Red Thread Zen

Red Thread Zen PDF Author: Susan Murphy
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 161902876X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Love, attachment, the passions, gender, carnality, birth, bodily being, mortality, belonging, suffering, hope, despair, personhood, imagination, vitality, the struggle to be fully human – how do these things dwell wholly in emptiness, how do we reconcile their vivid life with 'no–thingness'? The red (or 'vermilion') thread originally connoted the color of the silk undergarments courtesans were obliged to wear. Most spiritual traditions do their best to distance themselves as thoroughly as possible from such direct and intimate contact with the fact of impassioned human bodily being, if not to declare open war upon the flesh, and the female body that most plainly bears flesh into the world. Spirituality has trouble dealing with the fact that we arrive here covered in blood. But the red thread can never be cut. Why not? Why would no perfectly accomplished saint ever even dream of cutting it? Red Thread Zen will set out to explore every corner of the magnificent koan of being 'still attached to the red thread, or 'line of tears'. This is an argument against the bloodless and socially disengaged form of 'Buddhism' that is generally being gestated in the West, one that shades too readily into the blandest of bland self–help.

Red Thread Zen

Red Thread Zen PDF Author: Susan Murphy
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 161902876X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
Love, attachment, the passions, gender, carnality, birth, bodily being, mortality, belonging, suffering, hope, despair, personhood, imagination, vitality, the struggle to be fully human – how do these things dwell wholly in emptiness, how do we reconcile their vivid life with 'no–thingness'? The red (or 'vermilion') thread originally connoted the color of the silk undergarments courtesans were obliged to wear. Most spiritual traditions do their best to distance themselves as thoroughly as possible from such direct and intimate contact with the fact of impassioned human bodily being, if not to declare open war upon the flesh, and the female body that most plainly bears flesh into the world. Spirituality has trouble dealing with the fact that we arrive here covered in blood. But the red thread can never be cut. Why not? Why would no perfectly accomplished saint ever even dream of cutting it? Red Thread Zen will set out to explore every corner of the magnificent koan of being 'still attached to the red thread, or 'line of tears'. This is an argument against the bloodless and socially disengaged form of 'Buddhism' that is generally being gestated in the West, one that shades too readily into the blandest of bland self–help.

Unraveling Zen's Red Thread

Unraveling Zen's Red Thread PDF Author: Jon Etta Hastings Carter Covell
Publisher: Hollym International
ISBN: 9780930878191
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description


The Red Thread

The Red Thread PDF Author: Bernard Faure
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822602
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Is there a Buddhist discourse on sex? In this innovative study, Bernard Faure reveals Buddhism's paradoxical attitudes toward sexuality. His remarkably broad range covers the entire geography of this religion, and its long evolution from the time of its founder, Xvkyamuni, to the premodern age. The author's anthropological approach uncovers the inherent discrepancies between the normative teachings of Buddhism and what its followers practice. Framing his discussion on some of the most prominent Western thinkers of sexuality--Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault--Faure draws from different reservoirs of writings, such as the orthodox and heterodox "doctrines" of Buddhism, and its monastic codes. Virtually untapped mythological as well as legal sources are also used. The dialectics inherent in Mahvyvna Buddhism, in particular in the Tantric and Chan/Zen traditions, seemed to allow for greater laxity and even encouraged breaking of taboos. Faure also offers a history of Buddhist monastic life, which has been buffeted by anticlerical attitudes, and by attempts to regulate sexual behavior from both within and beyond the monastery. In two chapters devoted to Buddhist homosexuality, he examines the way in which this sexual behavior was simultaneously condemned and idealized in medieval Japan. This book will appeal especially to those interested in the cultural history of Buddhism and in premodern Japanese culture. But the story of how one of the world's oldest religions has faced one of life's greatest problems makes fascinating reading for all.

The Red Thread of Passion

The Red Thread of Passion PDF Author: David Guy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Is sex an enemy of spiritual practice, or a powerful and creative vehicle of enlightenment? "The Red Thread of Passion" describes one man's search to understand the connection between the sexual and the spiritual.

Upside-Down Zen

Upside-Down Zen PDF Author: Susan Murphy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 086171279X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
"Upside-Down Zen" invites readers to explore the vivid spirit of Zen Buddhism in fresh ways. Recalling, in another vein, the warm, lyrical style of Lin Jensen's "Bad Dog!, " author Susan Murphy offers a multifaceted take on the spiritual, grounded in the everyday. She uses her skills as storyteller, filmmaker, and poet to uncover the connections between Zen and Western cinema, as well as between Zen and traditions as diverse as Australian aboriginal beliefs and Jewish folktales. In the process, she finds spirituality where it has always belonged -- wherever life is happening. Murphy helps readers make sense of Zen koans, the often oversimplified and misunderstood teaching stories of the tradition, and highlights their wisdom for any reader on the spiritual path. A strong new voice in Western Buddhism, Murphy speaks for the many "unrecorded" women of Zen while bringing a lively, literate approach to a sometimes daunting genre.

Minding the Earth, Mending the World

Minding the Earth, Mending the World PDF Author: Susan Murphy
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619023040
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi founded the San Francisco Zen Center in 1962, and after fifty years we have seen a fine group of Zen masters trained in the west take up the mantle and extend the practice of Zen in ways that might have been hard to imagine in those first early years. Susan Murphy, one of Robert Aitken's students and dharma heirs, is one of the finest in this group of young Zen teachers. She is also a fine writer, and following on the teaching of her Roshi she has engaged her spiritual work in the ordinary world, dealing with the practice of daily life and with the struggles of all beings. We know that our earth is in crisis, but is the situation beyond repair? Are we on a path of planetary disaster where the only proper response is to prepare for our melancholic dystopian future? Is there a way out of our suspicious cynicism? In the tradition of Thomas Berry, using this spiritual opportunity to change the very nature of our crisis, Susan Murphy offers a profound message, subtly presented with clarity and assurance, showing that engaged Buddhism provides a possible path to the necessary repair and healing.

Wild Ways

Wild Ways PDF Author: Ikkyū
Publisher: White Pine Press (NY)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
One hundred poems by a revered Japanese Zen master.

Red Thread Sisters

Red Thread Sisters PDF Author: Carol Antoinette Peacock
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101591854
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
When a girl is adopted from a Chinese orphanage, everything she knew about family, best friends, and sisterhood must change. Wen has spent the first eleven years of her life at an orphanage in rural China, and the only person she would call family is her best friend, Shu Ling. When Wen is adopted by an American couple, she struggles to adjust to every part of her new life: having access to all the food and clothes she could want, going to school, being someone's daughter. But the hardest part of all is knowing that Shu Ling remains back at the orphanage, alone. Wen knows that her best friend deserves a family and a future, too. But finding a home for Shu Ling isn't easy, and time is running out . . .

The Dude and the Zen Master

The Dude and the Zen Master PDF Author: Jeff Bridges
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101600756
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
The perfect gift for fans of The Big Lebowski, Jeff Bridges's "The Dude", and anyone who could use more Zen in their lives. Zen Master Bernie Glassman compares Jeff Bridges’s iconic role in The Big Lebowski to a Lamed-Vavnik: one of the men in Jewish mysticism who are “simple and unassuming,” and “so good that on account of them God lets the world go on.” Jeff puts it another way. “The wonderful thing about the Dude is that he’d always rather hug it out than slug it out.” For more than a decade, Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges and his Buddhist teacher, renowned Roshi Bernie Glassman, have been close friends. Inspiring and often hilarious, The Dude and the Zen Master captures their freewheeling dialogue and remarkable humanism in a book that reminds us of the importance of doing good in a difficult world.

Bring Me the Rhinoceros

Bring Me the Rhinoceros PDF Author: John Tarrant
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834823497
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
A provocative and playful exploration of the Zen koan tradition that reveals how everyday paradoxes are an integral part of our spiritual journey Bring Me the Rhinoceros is an unusual guide to happiness and a can opener for your thinking. For fifteen hundred years, Zen koans have been passed down through generations of masters, usually in private encounters between teacher and student. This book deftly retells more than a dozen traditional koans, which are partly paradoxical questions dangerous to your beliefs and partly treasure boxes of ancient wisdom. Koans show that you don’t have to impress people or change into an improved, more polished version of yourself. Instead you can find happiness by unbuilding, unmaking, throwing overboard, and generally subverting unhappiness. Author and Zen teacher John Tarrant brings the heart of the koan tradition out into the open, reminding us that the old wisdom remains as vital as ever, a deep resource available to anyone in any place or time.