Takaoka's Travels

Takaoka's Travels PDF Author: Tatsuhiko Shibusawa
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press, Inc.
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Winner of the Yomiuri Prize and recipient of the 2022-23 William F. Sibley Memorial Subvention Award for Japanese Translation. Introducing Tatsuhiko Shibusawa—Japan’s Italo Calvino—in this fantastical tale of a Japanese prince who encounters both beauty and danger on a pilgrimage to India. A fantasy set in the ninth century, Takaoka’s Travels recounts the adventures of a Japanese prince-turned-monk on a pilgrimage to India. As Prince Takaoka and his companions pass through faraway lands, the rules of the ordinary world are upended, and they find curiosities and miracles wherever they go. The travelers encounter strange creatures--a white ape who guards a harem of bird-women, beasts who feed on dreams, a dog-headed man who can see hundreds of years into the future. On the high seas, their ship is boarded by ghostly pirates and driven back by supernatural winds, and still they push on. At every turn, Prince Takaoka is drawn to the beauty around him, whether it takes the form of a perfectly shaped pearl or a giant blood-red flower, but such beauty proves to be extremely dangerous. Seductive and mysterious, offering high adventure yet deeply human, this is a novel that transcends all expectations. With an afterword by translator David Boyd.

Takaoka's Travels

Takaoka's Travels PDF Author: Tatsuhiko Shibusawa
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press, Inc.
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the Yomiuri Prize and recipient of the 2022-23 William F. Sibley Memorial Subvention Award for Japanese Translation. Introducing Tatsuhiko Shibusawa—Japan’s Italo Calvino—in this fantastical tale of a Japanese prince who encounters both beauty and danger on a pilgrimage to India. A fantasy set in the ninth century, Takaoka’s Travels recounts the adventures of a Japanese prince-turned-monk on a pilgrimage to India. As Prince Takaoka and his companions pass through faraway lands, the rules of the ordinary world are upended, and they find curiosities and miracles wherever they go. The travelers encounter strange creatures--a white ape who guards a harem of bird-women, beasts who feed on dreams, a dog-headed man who can see hundreds of years into the future. On the high seas, their ship is boarded by ghostly pirates and driven back by supernatural winds, and still they push on. At every turn, Prince Takaoka is drawn to the beauty around him, whether it takes the form of a perfectly shaped pearl or a giant blood-red flower, but such beauty proves to be extremely dangerous. Seductive and mysterious, offering high adventure yet deeply human, this is a novel that transcends all expectations. With an afterword by translator David Boyd.

Zen and Material Culture

Zen and Material Culture PDF Author: Pamela D. Winfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190693738
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The stereotype of Zen Buddhism as a minimalistic or even immaterial meditative tradition persists in the Euro-American cultural imagination. This volume calls attention to the vast range of "stuff" in Zen by highlighting the material abundance and iconic range of the Soto, Rinzai, and Obaku sects in Japan. Chapters on beads, bowls, buildings, staffs, statues, rags, robes, and even retail commodities in America all shed new light on overlooked items of lay and monastic practice in both historical and contemporary perspectives. Nine authors from the cognate fields of art history, religious studies, and the history of material culture analyze these "Zen matters" in all four senses of the phrase: the interdisciplinary study of Zen's matters (objects and images) ultimately speaks to larger Zen matters (ideas, ideals) that matter (in the predicate sense) to both male and female practitioners, often because such matters (economic considerations) help to ensure the cultural and institutional survival of the tradition. Zen and Material Culture expands the study of Japanese Zen Buddhism to include material inquiry as an important complement to mainly textual, institutional, or ritual studies. It also broadens the traditional purview of art history by incorporating the visual culture of everyday Zen objects and images into the canon of recognized masterpieces by elite artists. Finally, the volume extends Japanese material and visual cultural studies into new research territory by taking up Zen's rich trove of materia liturgica and supplementing the largely secular approach to studying Japanese popular culture. This groundbreaking volume will be a resource for anyone whose interests lie at the intersection of Zen art, architecture, history, ritual, tea ceremony, women's studies, and the fine line between Buddhist materiality and materialism.

Irresistible North

Irresistible North PDF Author: Andrea Di Robilant
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 030726985X
Category : Explorers
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Examines the travel narrative describing the journey of the Zen brothers through the North Atlantic in the 1380s and 1390s, and looks at why the Zen's account was called a fraud in the nineteenth century.

The Venetian Discovery of America

The Venetian Discovery of America PDF Author: Elizabeth Horodowich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108687245
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Few Renaissance Venetians saw the New World with their own eyes. As the print capital of early modern Europe, however, Venice developed a unique relationship to the Americas. Venetian editors, mapmakers, translators, writers, and cosmographers represented the New World at times as a place that the city's mariners had discovered before the Spanish, a world linked to Marco Polo's China, or another version of Venice, especially in the case of Tenochtitlan. Elizabeth Horodowich explores these various and distinctive modes of imagining the New World, including Venetian rhetorics of 'firstness', similitude, othering, comparison, and simultaneity generated through forms of textual and visual pastiche that linked the wider world to the Venetian lagoon. These wide-ranging stances allowed Venetians to argue for their different but equivalent participation in the Age of Encounters. Whereas historians have traditionally focused on the Spanish conquest and colonization of the New World, and the Dutch and English mapping of it, they have ignored the wide circulation of Venetian Americana. Horodowich demonstrates how with their printed texts and maps, Venetian newsmongers embraced a fertile tension between the distant and the close. In doing so, they played a crucial yet heretofore unrecognized role in the invention of America.

Zen Baggage

Zen Baggage PDF Author: Bill Porter
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582439788
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In the spring of 2006, Bill Porter traveled through the heart of China, from Beijing to Hong Kong, on a pilgrimage to sites associated with the first six patriarchs of Zen. Zen Baggage is an account of that journey. He weaves together historical background, interviews with Zen masters, and translations of the earliest known records of Zen, along with personal vignettes. Porter's account captures the transformations taking place at religious centers in China but also the abiding legacy they have somehow managed to preserve. Porter brings wisdom and humor to every situation, whether visiting ancient caves containing the most complete collection of Buddhist texts ever uncovered, enduring a six–hour Buddhist ceremony, searching in vain for the ghost in his room, waking up the monk in charge of martial arts at Shaolin Temple, or meeting the abbess of China's first Zen nunnery. Porter's previously published Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits has become recommended reading at Zen centers and universities throughout America and even in China (in its Chinese translation), and Zen Baggage is sure to follow suit.

Just Traveling

Just Traveling PDF Author: Jaco J. Hamman
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506472079
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Just Traveling celebrates overcoming distance and seeking difference as defining human traits. Following the scriptural witness of God as the Earthroamer, the book explores the liminal qualities of traveling through six movements: anticipating, leaving, surrendering, meeting, caring, and returning. To travel is to move at the speed of being present to one's experiences, bridging distance and difference through acts of care. Drawing on personal experience as well as the wisdom of theology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and cultural studies, Hamman reimagines travel in a welcoming and beautiful, yet also complex and troubled world. Whether leaving home serves our wanderlust and curiosity or has personal or spiritual purposes; whether we travel a few miles or cover vast distances, we travel best when we contribute to human flourishing. Care--the compassionate reaching out to someone or something--is the practice that allows one to travel differently. The spirituality of roads is filled with hopeful restorative potential, and life is best lived with the Earthroamer.

Poetic Leaps in Zen’S Journey of Enlightenment

Poetic Leaps in Zen’S Journey of Enlightenment PDF Author: Yong Zhi
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9781475942149
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
While the philosophical discussion of Zen spirituality reaches its limit, poetry offers an effective expression of the sublime experiences. From a poetic perspective, enlightenment is understood as poetic leaps in the spiritual journey, which brings people from the habitually or conventionally established world toward new horizons of consciousness. This leap is a breakthrough in the overall consciousness, rather than a progression in contemplative thought. Therefore, it cannot be adequately described through abstract representation, but poetry can metaphorically capture this leap and reveal both the spiritual meaning and the practical wisdom of enlightenment. This book will take you on this fantastic journey of enlightenment.

Presentation Zen

Presentation Zen PDF Author: Garr Reynolds
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0321601890
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
FOREWORD BY GUY KAWASAKI Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the Net — presentationzen.com — shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making "slide presentations" in today’s world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.

Escape from Jipadara

Escape from Jipadara PDF Author: Darryl Gopaul
Publisher: Archway Publishing
ISBN: 1480809004
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
Jirboa, Pleen, and Khadaran each support great civilizations, with rich histories and varying strengths. But the Jipadara sun is about to go nova, threatening all life forms with extinction if they remain. The leaders of all three planets follow a cosmic and spiritually designed destiny that brings them into contact with each other. They are guided by a force that exists in a nether world, part of the indestructible matter from the creator but derived from their ancestors after their physical death. Although mostly invisible, this force, called Zen, occasionally intervenes among the people. As catastrophe approaches, it encourages them to escape. Although the leaders strive to maintain their independence, it is only a matter of time before they realize the truth. Building on their knowledge, history, and strength, they and their scientists must work together in order to avoid the death of their civilizations.

Zen Heart

Zen Heart PDF Author: Hozumi Gensho Roshi
Publisher: Weiser Books
ISBN: 9781578632251
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
This collection of 28 teachings by Zen Master Hozumi Gensho reads like an eloquent Dharma chapbook complete with original works of Zen calligraphy. Hozumi Roshi gently leads the reader through some of the major themes of Buddhism as presented in the Heart Sutra, the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate), the Hekigan-roku (The Blue Cliff Record), and other Zen texts. Ancient and modern masters are also cited along with passages from the Kansan-shi (Poems from Cold Mountain) and the Nanporoku (a handbook on the Way of Tea). Hozumi Roshi's work has long been available in Japan and Germany. This is the first time his teachings are available in English. These are things we need to know: *What is Gratitude * How to Live in the Present, Realizing Wisdom * Reverence for Life * Zazen * The Way of Zen Readers are sure to be inspired by Hozumi Roshi's simple but penetrating texts to discover their own Zen Hearts.