Download or read book A Chariot to Freedom written by Shechen Gyaltsap IV and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique commentary on the preliminary practices of Vajrayāna Buddhism, from a beloved Nyingma master. A Chariot to Freedom is one of the most beloved presentations of the preliminary practices, or ngöndro, that form the foundation of the Vajrayāna Buddhist path. This set of practices, common to all schools of Himalayan Buddhism, is what nearly every practitioner begins with, yet it also constitutes a complete method in and of itself. Although ngöndro are considered a prerequisite for further teachings and initiations into other practices, many of even the most accomplished masters continue to engage in them every day. Most of the other excellent works on these foundational techniques are specific to a particular tradition, but this text is widely considered to be exemplary, in part, because it is applicable to all traditions of ngöndro. Drawing from the original words of the Buddha in the sūtras and from later treatises by such masters as Nāgārjuna, Shāntideva, and Guru Padmasambhava, Shechen Gyaltsap’s commentary is a wonderfully curated anthology of Buddhist teachings on the preliminary practices of Vajrayāna Buddhism. It covers the thoughts that turn one’s mind away from ordinary pursuits and toward enlightenment, taking refuge, arousing the mind set on enlightenment (bodhichitta), purification, maṇḍala offering, and Guru Yoga. Shechen Gyaltsap explains why each practice is beneficial and provides profound and eminently useful guidance for practitioners, while simultaneously transmitting the wisdom of generations of Buddhist masters.

Download or read book Vajra Wisdom written by Shechen Gyaltsap IV and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2013-04-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vajra Wisdom presents the commentaries of two great nineteenth-century Nyingma masters that guide practitioners engaged in development stage practice through a series of straightforward instructions. The rarity of this kind of material in English makes it indispensable for practitioners and scholars alike. The goal of development stage meditation in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition is to directly realize the inseparability of phenomena and emptiness. Preceded by initiation and oral instructions, the practitioner arrives at this view through the profound methods of deity visualization, mantra recitation, and meditative absorption.

Download or read book Sweet Chariot written by Ann Patton Malone and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sweet Chariot is a pathbreaking analysis of slave families and household composition in the nineteenth-century South. Ann Malone presents a carefully drawn picture of the ways in which slaves were constituted into families and households within a community and shows how and why that organization changed through the years. Her book, based on massive research, is both a statistical study over time of 155 slave communities in twenty-six Louisiana parishes and a descriptive study of three plantations: Oakland, Petite Anse, and Tiger Island. Malone first provides a regional analysis of family, household, and community organization. Then, drawing on qualitative sources, she discusses patterns in slave family household organization, identifying the most significant ones as well as those that consistantly acted as indicators of change. Malone shows that slave community organization strongly reflected where each community was in its own developmental cycle, which in turn was influenced by myriad factors, ranging from impersonal economic conditions to the arbitrary decisions of individual owners. She also projects a statistical model that can be used for comparisons with other populations. The two persistent themes that Malone uncovers are the mutability and yet the constancy of Louisiana slave household organization. She shows that the slave family and its extensions, the slave household and community, were far more diverse and adaptable than previously believed. The real strength of the slave comunity was its multiplicity of forms, its tolerance for a variety of domestic units and its adaptability. She finds, for example, that the preferred family form consisted of two parents and children but that all types of families and households were accepted as functioning and contributing members of the slave community. "Louisiana slaves had a well-defined and collective vision of the structure that would serve them best and an iron determination to attain it, " Malone observes. "But along with this constancy in vision and perseverance was flexibility. Slave domestic forms in Louisiana bent like willows in the wind to keep from shattering. The suppleness of their forms prevented domestic chaos and enabled most slave communities to recover from even serious crises."

Download or read book An End to Suffering written by Pankaj Mishra and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An End to Suffering is a deeply original and provocative book about the Buddha's life and his influence throughout history, told in the form of the author's search to understand the Buddha's relevance in a world where class oppression and religious violence are rife, and where poverty and terrorism cast a long, constant shadow. Mishra describes his restless journeys into India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, among Islamists and the emerging Hindu middle class, looking for this most enigmatic of religious figures, exploring the myths and places of the Buddha's life, and discussing Western explorers' "discovery" of Buddhism in the nineteenth century. He also considers the impact of Buddhist ideas on such modern politicians as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. As he reflects on his travels and on his own past, Mishra shows how the Buddha wrestled with problems of personal identity, alienation, and suffering in his own, no less bewildering, times. In the process Mishra discovers the living meaning of the Buddha's teaching, in the world and for himself. The result is the most three-dimensional, convincing book on the Buddha that we have.

Download or read book Enlightened Vagabond written by Matthieu Ricard and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colorful stories about and profound teachings of Patrul Rinpoche, one of the most impactful teachers and thinkers in the Tibetan tradition from the nineteenth century. The life and teachings of the wandering yogi Patrul Rinpoche—a highly revered Buddhist master and scholar of nineteenth-century Tibet—come alive in true stories gathered and translated by the French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard over more than thirty years, based on the oral accounts of great contemporary teachers as well as written sources. Patrul’s life story reveals the nature of a highly realized being as he transmits the Dharma in everything he does, teaching both simple nomads and great lamas in ways that are often unconventional and even humorous, but always with uncompromising authenticity.

Download or read book The Great Medicine That Conquers Clinging to the Notion of Reality written by Shechen Rabjam and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2007-06-12 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these inspiring teachings on how to open the heart, a contemporary Tibetan Buddhist master shows us how to change our self-centered attitude and develop concern for the well-being of others. He teaches that when we acknowledge our own wish for happiness, we realize that all beings wish for the same. With a broader perspective, we can develop the strength to extend gratitude and kindness first to those we love, and eventually to everyone. In his warm and informal style, Rabjam offers accessible Buddhist teachings that will appeal to anyone who would like to find more meaning in life. Based on classical Tibetan teachings, his commentary is fresh, humorous, and sharply insightful. Here is a modern Tibetan teacher who appreciates the challenges of living in today’s world. The Great Medicine will help contemporary readers draw on ancient teachings to find their way to wisdom, freedom, and joy amid the struggles of real life. For more information about the author, Shechen Rabjam, visit his website at www.shechen.org.

Download or read book A Practice of Padmasambhava written by Shechen Gyaltsap IV and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2011-03-16 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indian master Padmasambhava occupies a special place in the hearts of practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. By bringing tantric Buddhism to Tibet from India, he inspired a movement of awakening that for centuries has brought countless practitioners to spiritual fulfillment. A Practice of Padmasambhava presents two practical and compelling works related to a visualization and mantra practice of Padmasambhava. This practice is based on the most important revelation of the renowned nineteenth-century treasure revealer Chokgyur Lingpa, Accomplishing the Guru's Mind: Dispeller of All Obstacles. These two works give an introduction to the preliminary trainings, outline the primary elements of visualization practice and mantra recitation, and supply a detailed explanation of the practice of Padmasambhava's wisdom aspect, Guru Vadisimha. Through practical step-by-step instructions on this deity, the reader is guided into the general world of tantric practice common to all of Tibetan Buddhism.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza s Ethics written by Olli Koistinen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-31 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its publication in 1677, Spinoza's Ethics has fascinated philosophers, novelists, and scientists alike. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and contested works of Western philosophy. Written in an austere, geometrical fashion, the work teaches us how we should live, ending with an ethics in which the only thing good in itself is understanding. Spinoza argues that only that which hinders us from understanding is bad and shows that those endowed with a human mind should devote themselves, as much as they can, to a contemplative life. This Companion volume provides a detailed, accessible exposition of the Ethics. Written by an internationally known team of scholars, it is the first anthology to treat the whole of the Ethics and is written in an accessible style.

Download or read book A Thousand Miles to Freedom written by Eunsun Kim and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the country-wide famine escalated. By the time she was eleven years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun was in danger of the same. Finally, her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister, not knowing that they were embarking on a journey that would take them nine long years to complete. Before finally reaching South Korea and freedom, Eunsun and her family would live homeless, fall into the hands of Chinese human traffickers, survive a North Korean labor camp, and cross the deserts of Mongolia on foot. Now, Eunsun is sharing her remarkable story to give voice to the tens of millions of North Koreans still suffering in silence. Told with grace and courage, her memoir is a riveting exposé of North Korea's totalitarian regime and, ultimately, a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit.

Download or read book The Precious Treasury of the Way of Abiding and the Exposition of the Quintessential Meaning of the Three Categories written by Kloṅ-chen-pa Dri-med-ʼod-zer and published by Padma Pub. This book was released on 1998 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fundamental Mind written by Mi-pham-rgya-mtsho (ʼJam-mgon ʼJu) and published by Snow Lion. This book was released on 2006-05-12 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Precise and detailed presentation of the nature of mind from the Dzogchen point of view.

Download or read book The Water Dancer written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • From the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me, a boldly conjured debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom. “This potent book about America’s most disgraceful sin establishes [Ta-Nehisi Coates] as a first-rate novelist.”—San Francisco Chronicle IN DEVELOPMENT AS A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Adapted by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kamilah Forbes, directed by Nia DaCosta, and produced by MGM, Plan B, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • Vanity Fair • Esquire • Good Housekeeping • Paste • Town & Country • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures. This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children—the violent and capricious separation of families—and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen. Praise for The Water Dancer “Ta-Nehisi Coates is the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race with his 2015 memoir, Between the World and Me. So naturally his debut novel comes with slightly unrealistic expectations—and then proceeds to exceed them. The Water Dancer . . . is a work of both staggering imagination and rich historical significance. . . . What’s most powerful is the way Coates enlists his notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound that never seems to heal. . . . Timeless and instantly canon-worthy.”—Rolling Stone

Download or read book Freedom Wherever We Go written by Thich Nhat Hanh and published by Parallax Press. This book was released on 2001-08-09 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Freedom Wherever We Go, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh takes the centuries–old Buddhist monastic code, the Pratimoksha, and updates it for the twenty-first century. "The Buddha," Thich Nhat Hanh says, "needs courageous disciples to make this revolutionary step." The Buddhist equivalent of the rules of Saint Benedict, the Pratimoksha defines and organizes the conduct of monastics and of the monastic community. The guidelines in this book emphasize right conduct, mindfulness, openheartedness, and clear communication. This is the first time that this text is available to lay practitioners and non-monastic readers.

Download or read book Chariot of Life written by Tawfiq-e-elahi Chowdhury and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book goes beyond an autobiographical account of his life. It is a history, eyewitness accounts of those breathtaking events that led to the ceremony of the proclamation of independence and swearingin of the first ever government of Bangladesh in April 1971 at Mujibnagar, informing the world of the birth of a much-waited independent nation. As a key organiser of the momentous events, Chowdhury was part of that phase in national history. Indeed, he contributed to making the history. In his book, Chowdhury goes beyond the war that shaped and reshaped life for the nation and the bloody history that took away innocence—the imposition of emergency in 2007 by an unconstitutional government was the last nail in the coffin. Chowdhury oscillates between his accounts during the liberation war and draws contrasts to the time spent unjustly in prison during the imposition, shares a chronicle of uncertainty, the unknown timeline of freedom, anguished at being mistreated by a country that he loves unremittingly and the continuous attempts to impose a prejudiced verdict on him and Hasina. Yet Chowdhury says he remains resolute in belief in justice. His fellow cell mates educate him, poignantly though, of the inner working of the judicial system. Along the way, the author, privileged of sitting next to Hasina in the dock, recounts briefly though, her dauntless political journey, her many trysts with fate and her indomitable belief in the destiny of Bangladesh. Honorable Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina unveiled the book in February 2018.

Download or read book The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison written by Ralph Ellison and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race,” and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that black Americans lead. “Ralph Ellison,” wrote Stanley Crouch, “reached across race, religion, class and sex to make us all Americans.”

Download or read book When I Was A Child I Read Books written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the magnificent, award-winning novels GILEAD, HOME and LILA comes this wonderful, heart-warming collection of essays about reading. 'Grace and intelligence ...[her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' Barack Obama Marilynne Robinson is not only a writer of sharp, subtly moving fiction, but also a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In this luminous collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her bestselling novels: the place literature has in life, the role of faith in modern living, the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our best-loved writers.

Download or read book The Legend of Freedom Hill written by Linda Jacobs Altman and published by Lee & Low Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the California Gold Rush Rosabel, an African American, and Sophie, a Jew, team up and search for gold to buy Rosabel's mother her freedom from a slave catcher.