With a cast of characters that includes a fat cat, seventeen camels, and a man with 83 problems, and drawing inspiration from quantum physics, research on risk aversion and modern linguistic theory, this book is essential reading for mediators, mediation advocates and negotiators.

This book is about emptiness and silence—the mind-expanding emptiness of Zen painting, and the reverberating silence of haiku poetry. Through imaginative participation in the visions of painters and poets, its readers are led to the realization that, in the author's words, "emptiness, silence, is not nothingness, but fullness. Your fullness." This cultural tradition has informed many distinguished lives and works of art. The work of painters like Niten, Liang K'ai, and Toba, and of painters like Basho, Buson, and Issa reflects the wholeness, spontaneity, and humanity of the Zen vision. Those who desire a glimpse into the world of intuitive contact with nature offered by Zen meditation will find these paintings, commentaries, and haiku poems especially rewarding. They enable the reader to experience the unique power of Zen art—it's capacity to fuse esthetic appreciation, personal intuition, and knowledge of life into one creative event.

A guidebook to recognizing and incorporating Zen thinking in everyday life. It encourages opportunities for mindfulness in commonplace human actions like breathing, speaking, waking, sleeping, moving, staying, eating, drinking, working, playing, caring, loving, thriving and surviving.

DIVBestselling author Howard Fast’s straightforward introduction to Zen meditation/div DIVHoward Fast began to formally practice Zen meditation after turning away from communism in 1956. The Art of Zen Meditation, originally published by the antiwar political collective Peace Press in 1977, is the fruit of Fast’s study: a brief and instructive history of Zen Buddhism and its tenets, written with a simplicity that is emblematic of the philosophy itself. Fast’s study of Zen also inspired his popular Masao Masuto mystery series about a Zen Buddhist detective in Beverly Hills, which he published under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham./divDIV /divDIVThe Art of Zen Meditation is illustrated with twenty-three beautiful photographs./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div

Who are you? When are you? What were you conscious of a moment ago? Susan Blackmore combines the latest scientific theories about mind, self, and consciousness with a lifetime’s practice of Zen. Framed by ten critical questions that are derived from Zen’s teachings, Zen and the Art of Consciousness explores how intellectual enquiry and meditation can expand your understanding and experience of consciousness and tackle some of today’s greatest scientific mysteries.

“A warm, profound and cleareyed memoir. . . this wise and sympathetic book’s lingering effect is as a reminder that a deeper and more companionable way of life lurks behind our self-serious stories."—Oliver Burkeman, New York Times Book Review A remarkable exploration of the therapeutic relationship, Dr. Mark Epstein reflects on one year’s worth of therapy sessions with his patients to observe how his training in Western psychotherapy and his equally long investigation into Buddhism, in tandem, led to greater awareness—for his patients, and for himself For years, Dr. Mark Epstein kept his beliefs as a Buddhist separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Content to use his training in mindfulness as a private resource, he trusted that the Buddhist influence could, and should, remain invisible. But as he became more forthcoming with his patients about his personal spiritual leanings, he was surprised to learn how many were eager to learn more. The divisions between the psychological, emotional, and the spiritual, he soon realized, were not as distinct as one might think. In The Zen of Therapy, Dr. Epstein reflects on a year’s worth of selected sessions with his patients and observes how, in the incidental details of a given hour, his Buddhist background influences the way he works. Meditation and psychotherapy each encourage a willingness to face life's difficulties with courage that can be hard to otherwise muster, and in this cross-section of life in his office, he emphasizes how therapy, an element of Western medicine, can in fact be considered a two-person meditation. Mindfulness, too, much like a good therapist, can “hold” our awareness for us—and allow us to come to our senses and find inner peace. Throughout this deeply personal inquiry, one which weaves together the wisdom of two worlds, Dr. Epstein illuminates the therapy relationship as spiritual friendship, and reveals how a therapist can help patients cultivate the sense that there is something magical, something wonderful, and something to trust running through our lives, no matter how fraught they have been or might become. For when we realize how readily we have misinterpreted our selves, when we stop clinging to our falsely conceived constructs, when we touch the ground of being, we come home.