Everything Yearned For


Book Description

Manhae (1879-1944), or Han Yongun, was a Korean Buddhist (Son) monk during the era of Japanese colonial occupation (1910-1945). Manhae is a political and cultural hero in Korea, and his works are studied by college students and school children alike. Everything Yearned For is a collection of 88 love poems, evocative of the mystical love poetry of Rumi, and even reminiscent of the work of Pablo Neruda.Though Manahe's poetry can be read allegorically on many levels - political and religious - it is completely unlike any other poetry in Buddhist or secular realm. The first poem, "My Lover's Silence," narrates the lover's departure and establishes the enduring themes of the work: the happiness of meeting, the sadness of separation, the agony of longing and waiting, and, most of all, the perfection of love in absence that demands the cost of one's ongoing life, as opposed to the relief of death. The Korean word translated in these poems as "love" and "lover" is nim, though nim has many and broad interpretations. Understandably, the identity of Manhae's lover, or "nim" has been the subject of much speculation. Manhae writes in his own preface: "Nim" is not only a human lover but everything yearned for. All beings are nim for the Buddha, and philosophy is the nim of Kant. The spring rain is nim for the rose, and Italy is the nim of Mazzini. Nim is what I love, but it also loves me. If romantic love is freedom, then so is my nim. But aren't you attached to the lofty name of freedom? Don't you also have a nim? If so, it's only your shadow. I write these poems for the young lambs wandering lost on the road home from the darkening plains.




Everything Yearned For


Book Description

Long a cultural hero in Korea, Manhae--whose work can be compared to that of Rumi and even Pablo Neruda--is overdue his proper audience in the West. Beautifully packaged, the love poems in this collection will speak volumes to lovers and seekers everywhere.




Homo Irrealis


Book Description

The New York Times–bestselling author of Find Me and Call Me by Your Name returns to the essay form with his collection of thoughts on time, the creative mind, and great lives and works Irrealis moods are a category of verbal moods that indicate that certain events have not happened, may never happen, or should or must or are indeed desired to happen, but for which there is no indication that they will ever happen. Irrealis moods are also known as counterfactual moods and include the conditional, the subjunctive, the optative, and the imperative—all best expressed in this book as the might-be and the might-have-been. One of the great prose stylists of his generation, André Aciman returns to the essay form in Homo Irrealis to explore what time means to artists who cannot grasp life in the present. Irrealis moods are not about the present or the past or the future; they are about what might have been but never was but could in theory still happen. From meditations on subway poetry and the temporal resonances of an empty Italian street to considerations of the lives and work of Sigmund Freud, C. P. Cavafy, W. G. Sebald, John Sloan, Éric Rohmer, Marcel Proust, and Fernando Pessoa and portraits of cities such as Alexandria and St. Petersburg, Homo Irrealis is a deep reflection on the imagination’s power to forge a zone outside of time’s intractable hold.




Bite Every Sorrow


Book Description

A collection of energetic and inquisitive poetry invites the reader to explore beauty, heartbreak, loss, and outrage




Yearning for the Vast and Endless Sea


Book Description

Evangelism is a contentious word, conjuring up all sorts of assumptions. It can create suspicion or imply tribalism, or can be seen as a desperate response to falling numbers. For some the term has become irredeemably polluted. But what if we recovered an authentic understanding of evangelism as good news that enables people to know that they are drenched in the love and grace of God? And how do we do that? This is a book for everyone who wants to share the gospel but who cannot relate to what evangelism has become. Its title is taken from Saint-Exupery, ‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.’ Drawing on writers like Bonhoeffer, Newbigin and Pope Francis’ landmark Euangelii Gaudium, Chris Russell aims to redeem evangelism from its present predicament. He sets it in a deeper and richer theological context, asks how the church and individual Christians can communicate the love of God in language and action, and explores how the good news is received.




Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path


Book Description

A guide to rekindling spiritual inspiration after betrayal and disillusionment • Explains why we are drawn to charismatic leaders, what we unconsciously give away to them, and how to reclaim our inner spiritual authority • Explores how to recover from spiritual abuse or betrayal by a teacher or group, including breaking free of denial, projection, and dependency using psychology and shadow-work • Extends #MeToo into the spiritual domain and tells the stories of contemporary clergy and spiritual leaders who acted out their shadows in destructive ways, leaving their followers traumatized and lost Within each of us is a spiritual longing that prompts us to unite with something greater than ourselves, to awaken to our unity with all of life. Yet, no matter the spiritual path we choose, we inevitably encounter our own shadow, those unconscious aspects of ourselves that we suppress or deny, or the shadows of our teachers and their secret desires about money, sex, and power. Meeting the shadow can derail the journey, but, according to Connie Zweig, Ph.D., we can learn to recover from loss of faith and move from spiritual naivete to spiritual maturity. Calling on us to expand our vision of religious and spiritual life—and our vision of awakening—to include the human shadow, Zweig examines the yearning that sets us on the spiritual path, showing how it can lead to ecstatic, transcendent experiences or to terrible suffering by projecting it onto an authoritarian teacher, priest, or guru who abuses power. She tells the stories of renowned teachers—Sufi poet Rumi, Hindu master Ramakrishna, and Christian saint Catherine of Siena—whose lives unfolded as they followed their spiritual yearning. And she tells the cautionary tales of contemporary teachers of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Catholicism, who acted out their shadows in devastating ways, leaving their followers traumatized and lost. She explains how meeting the shadow is a painful but inevitable stage on the path to a more mature spirituality. She describes how to use spiritual shadow-work to separate from abusive teachers, reclaim inner spiritual authority, and heal from betrayal. With guidance for both inspired and disillusioned seekers, the author explores how to navigate the narrow path through the darkness toward the light, rekindle the flame of longing, and once again engage in fulfilling spiritual practice.




The Hidden Lives of Brahman


Book Description

Finalist for the 2014 Best First Book in the History of Religions presented by the American Academy of Religion Śaṅkara's thought, advaita vedānta or non-dual vedānta, is a tradition focused on brahman, the ultimate reality transcending all particular manifestations, words, and ideas. It is generally considered that the transcendent brahman cannot be attained through any effort or activity. While this conception is technically correct, in The Hidden Lives of Brahman, Joël André-Michel Dubois contends that it is misleading. Hidden lives of brahman become visible when analysis of Śaṅkara's seminal commentaries is combined with ethnographic descriptions of contemporary Brāhmin students and teachers of vedānta, a group largely ignored in most studies of this tradition. Du bois demonstrates that for Śaṅkara, as for Brāhmin tradition in general, brahman is just as much an active force, fully connected to the dynamic power of words and imagination, as it is a transcendent ultimate.




Helping Children Who Yearn for Someone They Love


Book Description

This is a guidebook to help children who: "are missing someone too much or suffer from separation anxiety"; are obsessed with their absent parent "yearn for a parent who: has died; seems unreachable, although she is right there; or is loving one minute and indifferent, cold or abusive the next". They yearn because they have been taken into care, fostered or adopted.




A Genealogy of Marion's Philosophy of Religion


Book Description

Tamsin Jones believes that locating Jean-Luc Marion solely within theological or phenomenological discourse undermines the coherence of his intellectual and philosophical enterprise. Through a comparative examination of Marion's interpretation and use of Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory of Nyssa, Jones evaluates the interplay of the manifestation and hiddenness of phenomena. By placing Marion against the backdrop of these Greek fathers, Jones sharpens the tension between Marion's rigorous method and its intended purpose: a safeguard against idolatry. At once situated at the crossroads of the debate over the turn to religion in French phenomenology and an inquiry into the retrieval of early Christian writings within this discourse, A Genealogy of Marion's Philosophy of Religion opens up a new view of the phenomenology of religious experience.




Help Me God! I Still Yearn for My Earthly Father's Affection


Book Description

For those who have been "unfathered," experienced rejection, and desire a fresh start, Brown takes readers on a journey of self-discovery and healing.




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