The Essence of Art An excerpt from The Book of Tea By Kakuzo Okakura Related Books The Book of Tea$14.95 - PaperbackBy: Sam Hamill & Kakuzo Okakura Add to Cart The Book of Tea$12.95 - PaperbackBy: Kakuzo Okakura Add to Cart Striving to Become Art Itself In religion the future is behind us. In art the [...]

The Power of Art This short essay was written in 1987, when no one had any idea whether the Cold War would ever come to an end. We are still in a global crisis, but in another form. The Necessity of Political Art Art in a period of widely-perceived global crisis can never be the [...]

Clarify Your Definitions We have all been in gardens—even very costly ones—that we find oddly uninspiring. There are the landscapes around mansions where money has been lavished on moving trees, building pools, patios, and fire pits, and planting lush lawns, yet we don’t much enjoy being in those spaces and may even find them stale [...]

One of the greatest joys for me as an editor at Shambhala Publications is when I work on books by people I have long admired. This was most definitely the case when Shambhala had the good fortune to become William Scott Wilson’s publisher several years ago. I first encountered his work when I was a [...]

Enso: Zen Circles of Enlightenment by Audrey Yoshiko Seo These circular brushstrokes have become a kind of Zen cliché. Here's a chance to look past your preconceived ideas about them and appreciate their original energy, whimsy, and beauty. Each is a work of art that's executed in a split second-but the actual work in fact [...]

Shambhala: How long have you known Kaz? Roshi Joan: I met Kaz in the mid 1980s when we invited him and other artists to the Ojai Foundation with Thich Nhat Hanh. I felt an instant connection with him, and since that time we have collaborated on many projects and have become good friends and allies [...]