Grain of Emptiness


Book Description

Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Rubin Museum of Art, Nov. 5, 2010-Apr. 11, 2011.




Measure of Emptiness


Book Description

"In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is", said Gertude Stein. From the Midway area of Minneapolis to the prairie grasslands of Kansas, the American landscape is characterized by this spaciousness--and by the presence of windowless, rumbling, enormous grain elevators, rising above the steeples of churches to announce the presence of a town and to explain, in great measure, the function of its inhabitants. Why did their builders choose that particular form to fulfill a practical necessity? And how does the experience of great emptiness shape what people think, feel, and do? Frank Gohlke, one of America's foremost photographers of landscape, has pondered and documented the relationship between these enormous structures and the emptiness of the surrounding landscape for the past two decades. The result is this evocative sequence of images, beginning with Gohlke's earliest formal studies of structural fragments and their mechanisms, and gradually expanding to depict the grain elevator as a part of the landscape. His camera eventually retreats so far that the grain elevator disappears in the horizon, and only the landscape--the "space where nobody is"--is visible. Introducing the photographs is a personal essay by Gohlke on the relationship between people and their space, and the ways in which that relationship actually creates a landscape. A concluding historical essay by John C. Hudson details the development and function of the grain elevator and its geographical and economic role in American life.




Where the Heart Beats


Book Description

A “heroic” biography of John Cage and his “awakening through Zen Buddhism”—“a kind of love story” about a brilliant American pioneer of the creative arts who transformed himself and his culture (The New York Times) Composer John Cage sought the silence of a mind at peace with itself—and found it in Zen Buddhism, a spiritual path that changed both his music and his view of the universe. “Remarkably researched, exquisitely written,” Where the Heart Beats weaves together “a great many threads of cultural history” (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) to illuminate Cage’s struggle to accept himself and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Freed to be his own man, Cage originated exciting experiments that set him at the epicenter of a new avant-garde forming in the 1950s. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Allan Kaprow, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli were among those influenced by his ‘teaching’ and ‘preaching.’ Where the Heart Beats shows the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture.




Patterns in Emptiness


Book Description

How do Buddha' s teachings answer the most profound questions of our existence? What makes his thinking unique amongst other systems of thought? The answer lies in his teachings on “ dependent origination,” which hold the key to unlocking his doctrines of karma, rebirth, suffering, liberation, and compassion. Patterns in Emptiness shows how understanding this core Buddhist teaching of “ dependent origination” can transform how we see the world and provide an antidote to the disordered thinking that leaves us in the grip of disruptive emotions. Without understanding this essential teaching, our meditation practice is likely to lead only to greater confusion. Lama Jampa Thaye is a scholar and meditation master trained in the Sakya and Kagyu traditions of Buddhism by eminent masters.




Nothingness and Somethingness


Book Description

How could an ignorant, insane, inane, incapable creature talk about spiritual, immaterial, nonphysical sign that requires highly rational, intellectual, celestial, transcendental energy, which prerequisites delicate extramentality impressions beyond mundane entity? We have killed humanity in the name of humanity, it is to the end of its last breath, and it is useless to attempt to save it. The question in debate is much more serious, complicated, and also obvious than we have realized. It is not just the question of who, or what we are, but how we have come into this world, and how we have lived without given it real earnest thought. How do we present, draw, or paint a colorless, weightless, countless, faceless, and faultless space? There are always emptiness, void, cavity, darkness, ignorance in the air, clear sky craving for life, and crying for help. Space the only unique element, is everywhere, covering everything indiscriminately offering freedom, and democracy only to enslave all for its purpose to show its true face, feature, and fable. The exact example of perfect nothingness is where, nothing can be found, nor a being exits, but in form of ignorance within emptiness of self. Everything is continuation of nothingness extended everywhere forever, it is the beginning, and the end of all things considered. If intelligence does not learn what nothingness is, it never reaches to other end to see somethingness.




The Rings of Saturn


Book Description

"The book is like a dream you want to last forever" (Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review), now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The Rings of Saturn—with its curious archive of photographs—records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne’s skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt’s "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The Emigrants."




The Years of Rice and Salt


Book Description

With the same unique vision that brought his now classic Mars trilogy to vivid life, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson boldly imagines an alternate history of the last seven hundred years. In his grandest work yet, the acclaimed storyteller constructs a world vastly different from the one we know. . . . “A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction’s most important writers.”—The New York Times Book Review It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur—the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? This is a look at the history that could have been—one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation. Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, slaves and scholars, Robinson navigates a world where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions, while Christianity is merely a historical footnote. Probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power—and even love—in this bold New World. “Exceptional and engrossing.”—New York Post “Ambitious . . . ingenious.”—Newsday




The Valley of Kashmír


Book Description




Emptiness


Book Description

Emptiness is a strange phenomenon that haunts us in many ways. Most of us have felt empty at one time or another, though we don't often talk about it. We have a sense that something is missing in life. This absence extends beyond human experience to the physical world. As contemporary science has revealed to us on both a macroscopic and subatomic level, curiously, the vast majority of the universe is composed mostly of nothing but empty space. Emptiness is "abundant" and beckons for our attention. Drawing on the Judeo-Christian wisdom of the Bible, in conversation with Eastern and Celtic thought, David Arthur Auten offers us an eye-opening and profoundly practical examination of the much neglected gift of absence. Nothing, ironically, turns out to be endlessly fascinating and significant.




High Performance Concrete Optimal Composition Design


Book Description

Concrete and reinforced concrete remain the main building materials for construction of modern fortifications. The book presents experimental and theoretical results allowing production of special high-strength rapid hardening concrete and fiber reinforced concrete. It describes a method for effective proportioning of high-strength fast-setting concrete and fiber reinforced concrete with high dynamic strength as well as selecting proper technological parameters, methodology for design of reinforced concrete structures using such concrete. Particular attention is paid to ensuring the early strengthening of concrete within 24 hours after casting and to constructing structures with limited energy resources at the site.