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The Dharma of Poetry

2021-01-26
The Dharma of Poetry

Author: John Brehm

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

ISBN: 9781614297208

Category: Poetry

Page: 184

View: 458

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The author explores poetry as a spiritual practice with example poems from contemporary and historical poets, particularly as they relate to Buddhism. Includes meditations on poems and writing prompts for readers to experiment with on their own.

The Dharma of Poetry

2021-01-26
The Dharma of Poetry

Author: John Brehm

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

ISBN: 9781614297345

Category: Religion

Page: 184

View: 851

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Discover how to engage with poetry to support your spiritual practice, leading to more mindfulness, equanimity, and joy. In The Dharma of Poetry, John Brehm shows how poems can open up new ways of thinking, feeling, and being in the world. Brehm demonstrates the practice of mindfully entering a poem, with an alertness, curiosity, and open-hearted responsiveness very much like the attention we cultivate in meditation. Complete with poetry-related meditations and writing prompts, this collection of lively, elegantly written essays can be read as a standalone book, or as a companion to the author’s acclaimed anthology, The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy.

Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism

2013-01-21
Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism

Author: Stephen C. Berkwitz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 9780199935772

Category: Religion

Page: 320

View: 596

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Many researchers have explored the impact of British and French Orientalism in the reinterpretations of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Less noticed, however, and infrequently discussed is the impact of Portuguese colonialists and missionaries upon Buddhist communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries across Asia. Stephen C. Berkwitz addresses this theme by examining five poetic works by Alagiyavanna Mukaveti (b.1552), a renowned Sinhala poet who participated directly in the convergence of local and trans-local cultures in early modern Sri Lanka. Berkwitz follows the written works of the poet from his position in the court of a Sinhala king, through the cultural upheavals of warfare and the expansion of colonial rule, and finally to his eventual conversion to Catholicism and employment under the Portuguese Crown. In so doing, Berkwitz explores the transformations in religion and literature rendered by what was arguably the earliest sustained encounter between Asian Buddhists and European colonialists in world history. Alagiyavanna's poetic works give expression to both a discourse of nostalgia for the local religious and cultural order in the late sixteenth century, and a discourse of cultural assimilation with the new colonial order during its ascendancy in the early seventeenth century. Employing an interdisciplinary approach that combines Buddhist Studies, History, Literary Criticism, and Postcolonial Studies, this book yields important insights into how the colonial experience contributed to the transformation of Buddhist culture in early modernity.

Moonlight Leaning Against an Old Rail Fence

2015-07-07
Moonlight Leaning Against an Old Rail Fence

Author: Paul Weiss

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

ISBN: 9781583949467

Category: Body, Mind & Spirit

Page: 288

View: 609

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A rich and original collection of Dharma teachings, Moonlight Leaning Against an Old Rail Fence weaves the poetic and the expository in a series of Zen poems and commentaries that invite both direct experience and meditative study. Paul Weiss evokes the awake, pristine, and poetic nature of our human experience while also examining the mechanisms of ego that define our personal and cultural experience of separation and suffering. Here you will find simple, ecstatic celebrations of luminous and transparent reality; clarification of technical points of practice; support for everyday life; and reflections on issues of history, culture, and human ecology. All become threads in a jeweled net of integrative spiritual thought and practice that will inform and encourage any reader's practice, contemplation and personal growth. Moonlight Leaning Against an Old Rail Fence points beyond our literal fixations with language, ideas, and doctrines to the great ungraspable poetic reality that is expressed in all our spirituality and in all our human experience. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Aphorisms, the Arts, and Late Writings

2022-07-28
Aphorisms, the Arts, and Late Writings

Author: Sangharakshita

Publisher: Windhorse Publications

ISBN: 9781911407867

Category: Religion

Page: 832

View: 223

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This multi-faceted volume includes a collection of aphorisms, a selection of teachings on Buddhism and the arts, and two collections of late writings.

The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy

2017-06-06
The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy

Author: John Brehm

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

ISBN: 9781614293316

Category: Poetry

Page: 312

View: 960

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"Over 125 poetic companions for all life's ups and downs. The Buddha once told a disciple that good spiritual friends are the whole of holy life. The poems expertly gathered here offer all that one might hope for in such spiritual friendship: wisdom, compassion, peacefulness, good humor, and the ability to both absorb and express the deepest human emotions of grief and joy. The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy offers a wide-ranging collection of 129 ancient and modern poems unlike any other anthology on bookshelves today. It uniquely places Buddhist poets like Han Shan, Tu Fu, Saigyo, Ryokan, Basho, Issa, and others alongside modern Western poets one would not expect to find in such a collection--poets like Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, William Stafford, Denise Levertov, Jack Gilbert, Ellen Bass, Billy Collins, and more. What these poems have in common, no matter whether they are explicitly Buddhist, is that all reflect the essential truths the Buddha articulated 2,500 years ago. The book provides an important poetic complement to the many prose books on mindfulness practice--the poems here both reflect and embody the dharma in ways that can't be matched by other modes of writing. Its unique features include an introduction that discusses the themes of impermanence, mindfulness, and joy and explores the relationship between them. Biographical notes place the poets in historical context and offer quotes and anecdotes to help readers learn about the poets' lives. A short essay at the back of the book on "Mindful Reading" helps readers approach the poems from an experiential, non-analytical perspective and illustrates the similarities between meditation and the mindful reading of poetry. Brehm also includes a guided meditation on sound that helps readers appreciate the sonic qualities of poetry and shows how the anthology might be used in ongoing spiritual practice"--

The Poetry of Enlightenment

2006-10-10
The Poetry of Enlightenment

Author: Master Sheng-Yen

Publisher: Shambhala Publications

ISBN: 9781590303993

Category: Religion

Page: 112

View: 532

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For the masters of the Chan tradition, poetry was a form of creative expression, but even more than that, it was a primary vehicle for teaching. Here a modern master presents ten teaching poems from the ancient masters, with illuminating commentary. “These poems flow directly from the minds of the enlightened Chan masters,” Master Sheng Yen says. “We get a glimpse into their experience at the time of, and after, their enlightenment. It is my hope that this collection of poems will give those who are interested in the practice a new way of looking at Chan.”

Tracking Bodhidharma

2012-04-12
Tracking Bodhidharma

Author: Andy Ferguson

Publisher: Catapult

ISBN: 9781619020795

Category: Philosophy

Page: 288

View: 345

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The life of Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, has, with the passing of time, been magnified to the scale of myth, turning history into the stuff of legend. Known as the First Patriarch, Bodhidharma brought Zen from South India into China in 500 CE, changing the country forever. In Tracking Bodhidharma, Andrew Ferguson recreates the path of Bodhidharma, traveling through China to the places where the First Patriarch lived and taught. This sacred trail takes Ferguson deep into ancient China, and allows him to explore the origins of Chan [Zen] Buddhism, the cultural aftermath that Bodhidharma left in his wake, and the stories of a man who shaped a civilization. Tracking Bodhidharma offers a previously unheard perspective on the life of Zen's most important religious leader, while simultaneously showing how that history is relevant to the rapidly developing super–power that is present–day China. By placing Zen Buddhism within the country's political landscape, Ferguson presents the religion as a counterpoint to other Buddhist sects, a catalyst for some of the most revolutionary moments in China's history, and as the ancient spiritual core of a country that is every day becoming more an emblem of the modern era.

Poetic Leaps in Zen's Journey of Enlightenment

2012-08
Poetic Leaps in Zen's Journey of Enlightenment

Author: Yong Zhi

Publisher: iUniverse

ISBN: 9781475942125

Category: Science

Page: 220

View: 668

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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.

Poems and Short Stories

2020-04-07
Poems and Short Stories

Author: Sangharakshita

Publisher: Windhorse Publications

ISBN: 9781911407485

Category: Poetry

Page: 704

View: 301

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This volume contains all of Sanghrakshita's poems and six short stories. It is prefaced by a foreword and two essays introducing the poems in different ways. It also includes edited versions of two talks Sangharakshita gave about specific poems, and a sequence of conversations about his poetry that were recorded towards the end of his life.

The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry

2005-05-15
The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry

Author: Andrew Schelling

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

ISBN: 9780861713929

Category: Literary Collections

Page: 397

View: 991

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This unique collection brings us African Americans reading the Black diasporahrough the eyes of exiled Tibetan monks; Americans of Vietnamese and Tibetaneritage wrestling with the cultural norms of their parents or ancestors; Zennd Dada inspired performance pieces; and groundbreaking writings from theioneers of the Beat movement, so many of whom remain not just relevant butital to this day. With its eclectic mix of acknowledged elders and newlymergent voices, this landmark anthology vividly displays how Buddhism isnfluencing the character of contemporary poetry.