress, grief, anxiety, depression, and life's transitions. Yoga was originally designed to make you calmer, steadier, and more content, not just stronger and healthier. This guide offers many ways you can use yoga as a healthy coping mechanism when you're confronted with the physical, emotional, and mental changes that life brings you. It covers both ancient and modern techniques—including yoga poses, breathing practices, relaxation, mantras, and meditation—that allow you to return yourself to balance when you're experiencing challenges, and to fortify yourself for the future. Nina Zolotow covers myriad topics related to living through times of change, including stress, anxiety, depression, anger, grief, being present, making peace with change, how to practice yoga when you're experiencing physical changes, and how to practice meditation, breath practices, and yoga on your own, among others. Become more content through life's ups and downs by learning to live your everyday life the yogic way.
From the enlightened smile of the Holy Buddha to the lewd leer of the seventeenth century Dutch chicken groper, from the sociological to the scatological, Angus Trumble presents a uniquely readable and erudite insight into the cultural, physiological, artistic and literary history of that most universal of human expressions, the smile.;
"Eminently readable and extremely meaningful. The contributors tackle essential questions about the relationship of art and life. The book is also very timely, offering a way to approach Buddhism through unexpected channels."--Lynn Gumpert, Director, Grey Art Gallery, New York University
A guide to the foundational practice of “smiling to the organs” to promote deep relaxation and internal health • Presents exercises that dissolve the physical and mental tensions that can cause energy blockages and unhealthy chi flow • Shows how to recognize illness at its inception on the organ level and how to balance the emotions to heal it The Inner Smile is a practice that focuses gratitude and joy on the internal organs to resolve the physical and mental tensions that can lead to illness. In Taoism negative emotions--anger, sadness, depression, fear, and worry--are seen as low-grade energy that causes chronic disease and steals our major life force by creating energy blockages. Master Mantak Chia shows that the internal awareness produced by the simple yet powerful Inner Smile meditation practice flushes the organs of poisonous negative energy that may be blocking chi energy flow in order to nourish the entire body. Just as a genuine outer smile transmits positive energy and has the power to warm and heal, an inner smile produces a high grade of energy that promotes powerful internal healing, deep relaxation, happiness, and longevity. Smiling to the organs and thanking them for the work they do helps to reawaken the intelligence of the body, which, once activated, can dissipate emotional imbalances and inner disharmony before serious illness manifests.
"Robert Thurman is a living treasure, one of today's most provocative spiritual thinkers." - Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence Robert Thurman, the preeminent scholar and interpreter of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy for the modern world, leads us on a joyful exploration into the nature of reality through Buddha's threefold curriculum of "super-education." "Buddha had to be an educator, rather than a prophet or religion founder, since he had achieved his goal of exact and complete understanding of reality by using reason, experiments to open his own mind, and vision to do so," Thurman writes. "From his own experience, he could help [others] as a teacher by streamlining the process. He could not just transplant his realization into their minds. They could not get their own realizations just by believing whatever he said. He could only provide them with a prospect of full realization along a path of learning and experiencing they could follow-they would have to travel on their own." This book is your invitation to travel that same road. Deeply felt and bracingly direct, it doesn't teach about the teaching-it is the teaching. Get ready to get real, and have fun along the way, as you chart a path to reliable, lasting happiness.
The Linji lu (Record of Linji) has been an essential text of Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhism for nearly a thousand years. A compilation of sermons, statements, and acts attributed to the great Chinese Zen master Linji Yixuan (d. 866), it serves as both an authoritative statement of Zen’s basic standpoint and a central source of material for Zen koan practice. Scholars study the text for its importance in understanding both Zen thought and East Asian Mahayana doctrine, while Zen practitioners cherish it for its unusual simplicity, directness, and ability to inspire. One of the earliest attempts to translate this important work into English was by Sasaki Shigetsu (1882–1945), a pioneer Zen master in the U.S. and the founder of the First Zen Institute of America. At the time of his death, he entrusted the project to his wife, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, who in 1949 moved to Japan and there founded a branch of the First Zen Institute at Daitoku-ji. Mrs. Sasaki, determined to produce a definitive translation, assembled a team of talented young scholars, both Japanese and Western, who in the following years retranslated the text in accordance with modern research on Tang-dynasty colloquial Chinese. As they worked on the translation, they compiled hundreds of detailed notes explaining every technical term, vernacular expression, and literary reference. One of the team, Yanagida Seizan (later Japan’s preeminent Zen historian), produced a lengthy introduction that outlined the emergence of Chinese Zen, presented a biography of Linji, and traced the textual development of the Linji lu. The sudden death of Mrs. Sasaki in 1967 brought the nearly completed project to a halt. An abbreviated version of the book was published in 1975, but neither this nor any other English translations that subsequently appeared contain the type of detailed historical, linguistic, and doctrinal annotation that was central to Mrs. Sasaki’s plan. The materials assembled by Mrs. Sasaki and her team are finally available in the present edition of the Record of Linji. Chinese readings have been changed to Pinyin and the translation itself has been revised in line with subsequent research by Iriya Yoshitaka and Yanagida Seizan, the scholars who advised Mrs. Sasaki. The notes, nearly six hundred in all, are almost entirely based on primary sources and thus retain their value despite the nearly forty years since their preparation. They provide a rich context for Linji’s teachings, supplying a wealth of information on Tang colloquial expressions, Buddhist thought, and Zen history, much of which is unavailable anywhere else in English. This revised edition of the Record of Linji is certain to be of great value to Buddhist scholars, Zen practitioners, and readers interested in Asian Buddhism.
A Junior Library Guild selection! A gorgeously illustrated picture book about the myth of the Buddha and a simple rose told by wellness and mindfulness expert Mallika Chopra. Buddha sat, gazing at the flower in his hand, a smile on his face. Sujata, the milkmaid, approached Buddha with some rice puddling to break his long fast. As she gazed at the Buddha and then at the rose, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and what she saw and felt changed her life forever. A subtle, powerful, and calming story about our connection with the natural world and the universe that connects all of us. Wellness expert and author Mallika Chopra and illustrator Neha Rawat breathe life into this simple but poignant story of awareness, wonder, and the joy of being present and open to seeing the world in new ways.
