These modern day parables in Zen Master Next Door send positive messages that are simple and inspiring. Based in the truth, they are an insightful means to explore our many relationships and how they touch our soul. Relevant and timely, these stories underscore our yearning to live an inspired life and they show that deep-rooted and ancient ideals are as mainstream as our exchanges with our neighbor next door. These parables are gentle but strong. They embrace but let go. They are simple and complex just like our own lives. They are, of course, parables. What others are saying about this book: What an inspiring way to learn about our very soul. These modern day parables in Zen Master Next Door are compelling and left me wanting more. - Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind

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.

In the fifth edition of his classic work, Sire offers additional student-friendly features to his introductions to theism, deism, naturalism, Marxism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern monism, New Age philosophy, and postmodernism.

Author Bauple New Fiction Shares One Mans Reflection of Life Based on Stereotypes The story of Joe Candide and how he realized the one thing that links all the unknowns in his life together QUEENSLAND, Australia (Release Date TBD) Do you look at someone and automatically put them into a stereotype or pigeonhole? Joe Candide used to, when he was young. But as he matured, he began to realise that life and reality was a far more complex story. Pigeonholes is a thought provoking book written by author Bauple. It takes readers into the life story of Joe Candide, a man who is constantly changing his perspectives, job and lifestyle. But now, falling to his death from a seven storey building with his memories flashing right before his eyes, he reflects on his life and starts with each stereotype and then develops them into characters that are sometimes very different than his first impression. Throughout his life, Joe had always thought he was in control of everything. He could read people, understand people, and know what they were thinking. He could work on the higher level with an empathetic view. But there were always subtle reactions and actions that took place now and then that he could not explain. Will he get the clarity that men search their whole life for? Will he finally realised the one thing that linked all the unknowns in his life together? Pigeonholes will make readers realise that everyone has an immediate idea or first impression of people due to their own prejudices.This book shows that rarely are the first impressions a true indication of character. It is witty and thought provoking and readers should see some part of themselves inside the pages. In the end, after all the raging against stereotypes and pigeonholes, Joe will finally find one that provides meaning and explanations and more importantly provides hope. For more information on this book, interested parties can log on to www.Xlibris.com.au

The Hidden Lamp is a collection of one hundred koans and stories of Buddhist women from the time of the Buddha to the present day. This revolutionary book brings together many teaching stories that were hidden for centuries, unknown until this volume. These stories are extraordinary expressions of freedom and fearlessness, relevant for men and women of any time or place. In these pages we meet nuns, laywomen practicing with their families, famous teachers honored by emperors, and old women selling tea on the side of the road. Each story is accompanied by a reflection by a contemporary woman teacher--personal responses that help bring the old stories alive for readers today--and concluded by a final meditation for the reader, a question from the editors meant to spark further rumination and inquiry. These are the voices of the women ancestors of every contemporary Buddhist.

The book is written for parents, community leaders and all other educators at all levels. Its main purpose is to inspire all children in general and all open-minded teens, adolescents and young adults in particular to know why and how to enjoy and share and celebrate their 4 deepest educational needs for: *belonging, *relative Independence, *dialogical encounter between belonging and relative independence *self-navigation

Dogen used to say, ”It was a great opportunity that both the people who could have distracted me, who loved me and I loved them ... and that was the danger. They died at the right time. I am infinitely grateful to them just because they died at the right time without destroying me.”

Notes about my spiritual experiences - a description of what happened as I tried moving towards awareness of an awakened spirit. This is a personal account, drawn from a wide range of sources, mostly what are described as mystical traditions. A ramble through ideas that have seemed most important to me.

Drag queen. Prostitute. Drug addict. American bodhisattva. These words describe the unlikely persona of Issan Dorsey, one of the most beloved teachers to emerge in American Zen. From his early days as a gorgeous female impersonator to the LSD experiences that set him on the spiritual path, Issan's life was never conventional. In 1989, after twenty years of Zen practice, he became the Founding Abbot of San Francisco's Hartford Street Zen Center, where he established Maitri Hospice for AIDS patients. Featuring Bernie Glassman's foreword to the second edition, as well as a new foreword by Koshin Paley Ellison, Street Zen paints a vivid portrait of a teacher whose creativity, honesty, joy, and compassion awakened new possibilities for American Buddhism.

This book offers an original examination of human cognition, arguing that cognitive skills are dispositional in nature. Opposing influential views in modern Anglo-American philosophy, Gundersen starts from the received premis that knowledge is analyzable in terms of belief, justification and truth, and goes on to clarify and improve on these ingredients' exact nature and internal association. Exploring a wide range of arguments offered by influential contributors in the field of modal epistemology, Gundersen argues that external conditions are secondary in developing and cultivating cognitive competence and that the fulcrum of the cognitive investigation is the fascinating interplay between and cultivation of internal cognitive powers.