Excerpts Guides
Navigating the Battle of Life | An Excerpt from The Bhagavad Gita
A Fresh Translation The Yoga of Arjuna's Crisis No Life without Struggle Dhritarāshtra asked: Sanjaya, what did my sons and the sons of Pāndu do, when they were gathered for the sake of fighting on the field of dharma, in the field of the Kurus? Forces in the Battle of Life Sanjaya said: Having seen [...]Bhartrihari the Poet | An Excerpt from Some Unquenchable Desire
Bhartrihari the Poet, Bhartrihari the Linguist Nalanda Everything known for certain about India’s poet Bhartrihari could be engraved on a grain of rice. He steps into the wavering historical record like a ghost out of the mist in 671 C.E., when the Chinese pilgrim I-Tsing (Yijing in the newer way of spelling) jotted down his [...]A Buddhist Approach to Politics: An Interview with Chogyam Trungpa
This article on Buddhism and Politics originally appeared in the Shambhala Review of Books and Ideas, Vol 5, Winter 1976. It in included in the Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa, Volume 8. The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Eight$59.95 - HardcoverBy: Carolyn Rose Gimian & Chogyam Trungpa Add to Cart Shambhala Review: To most [...]Finding One’s Self in the Universe | An Excerpt from Song of Myself
The Core of Walt Whitman’s Poetic Vision I am enamoured of growing outdoors, Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and mauls, of the drivers of horses, I can eat and sleep with them week in and [...]The Book of Divine Consolation | An Excerpt from The Pocket Meister Eckhart
Manifesting Goodness First of all, one should know that the wise man and Wisdom, the true man and Truth, the just man and Justice, the good man and Goodness, are related to each other and are proportioned to one another as follows: Goodness is neither created nor made nor born; but it is giving birth [...]At the Mercy of the Bootstraps Barbershop Chorus | An Excerpt from Notes for the Everlost
Sharing is the antidote. Irene messaged me a few months after her son Oliver had died of SIDS, another episode in our ongoing conversation from one continent to the other. Looking for you today. I hope you don’t mind. Oh! Are you okay love? No, but I’m getting used to it now and don’t expect [...]The Future of Religion | An Excerpt from the Religion of Tomorrow
A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions A Religion of Tomorrow This is a book about what a possible religion of tomorrow might look like. It is meant to apply across the field of the Great Traditions; I believe that all of them will, in fact, most likely end up incorporating many of [...]Singapore Dream | An Excerpt from Singapore Dream & Other Adventures
Hermann Hesse’s Southeast Asian Travels In the morning I had chased butterflies on the byways, overgrown with grass and overhung with foliage, that run among the European gardens. In the white heat of noon I returned to the city on foot, and I passed the afternoon walking about, visiting shops, and doing my shopping in [...]The Life of Master Yunmen | An Excerpt from Zen Master Yunmen
An Introduction to a Remarkable Life Youth Yunmen was born in 864 in Jiaxing, a town between Shanghai and Hangzhou on China’s eastern coast. His family name was Zhang; but because it was the custom for Buddhist monks to abandon their family names, he became known as Wenyan and later took the name of Mt. [...]Why Go beyond Gender? | An Excerpt from Buddhism beyond Gender
Rejecting the Idea of Gender Roles The Prison of Gender Roles What “it” has a greater hold on people’s imaginations or limits them more than ideas about what biological sex must mean, what I call “the prison of gender roles”? Almost all conventional people—often called “ordinary worldlings” in Buddhist texts—as well as many Buddhists hold [...]Freedom Fighter | An Excerpt from The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi
British Feminist, Indian Nationalist, Buddhist Nun She was the first Western woman to become a Tibetan Buddhist nun—but that pioneering ordination was really just one in a life full of revolutionary acts. Freda Bedi (1911–1977) broke the rules of gender, race, and religion—in many cases before it was thought that the rules were ready to [...]The Essence of Wisdom | An Excerpt from Beyond the Ordinary Mind
The Essence of Wisdom: How to Sustain the Face of Rigpa by Jamgön Mipham To the glorious primordial protector, I pay homage! There are three stages to sustaining the essence of rigpa: (1) recognition, (2) perfecting the strength, and (3) gaining stability. At first, refine your understanding until, through the guru’s instructions, you come to see [...]Meditation Looks Inward, Poetry Holds Forth | An Excerpt from Hard to Be a Saint in the City
We have excerpted part of the chapter “Meditation Looks Inward, Poetry Holds Forth: Is There a Beat Way of Writing?” from Hard to Be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats here. In this book, Robert Inchausti explores the Beat canon to reveal that the movement was at its heart a spiritual one. [...]Offering Realization | An Excerpt from The Supreme Siddhi of Mahamudra
We have excerpted the chapter “Offering Realization: In the Presence of Pagmo Drupa” from The Supreme Siddhi of Mahamudra: Teachings, Poems, and Songs of the Drukpa Kagyu Lineage here. The Drukpa Kagyu lineage is renowned among the traditions of Vajrayana Buddhism for producing some of the greatest yogis from across the Himalayas. After spending many years [...]Salamba Prasarita Padottanasana | An Excerpt from Restore & Rebalance
We have excerpted the chapter “Salamba Prasarita Padottanasana: Supported Wide-Legged Forward Bend” from Restore and Rebalance by Judith Hanson Lasater. This chapter describes how to complete the Salamba Prasarita Padottanasana or Supported Wide-Legged Forward Bend pose. Click here to read “Salamba Prasarita Padottanasana: Supported Wide-Legged Forward Bend” from Restore and Rebalance Related Books Restore and Rebalance$21.95 - [...]Suffering and the End of Suffering | An Excerpt from Touching the Infinite
We have excerpted a portion of chapter one entitled, “Suffering and the End of Suffering,” from Touching the Infinite: A New Perspective on the Buddha's Four Foundations of Mindfulness here. To order the full book, click here. During a question-and-answer period after a meditation session I was leading, a student asked where meditation was taking us. He [...]Trusting in Self | An Excerpt from The Light That Shines through Infinity
We have excerpted a portion of chapter one from The Light That Shines through Infinity: Zen and the Energy of Life here. To order the full book, click here. Zen Buddhism is not a philosophy like rationalism or empiricism; Zen is actual life. But when you study Zen, sometimes it may seem that Zen denies the value [...]The Offering of the Pigeon Goddess Girl | Excerpt From The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa
In this excerpt, Milarepa is visited by eight goddesses who arrive in the form of pigeons to hide themselves “from people with negativity.” The goddesses perform magic that reveals their bodily forms, and request that Milarepa come to the divine world to teach them the dharma. Milarepa explains the fleeting pleasures of both the divine [...]Lana Wachowski, Writer/Director of “The Matrix,” Interviews Ken Wilber about Brief History
Lana Wachowski Interviews Ken Wilber Learn More An exploration of Integral Theory Lana Wachowski: Let’s see . . . always awkward getting started with this kind of thing because there is so much context, so many backstories and memories tucked into various corners of the integral cupboard that would not only help readers understand why [...]From the Foreword to the Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff
The Reality of Being$27.95 - PaperbackBy: Jeanne de Salzmann Add to Cart George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866–1949) regarded knowledge of reality—what he called true "knowledge of being"—as a stream flowing from remote antiquity, passed on from age to age, from people to people, from race to race. He viewed this knowledge as the indispensable means to [...]Hidden Treasure – My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization
My Name Is Chellis, and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning It's a funny title, and Chellis Glendinning is a fun gal, to be sure-but she's also very serious in her assertion that our relationship to the Earth bears traces of traumatic stress syndrome. Chellis was one of the pioneers in the [...]Hidden Treasure – A Guided Tour to the Collected Workks or C.G. Jung
A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung by Robert Hopcke When people get their heads rearranged by Jung--sometimes after reading his Man and His Symbols-it often instills in them a craving for more writings of the founder of analytical psychology. But they hit a roadblock: Jung's Collected Works run to more [...]