The Hidden Lamp


Book Description

The Hidden Lamp is a collection of one hundred koans and stories of Buddhist women from the time of the Buddha to the present day. This revolutionary book brings together many teaching stories that were hidden for centuries, unknown until this volume. These stories are extraordinary expressions of freedom and fearlessness, relevant for men and women of any time or place. In these pages we meet nuns, laywomen practicing with their families, famous teachers honored by emperors, and old women selling tea on the side of the road. Each story is accompanied by a reflection by a contemporary woman teacher--personal responses that help bring the old stories alive for readers today--and concluded by a final meditation for the reader, a question from the editors meant to spark further rumination and inquiry. These are the voices of the women ancestors of every contemporary Buddhist.




The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead


Book Description

In 1927, Oxford University Press published the first western-language translation of a collection of Tibetan funerary texts (the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo) under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since that time, the work has established a powerful hold on the western popular imagination, and is now considered a classic of spiritual literature. Over the years, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has inspired numerous commentaries, an illustrated edition, a play, a video series, and even an opera. Translators, scholars, and popular devotees of the book have claimed to explain its esoteric ideas and reveal its hidden meaning. Few, however, have uttered a word about its history. Bryan J. Cuevas seeks to fill this gap in our knowledge by offering the first comprehensive historical study of the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo, and by grounding it firmly in the context of Tibetan history and culture. He begins by discussing the many ways the texts have been understood (and misunderstood) by westerners, beginning with its first editor, the Oxford-educated anthropologist Walter Y. Evans-Wentz, and continuing through the present day. The remarkable fame of the book in the west, Cuevas argues, is strikingly disproportionate to how the original Tibetan texts were perceived in their own country. Cuevas tells the story of how The Tibetan Book of the Dead was compiled in Tibet, of the lives of those who preserved and transmitted it, and explores the history of the rituals through which the life of the dead is imagined in Tibetan society. This book provides not only a fascinating look at a popular and enduring spiritual work, but also a much-needed corrective to the proliferation of ahistorical scholarship surrounding The Tibetan Book of the Dead.




Your Aladdin's Lamp


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The Hidden Hand


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Tabo


Book Description

"The monastery of Tabo lies in northern India in the secluded Spiti valley, which was at one time part of the ancient kingdom of Western Tibet. The oldest continuously operating Buddhist enclave in India and the Himalayas, Tabo's historical role as an intermediary between India and Tibet and the extraordinary beauty of its frescoes make it a place of unique importance. The main temple of Tabo is one of the masterpieces of Indian and Tibetan art. Built in 996 and renovated in 1042, the temple is remarkable not only for the exceptional quality of its sculpture and the decorative paintings that cover every surface, but also for the numerous portraits of royal patrons, members of the local nobility, and ecclesiastical figures, all identified by name. Tabo played a pivotal role in the history of Buddhism in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Tibetan monks and Indian pandits studied together and translated scripture from Sanskrit into Tibetan. This meeting of trans-Himalayan cultures, and the devotions of their faithful, are vividly preserved in the magnificent paintings and sculptures that adorn the original temple and the monastery that surrounds it."--Amazon.




The Librarians and The Lost Lamp


Book Description

"Based on the hit TNT television series"--Front cover.




Zen Women


Book Description

This landmark presentation at last makes heard the centuries of Zen's female voices. Through exploring the teachings and history of Zen's female ancestors, from the time of the Buddha to ancient and modern female masters in China, Korea, and Japan, Grace Schireson offers us a view of a more balanced Dharma practice, one that is especially applicable to our complex lives, embedded as they are in webs of family relations and responsibilities, and the challenges of love and work. Part I of this book describes female practitioners as they are portrayed in the classic literature of "Patriarchs' Zen"--often as "tea-ladies," bit players in the drama of male students' enlightenments; as "iron maidens," tough-as-nails women always jousting with their male counterparts; or women who themselves become "macho masters," teaching the same Patriarchs' Zen as the men do. Part II of this book presents a different view--a view of how women Zen masters entered Zen practice and how they embodied and taught Zen uniquely as women. This section examines many urgent and illuminating questions about our Zen grandmothers: How did it affect them to be taught by men? What did they feel as they trying to fit into this male practice environment, and how did their Zen training help them with their feelings? How did their lives and relationships differ from that of their male teachers? How did they express the Dharma in their own way for other female students? How was their teaching consistently different from that of male ancestors? And then part III explores how women's practice provides flexible and pragmatic solutions to issues arising in contemporary Western Zen centers.




The Lamp of Darkness


Book Description

The World of The Prophets as You’ve Never Experienced It Before The Age of Prophecy series transports you back 3000 years, to the epic battle between the Israelite Kings and Prophets. Lev, an orphaned shepherd boy, begins a journey of discovery when he’s hired to play as a musician before the prophets. He soon learns that his father’s knife holds a deadly secret about his hidden past. As he is drawn deeper into the world of prophecy, Lev fights to unearth his true self while the clouds of war gather around him. Authors Dave Mason and Mike Feuer spent years researching the Oral and Kabbalistic traditions detailing the inner workings of prophecy and the world of Ancient Israel. The backdrop for The Age of Prophecy is the greatest of Biblical conflicts, the Battle between King Ahav and the Prophet Eliyahu (more commonly known as Ahab and Elijah in English). Learn the inner story of the battle, in a way that will reframe all you've ever heard about the Israelite< Kings and Prophets.




The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi


Book Description

Tofu Roshi—the fictional "Dear Abby" of Zen Buddhism—counsels his readers about their spiritual problems in this hilarious spoof of America's search for enlightenment. Selections from his advice column alternate with commentary from narrator and disciple Ichi Su.




All the Light We Cannot See


Book Description

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).