Passage to Nirvana


Book Description

On a beautiful spring day in 2002, Lee Carlson's life was transformed forever when he was hit by a careless, speeding driver. Father, husband, writer, son all that was about to change. Several days later he woke up in a hospital with a new identity: Traumatic Brain Injury Survivor. Unfortunately he knew all about Traumatic Brain Injury, or TBI. Just months before, his mother had fallen down a flight of basement stairs, crushing her brain and leaving her unable to walk, speak or feed herself. Passage to Nirvana tells the story of one person's descent into the hell of losing everything: family, home, health, even the ability to think and the slow climb back to a normal life. Told in a unique creative style brought on by the author's brain injury, combining short poems and essays in an interwoven, exuberant narrative, Passage to Nirvana recounts one person s struggle and ultimate joy at building a new life. The story takes the reader through Intensive Care Units, doctors offices and a profusion of therapy centers, eventually winding its way to sunlit oceans, quiet Zen meditation halls, white beaches, azure skies and a sailboat named Nirvana. Passage to Nirvana is a memoir, a treasury of Zen teachings and a sailor s yarn all rolled into one. Passage to Nirvana is an illustrative tale about finding a path to happiness after a traumatic life event, a book that will teach you about the Poetry of Living.




Vegetarian Nirvana


Book Description

Enjoy the verses all in rhyme, and remember to have a good time. When getting serious with what is intense, relax and sit back for the next line suspense. When the issues get serious and deep, these verses were not intended to make you weep. The very realm goes into trust of kind, it is interesting what violations of trust we might find. Your voyage into this rhyme and verse may have you divert encounters of much worse. It is your choice to venture beyond, but some ideas may become fond. Enjoy this little taste of ones plight, although it may not all seem right. The biggest event that seems wrong, is abusive authority's law to provoke for too long. Those who accuse a person of hostility, need to face their own sense of humility. As their accused target is no threat, they want whatever attention they can get. The sorrow is in observing such hate, when they provoke and manipulate. Determined to watch and observe, it is obvious they have a poor self-respecting nerve. When watching a large framed agile being, their inner fear surfaces we are seeing. To tarnish that seeming honored reputation state, is their goal driven by hate. When they stake their reputation on this fact, they manipulate others to react. Their opinion and directives upheld, so desperate character attacks compelled. The war waged of ones reputations respect, faced contradiction insults they detect. These wonderful people hate to be wrong, as they want their direct opinions to remain strong. Everyone having the goal, must honor the interpretations of those in control. To dignify their respectful appointed governance place, we work hard so they appear competent to save face. The following issues are embellished in rhyme, the verse, lyric, and rap intends to chime.




Passage to Dusk


Book Description

Passage to Dusk deals with the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s in a postmodern, poetic style. The narrative focuses on the deranged, destabilized, confused, and hyper-perceptive state of mind created by living on the scene through a lengthy war. The story is filled with details that transcend the willed narcissism of the main character, while giving clues to the culture of the time. It is excellent fiction, written in a surrealistic mode, but faithful to the characters of the people of Lebanon, their behavior during the war, and their contradictions. Issues of gender and identity are acutely portrayed against Lebanon's shifting national landscape. The English-language reader has not been much exposed to Lebanese literature in translation, and Rashid al-Daif is one of Lebanon's leading writers. He has been translated into eight languages, including French, German, Italian, Polish, and Spanish. Translator Nirvana Tanoukhi manages to preserve Daif's unusual, moving, and at times humorous style in her English rendition.




Here We Are Now


Book Description

In Here We Are Now: The Lasting Impact of Kurt Cobain, Charles R. Cross, author of the New York Times bestselling Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven, examines the legacy of the Nirvana front man and takes on the question: why does Kurt Cobain still matter so much, 20 years after his death? Kurt Cobain is the icon born of the 90s, a man whose legacy continues to influence pop culture and music. Cross explores the impact Cobain has had on music, fashion, film, and culture, and attempts to explain his lasting and looming legacy.




Dancing to Nirvana


Book Description

Throughout the ages, humanity's spiritual endeavors have led thousands to experience enlightenment. Other names for it are celebrated and plentiful: nirvana (extinguish) for Buddhists; the kingdom of God for Jesus; satori (understanding) and kensho (seeing into one's nature) for Zen Buddhists; moksha (liberation) among Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains; al-fana fi al-tawhid (annihilation in Unity) for Muslim Sufis; and theosis (union with God) in the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. Platonists and Neo-Platonists called it henosis (unity with the One) and alchemists variously referred to this spectacle with the most imaginative and colorful names: philosopher's stone, lapis lazuli, peacock's tail, and treasured gold. No doubt earlier names are now lost to history. These diverse traditions consider enlightenment a significant goal-perhaps even the essential experience-of human existence.Dancing to Nirvana illustrates the shared vision of all religions that can lead to enlightenment as well as the story and views of an American who experienced it. This book is for people who desire to see more clearly the common insights of diverse spiritual traditions as well as techniques of individual transformation for personal growth. The wisest beliefs are not from one creed only, but from many branches of one blessed Tree, linked through the roots with eternity's wellspring. Each branch crafts its own unique fruit so that we marvel-hearts and mouths open, on bowing knee-at the beauty, mystery, variety, outlandishness, and deliciousness of the religious imagination.




Many Ways to Nirvana


Book Description

Can A Common Man With Family Responsibilities Achieve Nirvana Or Buddhahood? What Should Be The Spiritual Limit Of Ambition For A Busy Professional? Are There Different Kinds Of Negative Emotions? How Do You Stay Positive When Confronted With Environmental And Human Injustice? His Holiness The Dalai Lama Answers These And A Host Of Other Questions In This Companion Volume To The Transformed Mind: Reflections On Truth, Love And Happiness, Successfully Published Around The World In 1999. Interpreting The Ancient Wisdom Of Lord Buddha For Today'S Generation, He Speaks To Us About The Paths To Self-Realization And The Need To Overcome Negative Emotions In Order To Develop One'S Inner Consciousness. Wise, Compassionate And Always Pragmatic, He Offers Advice On The Many Issues That Confront The Ordinary Human Being: How To Free Yourself From Emotional Afflictions And Petty Cravings, How To Transform Anxiety And Depression Into Contentment, How To Initiate And Keep Alive Inter-Faith Dialogue In The Troubled Times We Live In. Undeniably One Of The Best Books Of Its Kind, Many Ways To Nirvana Gives Us An Insight Into The Dalai Lama'S Philosophy And Guides Us Along The Path To True Liberation.




The Dharma Bum’s Guide to Western Literature


Book Description

HOW THE LITERATURE WE LOVE CONVEYS THE AWAKENING WE SEEK Suppose we could read Hemingway as haiku . . . learn mindfulness from Virginia Woolf and liberation from Frederick Douglass . . . see Dickinson and Whitman as buddhas of poetry, and Huck Finn and Gatsby as seekers of the infinite . . . discover enlightenment teachings in Macbeth, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby-Dick, and The Bluest Eye. Some of us were lucky enough to have one passionate, funny, inspiring English teacher who helped us fall in love with books. Add a lifetime of teaching Dharma — authentic, traditional approaches to meditation and awakening — and you get award-winning author Dean Sluyter. With droll humor and irreverent wisdom, he unpacks the Dharma of more than twenty major writers, from William Blake to Dr. Seuss, inspiring readers to deepen their own spiritual life and see literature in a fresh, new way: as a path of awakening.




Dark Slivers


Book Description




The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin


Book Description

An authoritative translation of 172 of Nichiren's writings presented in chronological order. The collection includes Nichiren's five major works as well as other treatises setting forth his doctrine, writings remonstrating with government officials, and letters offering advice, encouragement, or consolation to believers. The translations are based on those of Burton Watson, formerly of Columbia University and an award-winning translator of Chinese and Japanese literature. Edited by the Soka Gakkai's Gosho Translation Committee, these are the translations used by English-speaking Soka Gakkai members the world over.




Essence of the Dhammapada


Book Description

In this companion to his best-selling translation of The Dhammapada, Eknath Easwaran explains how The Dhammapada is a perfect map for the spiritual journey. Said to be the text closest to the Buddha’s actual words, The Dhammapada is a collection of short teachings that his disciples memorized during his lifetime. Easwaran presents The Dhammapada as a guide to spiritual perseverance, progress, and ultimately enlightenment — a heroic confrontation with life as it really is, with straight answers to our deepest questions. We witness the heartbreak of death, for instance — what does that mean for us? What is love? How does karma work? How do we follow the spiritual life in the midst of work and family? Does nirvana really exist, and if so, what is it like to be illumined? In his interpretation of Buddhist themes, illustrated with stories from the Buddha’s life, Easwaran offers a view of the concept of Right Understanding that is both exhilarating and instructive. He shares his experiences on the spiritual path, giving the advice that only an experienced teacher and practitioner can offer, and urges us to answer for ourselves the Buddha’s call to nirvana — that mysterious, enduring state of wisdom, joy, and peace.