Emotional Needs of the Animals We Care For An Excerpt from Kindness for All Creatures Core Needs What do animals need? Basics include food, water, shelter, rest, safety from undue fear and harm, opportunities for play, company, solitude, territory (a nest), enrichment (stimulation), toys and activities, and healthy interactions. Most pets need praise and positive feedback. [...]

"It's My Karma" An Excerpt from Choosing Compassion by Anam Thubten Rinpoche One of the strongest impulses we all have is our desire to experience transcendence. When we tap into transcendence we rise above all of our concerns. We are no longer dominated by fear and we are no longer caught up in the web [...]

The following is an adapted excerpt from The Great Within The Transformative Power and Psychology of the Spiritual Path By Han F. de Wit The Great Within$24.95 - PaperbackBy: Han F. de Wit Add to Cart Exploring the Meaning of The Way The Way, or the Path, is a universal metaphor encountered again and again in [...]

Essential Teachings An Excerpt from Budōshoshinshu Budōshoshinshu and Hagakure are the most influential treatises on samurai philosophy from the Edo period. The two books were written at about the same time and both address the warrior’s role in times of peace. While Hagakure was mostly a secret book of the Nabeshima clan until the twentieth [...]

Mary Gordon's Close Read of the Journals An Excerpt from On Thomas Merton A Structured Approach I very much regret that it took me so long to get to Merton’s journals. There are seven volumes of them, over 2,500 pages—longer than the whole of Proust, whom I also read obsessively for years. I entered into [...]

Shabkar Elucidates the Essentials of Spiritual Practice The Emanated Scripture of Manjushri includes twenty-three pieces of advice from Shabkar (1781–1851), teacher both of the Mind-Training and the Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. In this work, Shabkar shares what he believes to be the essentials of spiritual practice. In this particular section, Shabkar illuminates the importance of retreat [...]

Gurdjieff. “Disparu! Éteint!” An Excerpt from Gurdjieff Reconsidered I make a point of visiting her bookstore, the ideal Parisian bookstore if you care for old editions, rarities, surprises. Widow of a well-respected poet, she presides with touching goodwill over history and taste in the form of books, thousands of books, shelves and stacks of books [...]

My Story of Becoming the First African-American Man to Receive Soto Zen Transmission An Excerpt from Zen beyond Mindfulness My Beginnings I was born in 1939 in Chester, Pennsylvania, an industrial town just outside of Philadelphia that was working class and extremely diverse. Based on this background, the path I ended up taking was exceedingly [...]

The Universe and Beings An Excerpt from Finding Rest in Illusion This excerpt provides commentary on the second vajra point in Finding Rest in Illusion, the third book in the Trilogy of Rest. The character of illusion is applied to the entire phenomenal field of both samsara and nirvana. The second vajra point explains that we [...]

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 [...]