Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Zen Of The Plains
Download Zen Of The Plains full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Zen Of The Plains ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis Zen of the Plains by : Tyra A. Olstad
Download or read book Zen of the Plains written by Tyra A. Olstad and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although spare, sweeping landscapes may appear "empty," plains and prairies afford a rich, unique aesthetic experience--one of quiet sunrises and dramatic storms, hidden treasures and abundant wildlife, infinite horizons and omnipresent wind, all worthy of contemplation and celebration. In this series of narratives, photographs, and hand-drawn maps, Tyra Olstad blends scholarly research with first-hand observation to explore topics such as wildness and wilderness, travel and tourism, preservation and conservation, expectations and acceptance, and even dreams and reality in the context of parks, prairies, and wild, open places. In so doing, she invites readers to reconsider the meaning of "emptiness" and ask larger, deeper questions such as: how do people experience the world? How do we shape places and how do places shape us? Above all, what does it mean to experience that exhilarating effect known as Zen of the plains?
Book Synopsis Zen of the Plains by : Tyra A. Olstad
Download or read book Zen of the Plains written by Tyra A. Olstad and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With their windswept ridges and wind-rent skies, prairies and plains have often been denigrated as nothing but nothing--empty, meaningless, valueless space. Mountains and forests, oceans and deserts have been praised and protected while vast expanses of undulating grasslands have been plowed under, grazed over, used, abused, maligned. Once the largest ecosystem on the North American continent, wild prairies now persist mainly in overlooked or unwanted fragments. In part, it's a matter of psychology; some people see plains as visually unpleasing (too big, too boring) or physically alienating (too dry, too exposed). It's also part economics; prairies seem more productive, more valuable as anything but tangles of grass and sage. But at heart, it's a matter of sociocultural and individual biases; people seeking bucolic or sublime landscapes find "empty"+ treeless skyscapes flat and dull, forgettable. Scientific, social, and especially aesthetic appreciation for plains requires a different perspective--a pause in place--an exploration of the horizon as well as an examination of the minutiae, few people have strived to understand and appreciate undifferentiated, untrammeled space. This research seeks to change that by example, using conscientious, systematic reflection on first-hand experience to explore questions fundamental to phenomenology and geography--how do people experience the world? How do we shape places and how do places shape us?--in the context of plains landscapes. Written and illustrated from the perspective of a newcomer, a scholar, a National Park Service ranger, a walker, a watcher, a person wholly and unabashedly in love with wild places, the creative non-fiction narratives, photoessays, and hand-drawn maps address themes of landscape aesthetics, sense of place, and place-identity by tracing the natural, cultural, and managerial histories of and personal relationships with Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park, South Dakota's Badlands National Park, Kansas's Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research Station, and Wyoming's Fossil Butte National Monument. Prosaic and photographic meditations on wildness and wilderness, travel and tourism, preservation and conservation, days and seasons, expectations and acceptance, even dreams and reality intertwine to evoke and illuminate the inspiring aesthetic of spacious places--Zen of the plains.
Book Synopsis Zen in Plain English by : Stephan Schuhmacher
Download or read book Zen in Plain English written by Stephan Schuhmacher and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No other book quite engages the reader in the kinds of perceptions and experiences that the seeker will have while following this path. The Zen masters are famous for their unorthodox ways of teaching the wisdom of the 'thing itself'. Their Koans - paradoxical stories, and questions - are designed to rid the mind of over-sophisticated responses. A selection of tales from the great Zen teachers, this book coaxes the reader into a direct encounter with the life-changing perceptions of the Zen mind. Challenging us to find 'a solution that resolves and dissolves the knots in heart and mind, the chronic cramp that prevents us from breathing freely, from giving ourselves without reserve to life in all its delightful and painful facets, and from being at peace with life and with death.' In this process we are confronted by the limits of rational meaning - and we begin to understand why Zen masters use humour and paradox to lead us to the very edge of the precipice of reason, and why, at that critical point, we are gently pushed over. 'Stephan Schumacher's innovative format and his fresh interpretations of this fine selection of stories from the great teachers are a useful introduction to Zen practice, and more importantly a welcome return to the fundamental Dharma of no-self, not-knowing, the thing- itself and the beauty and precision of this moment-by-moment precious moment of our lives.' Peter Matthiessen(Muryo Roshi)
Book Synopsis Meteorological Observations by : J. Boileau
Download or read book Meteorological Observations written by J. Boileau and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-03-23 with total page 685 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1872. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.
Download or read book A Primer of Soto Zen written by Dōgen and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1979-06-01 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zen was popularized in the West largely through the writings of Dr. D.T. Suzuki, who followed the school of Rinzai Zen. Although it remains relatively unknown in the West, Soto Zen eventually attracted the greatest number of followers in Japan. With its gentle, more intellectual approach, Soto Zen relies on deep meditation (zazen) rather than the "sudden," direct method (using koan) of Rinzai Zen, in striving for enlightenment. The Shobogenzo Zuimonki consists largely of brief talks, horatatory remarks, and instructional and cautionary comments by the Soto Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253). Translated, shobogenzo means "the eye of the true law." Roughly translated, zuimonki means "easy for the ears to understand," or "simplified."
Book Synopsis Rising from the Plains by : John McPhee
Download or read book Rising from the Plains written by John McPhee and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee continues his Annals of the Former World series about the geology of North America along the fortieth parallel with Rising from the Plains. This third volume presents another exciting geological excursion with an engaging account of life—past and present—in the high plains of Wyoming. Sometimes it is said of geologists that they reflect in their professional styles the sort of country in which they grew up. Nowhere could that be more true than in the life of a geologist born in the center of Wyoming and raised on an isolated ranch. This is the story of that ranch, soon after the turn of the twentieth century, and of David Love, the geologist who grew up there, at home with the composition of the high country in the way that someone growing up in a coastal harbor would be at home with the vagaries of the sea.
Book Synopsis One Blade of Grass by : Henry Shukman
Download or read book One Blade of Grass written by Henry Shukman and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you've ever wondered how a messed up kid like you or me might master the wisdom of Zen, One Blade of Grass is the adventure for you. It's great company—and after reading it, you might recognize that you're further along than you imagined." —David Hinton, editor and translator of The Four Chinese Classics and author of The Wilds of Poetry One Blade of Grass tells the story of how meditation practice helped Henry Shukman to recover from the depression, anxiety, and chronic eczema he had had since childhood and to integrate a sudden spiritual awakening into his life. By turns humorous and moving, this beautifully written memoir demystifies Zen training, casting its profound insights in simple, lucid language, and takes the reader on a journey of their own, into the hidden treasures of life that contemplative practice can reveal to any of us. "This heartfelt and beautifully written memoir provides one of the most insightful, informative, and honest accounts of Zen practice yet to appear in English." —Stephen Batchelor, author of After Buddhism
Book Synopsis Paradise in Plain Sight by : Karen Maezen Miller
Download or read book Paradise in Plain Sight written by Karen Maezen Miller and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Come See the Garden That Is Your Life When Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller and her family land in a house with a hundred-year-old Japanese garden, she uses the paradise in her backyard to glean the living wisdom of our natural world. Through her eyes, rocks convey faith, ponds preach stillness, flowers give love, and leaves express the effortless ease of letting go. The book welcomes readers into the garden for Zen lessons in fearlessness, forgiveness, presence, acceptance, and contentment. Miller gathers inspiration from the ground beneath her feet to remind us that paradise is always here and now.
Download or read book Return of the Gar written by Mark Spitzer and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-03-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The alligator gar belongs to a family of fish that has remained fundamentally unchanged since the Cretaceous, over 100 million years ago. Its intimidating size and plethora of teeth have made it demonized throughout its range in North America, resulting in needless killing. Massive oil spills in its breeding range have not helped its population either. Interspersing science, folklore, history, and action-packed fishing narratives, Spitzer's empathy for and fascination with this air-breathing, armored fish provides for an entertaining odyssey that examines management efforts to preserve and propagate the alligator gar in the United States. Spitzer also travels to Central America, Thailand, and Mexico to assess the global gar situation. He reflects on what is and isn't working in compromised environments, then makes a case for conservation based on personal experience and a love for wildness for its own sake. This colorful portrait of the alligator gar can serve as a metaphor and measurement for the future of our biodiversity during a time of planetary crisis.
Book Synopsis Crooked Cucumber by : David Chadwick
Download or read book Crooked Cucumber written by David Chadwick and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2000-02-08 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shunryu Suzuki is known to countless readers as the author of the modern spiritual classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. This most influential teacher comes vividly to life in Crooked Cucumber, the first full biography of any Zen master to be published in the West. To make up his intimate and engrossing narrative, David Chadwick draws on Suzuki's own words and the memories of his students, friends, and family. Interspersed with previously unpublished passages from Suzuki's talks, Crooked Cucumber evokes a down-to-earth life of the spirit. Along with Suzuki we can find a way to "practice with mountains, trees, and stones and to find ourselves in this big world."
Book Synopsis Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record by : Thomas Cleary
Download or read book Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record written by Thomas Cleary and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2002-12-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blue Cliff Record is a classic text of Zen Buddhism, designed to assist in the activation of dormant human potential. The core of this extraordinary work is a collection of one hundred traditional citations and stories, selected for their ability to bring about insight and enlightenment. These vignettes are known as gongan in Chinese and koan in Japanese. Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record is a fresh translation featuring newly translated commentary from two of the greatest Zen masters of early modern Japan, Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) of the Rinzai sect of Zen and Tenkei Denson (1648–1735) of the Soto sect of Zen. This translation and commentary on The Blue Cliff Record sheds new light on the meaning of this central Zen text.
Download or read book The Spirit of Zen written by Alan Watts and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere by : Poe Ballantine
Download or read book Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere written by Poe Ballantine and published by Hawthorne Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" will embrace Poe Ballantine's "Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere." Poe Ballantine's "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" included in Best American Essays 2013, and for well over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd jobs, living in small rooms, trying to make a living as a writer. At age 46, he finally settled with his Mexican immigrant wife in Chadron, Nebraska, where they had a son who was red-flagged as autistic. Poe published four books about his experiences as a wanderer and his observations of America. But one day in 2006, his neighbor, Steven Haataja, a math professor from the local state college disappeared. Ninety five days later, the professor was found bound to a tree, burned to death in the hills behind the campus where he had taught. No one, law enforcement included, understood the circumstances. Poe had never contemplated writing mystery or true crime, but since he knew all the players, the suspects, the sheriff, the police involved, he and his kindergarten son set out to find out what might have happened.
Book Synopsis What More Do You Want? by : Albert Low
Download or read book What More Do You Want? written by Albert Low and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All readers, both novice and longtime practitioners, will encounter in this book new answers, and new questions, to the what, why and how of Zen practice. We've all had moments in our lives when we've thought, "Something is missing. There must be more to life than this." It is this sense that often brings people to the practice of Zen. By turning to Zen, they acknowledge that this "something" lies not in externals, but rather in seeking to transcend desire and attachment. The journey toward that transcendence begins with questioning, and questions will be part of the path until awakening is attained. In What More do You Want? a fascinating new book by renowned Zen master Albert Low, he addresses some of the questions students have posed about the practice of Zen: Why do we practice? Why should we seek to understand our reasons for practicing? How can we distinguish between true and false practice? What is awakening? In addition, Low shares with his readers four teishos--talks that comment on a text or koan in order to enhance meditation practice--on zazen or seated meditation, on pain and suffering, and on the very nature of practice itself. Finally, Low shares with readers an experience of satori, a glimpse into Buddha nature.
Book Synopsis Zen Meditation Plain and Simple by : Albert Low
Download or read book Zen Meditation Plain and Simple written by Albert Low and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2000-05-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published by Tuttle in 1989 as An Invitation to Practice Zen, Zen Meditation Plain and Simple has gone on to sell nearly 20,000 copies. Now, with a new preface and updated instructional photographs, it's perfect to help a new generation of readers looking to learn the basics of zazen—zen meditation. With a concise overview of the basics and clear photographs illustrating the proper positions and postures, this comprehensive guidebook demystifies the age-old practice of zazen and brings its numerous benefits into the lives of today's Westerners.
Book Synopsis Morning Comes to Elk Mountain by : Gary Lantz
Download or read book Morning Comes to Elk Mountain written by Gary Lantz and published by Southwestern Nature Writing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organized as a series of monthly journal entries, Morning Comes to Elk Mountain is Lantz's response to ten years of exploring the rough and unexpected beauty of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. A combination of memoir, natural history, Native American history, and geology, this book is enriched by 20 color photos and a map to appeal to the seasoned visitor as well as the newcomer to the refuge. The national wildlife refuge that's the focus of the book was among the first established by President Theodore Roosevelt. He helped save the Wichitas from miners and land speculators, and instead the harsh yet scenic area became the nation's first bison refuge, established to keep this American icon from slipping into extinction. Today the refuge hosts more than a million visitors a year, most of them coming to hike the trails, climb the rocks, photograph bison and prairie dogs, or simply commune with a beautiful, wild area that remains a spiritual landscape for the Kiowa and Comanche Indians who call it home.
Book Synopsis Canyon, Mountain, Cloud by : Tyra Olstad
Download or read book Canyon, Mountain, Cloud written by Tyra Olstad and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we seek and what do we find when we visit parks and protected areas? What does it mean to become so deeply attached to a beautiful, wild place that it becomes part of one's identity? And why does it matter if a particular landscape doesn't speak to one's soul? Part memoir and part scholarly analysis of the psychological and societal dimensions of place-creation, Canyon, Mountain, Cloud details the author's experiences working and living in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Denali National Park and Preserve, Adirondack State Park, and arctic Alaska. Along the way, Olstad explores canyons, climbs mountains, watches clouds, rafts rivers, searches for fossils, and protects rare and fragile vegetation. She learns and shares local natural and cultural histories, questions perceptions of "wilderness," deepens her appreciation for wildness, and reshapes her understanding of self and self-in-place. Anyone who has ever felt appreciation for wild places and who wants to think more deeply about individual and societal relationships with American parks and protected areas will find humor, fear, provocation, wonder, awe, and, above all, inspiration in these pages.
