Paradise in Plain Sight

Paradise in Plain Sight PDF Author: Karen Maezen Miller
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1608682528
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
"Reflections on finding peace, beauty, and fulfillment in everyday life, illustrated by the author's experiences with tending her new home's venerable but neglected Japanese garden"--

Paradise in Plain Sight

Paradise in Plain Sight PDF Author: Karen Maezen Miller
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1608682528
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Reflections on finding peace, beauty, and fulfillment in everyday life, illustrated by the author's experiences with tending her new home's venerable but neglected Japanese garden"--

Paradise in Plain Sight

Paradise in Plain Sight PDF Author: Karen Maezen Miller
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1608682536
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Come See the Garden That Is Your Life When Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller and her family land in a house with a hundred-year-old Japanese garden, she uses the paradise in her backyard to glean the living wisdom of our natural world. Through her eyes, rocks convey faith, ponds preach stillness, flowers give love, and leaves express the effortless ease of letting go. The book welcomes readers into the garden for Zen lessons in fearlessness, forgiveness, presence, acceptance, and contentment. Miller gathers inspiration from the ground beneath her feet to remind us that paradise is always here and now.

Momma Zen

Momma Zen PDF Author: Karen Maezen Miller
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834824892
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Combining humor, honesty, and plainspoken advice, Momma Zen distills the doubts and frustrations of motherhood into vignettes of Zen wisdom Drawing on her experience as a first-time mother and her years of Zen meditation and study, Karen Miller explores how the daily challenges of parenthood can become the most profound spiritual journey of our lives. Her compelling and wise memoir follows the timeline of early motherhood from pregnancy through toddlerhood. Momma Zen takes readers on a transformative journey, charting a mother’s growth beyond naive expectations and disorientation to finding fulfillment in ordinary tasks, developing greater self-awareness and acceptance—to the gradual discovery of "maternal bliss," a state of abiding happiness and ease that is available to us all. In her gentle and reassuring voice, Karen Miller convinces us that ancient and authentic spiritual lessons can be as familiar as a lullaby, as ordinary as pureed peas, and as frequent as a sleepless night. She offers encouragement for the hard days, consolation for the long haul, and the lightheartedness every new mom needs to face the crooked path of motherhood straight on.

Hand Wash Cold

Hand Wash Cold PDF Author: Karen Maezen Miller
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1577319044
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Miller (Momma Zen) uses daily household chores?laundry, kitchen, yard?to demonstrate timeless Buddhist principles. The skillful weaving of personal anecdotes, a few Zen terms, and acute insights?sometimes addressing the reader directly?distinguish this book from others in the genre. Miller, a Zen priest and student of the late Maezumi Roshi, argues for?the faultless wisdom of following instructions? when going about the mundane activities that form the substance of everyday life. --publisher.

Mindfulness in the Garden

Mindfulness in the Garden PDF Author: Zachiah Murray
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1937006158
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Mindfulness in the Garden offers simple mindfulness verses (gathas) composed to connect the mind and body and to bring the reader/gardener’s awareness to the details of the present moment as they work in the garden. These gathas are signposts leading to nature, to the present, and ultimately to one’s self through the love and understanding they evoke. The gathas offered with each gardening activity serves to water the seeds of mindfulness within us, and softening and preparing the ground for our ability to be present. Mindfulness in the Garden values weeds as important messengers seeking to bring into close communion our spiritual nature with that of the environment. It likens spiritual practice to cultivating a garden and inspires each person to accept themselves and start where they are, weeds and all. Through the practice of mindful gardening, we invite not only the thriving of the natural world but also the flowering and beauty of the pure land of our true self to emerge. Features black and white botanical illustrations throughout. Introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh, author of Present Moment Wonderful Moment Foreword by Wendy Johnson,author of Gardening at the Dragon's Gate

More Travels on Grace Street

More Travels on Grace Street PDF Author: Jeff Blake
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1499062443
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Praise for More Travels on Grace Street: “Jeff Blake strikes me as one of the most persistent and discerning seekers—after experience, knowledge, beauty, integrity, love, and grace—whom I have ever known, and his writings about travel, history, poetry, race relations, family, and faith resonate with all of the qualities that one would expect of a committed lifelong seeker. I have recommended Traveling on Grace Street to many people as Blake’s bona fide gift to the world, which he returns to it out of both love and gratitude, and More Travels on Grace Street derives from the same uplifting wellsprings. I recommend it just as heartily as I continue to do his earlier book.” —Michael Bishop, author of Ancient of Days and Who Made Stevie Crye?, Pine Mountain, Georgia “Nobody will ever show you what grace actually looks like better than Jeff Blake, who continues his travels on Grace Street with this excellent volume. He is a genius about grace. The grace of God. The grace that carries us through the rough patches of life. The grace of sacred places. The grace of ordinary life. He is my teacher.” —Joanna Adams, minister, Presbyterian Church (USA), Atlanta, Georgia “I got to know Jeff Blake through his writings and our occasional bird-watching. In fact, I have followed his words for at least ten years. We share a common passion for nature, including Texas wildflowers. I’ve read with interest of his encounters with poets and writers and other interesting folks. I have observed his journey through various trials, which are common to all of us, and count him as a friend. Jeff’s reflections on the meaning of grace interest me and make for good reading.” —Robert Nunnally, attorney, Allen, Texas “Jeff Blake invites and guides on a journey of grace. With courage, vulnerability, and strength, his full and open heart lights the thread that connects. We are held, embraced, enticed into stepping more fully, lovingly, and deeply into and onto our own sacred path. Jeff opens doors as he leads us through a garden of possibility. His words ring with support. We enclose in the intimacy of tenderness as compassion and grace guide knowing and faith.” —Cathy Edgett, author of Breast Strokes: Two Friends Journal through the Unexpected Gifts of Cancer and Love Letters: To My Daughters-in-Law, Mill Valley, California

Zen Traces

Zen Traces PDF Author: Kenneth Kraft
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589881281
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
As Zen takes root in the West, new forms arise. For centuries Zen masters have tested their students with “koans” and “capping phrases.” A koan is a spiritual paradox that must be solved intuitively. A capping phrase is a trenchant comment. Both are meditative practices that reveal deeper truths about the self and, ideally, lead to enlightenment. In Zen Traces, Buddhist scholar Kenneth Kraft plays off these practices in a new idiom. He selects passages from four sources: traditional Zen, present-day Zen, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain. When a koan-like story about a contemporary Zen teacher is paired with a pithy comment by Mark Twain, something fresh emerges. “In this lovely book, Ken Kraft provides a unique opening for American Buddhism and American wisdom in general. The reader will come to fresh and spacious new insights and enjoyments… Cheers for Zen in America and a deep bow to Ken Kraft!”—POLLY YOUNG-EISENDRATH, Ph.D., author of The Present Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Discovery “I highly recommend this delightful book of East-West wisdom—full of surprise, insight, wit, and piercing beauty.”—KATY BUTLER, author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death

Right Here with You

Right Here with You PDF Author: Andrea Miller
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1590309049
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
In recent years scientists have discovered that mindfulness can reduce stress, improve mood, and enhance our sense of well-being. In this book, readers learn how mindfulness can be brought to bear in our relationships to increase intimacy, strengthen communication, and help us to find greater fulfilment. Topics in this collection include how to open your heart and develop lovingkindness for yourself and others, how to improve communication through mindful speech and deep listening, noticing and counteracting destructive patterns, and discovering how intimate relationships can become a rich form of spiritual practice. Chapters and contributors include: • Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on what mindfulness is and why it lies at the heart real love • Psychotherapist David Richo on finding a partner • Psychotherapist and meditation teacher Tara Brach on the power of forgiveness • Rabbi Harold Kushner on striving to give love rather than get it • Novelist Jane Hamilton on a marital meltdown—and recovery • Meditation teacher Susan Piver on the value of heartbreak • Psychologist John Welwood on relationships as a path of personal and spiritual growth

All the Rage

All the Rage PDF Author: Andrea Miller
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1611801710
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Leading psychologists and meditation teachers explain how mindfulness can help us work with our anger--and ultimately transform it into compassion. Anger. For all of us, it’s a familiar feeling—jaw clenching, face flushing, hands shaking. We feel it for rational and irrational reasons, on a personal and on a global level. If we know how to handle our anger skillfully, it is an effective tool for helping us recognize that a situation needs to change and for providing the energy to create that change. Yet more often anger is destructive—and in its grip we hurt ourselves and those around us. In recent years scientists have discovered that mindfulness practice can reduce stress, improve mood, and enhance our sense of well-being. It also offers us a way of dealing with strong emotions, like anger. This anthology offers a Buddhist perspective on how we can better work with anger and ultimately transform it into compassion, with insight and practices from a variety of contributors, including Thich Nhat Hanh, Sharon Salzberg, Sylvia Boorstein, Carolyn Gimian, Tara Bennett-Goleman, Pat Enkyo O’Hara, Jules Shuzen Harris, Christina Feldman, Mark Epstein, Ezra Bayda, Judith Toy, Noah Levine, Judy Lief, Norman Fischer, Jack Kornfield, Stan Goldberg, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Dzigar Kongtrül, and many others.

My Year of Dirt and Water

My Year of Dirt and Water PDF Author: Tracy Franz
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press, Inc.
ISBN: 1611729300
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
Married to a Zen monk in training, an American woman in Japan chronicles her own year of growth and discovery In February 2004, when her American husband, a recently ordained Zen monk, leaves home to train for a year at a centuries-old Buddhist monastery, Tracy Franz embarks on her own year of Zen. An Alaskan alone—and lonely—in Japan, she begins to pay attention. My Year of Dirt and Water is a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered husband, Tracy teaches English, studies Japanese, and devotes herself to making pottery. Her teacher instructs her to turn cup after cup—creating one failure after another. Past and present, East and West intertwine as Tracy is twice compelled to return home to Alaska to confront her mother’s newly diagnosed cancer and the ghosts of a devastating childhood. Revolving through the days, My Year of Dirt and Water circles hard questions: What is love? What is art? What is practice? What do we do with the burden of suffering? The answers are formed and then unformed—a ceramic bowl born on the wheel and then returned again and again to dirt and water.