Eastern Philosophy

The poems in Something The River Says are inspired by and drawn from the philosophy of Vedanta and the words of John Muir, Emerson, Thoreau, Rumi, Hafiz, Tagore, Paramananda as well as other great poets and writers whose works reflect the mystical wonder and Divine nature of all creation. They are also the fruit of inspiration born of nature’s intelligence, beauty and transformative awakening power.

The remarkable Gertrude Bell, one of the great scholars/adventurers of the late 19th and early 20th century, translated the poems of Hafiz of Persia and introduced the English world to one of the great minds of the 15th century. This is her work in an inexpensive and highly understandable new edition.

Who was the 20th-century Indian sage known as Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi? How did he attain enlightenment and become one of the most celebrated spiritual masters of his time? Why is his spiritual teaching presently revered by Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Taoists, and followers of other spiritual paths, transcending all religious differences? What is the essence of his revolutionary technique, popularly known as self-inquiry meditation? The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi offers you the answers to these profound questions.

The question-and-answer format makes this introduction to Zen especially easy to understand - and also to use as a reference, as you can easily look up just the question you had in mind. The esteemed Zen teacher Norman Fischer and his old friend and teaching colleague Susan Moon (both of them in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind) give this collaborative effort a playful tone: Susan asks a question on our behalf, Norman answers it, and then Sue challenges him.

A leading Christian intellectual and a global citizen, Thomas Merton was known for his mission to understand and learn from other cultures’ worldviews and philosophies. Now, as you listen to these nine captivating talks on Chinese and Greek philosophy, your own interest in these ancient schools of thought, Eastern and Western, will be ignited.

The Commanding Self, in Sufic terminology, is that mixture of the primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding. This audiobook was described by Shah as the key to understanding his entire corpus of work. While complete in itself as an anthology of hitherto unpublished work, it serves to illustrate and amplify Idries Shah’s preceding books on the Sufi Way.

We all long for boundless love as we long for home. But how can we find our home our meaning and purpose if we don't know our self? Wise-Love is an exploration of the self, or consciousness, guided through the meditative eyes of saints, sages, seers, and mystics. As we embark on the journey to the self, we discover that the self's most charming characteristic part of its eternal, unchanging nature is that it is a lover, a lover who can be satisfied only when ordinary love evolves into wise-love.

The Book of Five Rings (五輪書, Go Rin no Sho) is a text on kenjutsu (sword fighting), and combat in general, written by the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi around 1645.

Deepak Chopra and Kimberly Snyder offer an exciting and practical program to help transform you from the inside out. Through six pillars of healthy living that focus on internal and external nourishment, sleep, living naturally, avoiding excessive stress, and better understanding the relationship between emotions and inflammatory foods, the authors offer practical tips, tools, innovative routines, and foods that will allow you to achieve your highest potential of beauty and health.

Come along with David Hinton on a series of walks through the wild beauty of Hunger Mountain, near his home in Vermont—excursions informed by the worldview he’s imbibed from his many years translating the classics of Chinese poetry and philosophy. His broad-ranging discussion offers insight on everything from the mountain landscape to the origins of consciousness and the Cosmos, from geology to Chinese landscape painting, from parenting to pictographic oracle-bone script, to a family chutney recipe.

Brilliant, mystical, pragmatic, and witty, Chuang Tsu has been called the world's first anarchist by some. Even 2,000 years after his death, his provocative Taoist text remains in the forefront of ancient Chinese philosophical study. An essential sourcebook in the Taoist canon, the sublime prose of this spiritual classic provides a profound and paradoxical commentary to the Tao Te Ching.

Shortly before his death in 1645, the undefeated swordsman Miyamoto Musashi retreated to a cave to live as a hermit. There he wrote five scrolls describing the "true principles" required for victory in the martial arts and on the battlefield. Instead of relying on religion or theory, Musashi based his writings on his own experience, observation, and reason. The scrolls, published as The Book of Five Rings, have recently gained an international reputation in the business world as a means of resolving differences and achieving success.

In his thought-provoking and entertaining book, David Michie explains the nuts and bolts of meditation. As a busy professional, as well as long-term meditator, he also gives a first-hand account of how to integrate this transformational practice into everyday life. Combining leading edge science with timeless wisdom, Hurry Up and Meditate provides all the motivation and tools you need to achieve greater balance, better health and a more panoramic perspective on life.

This memoir and biography unfolds the inspiring internal and external spiritual odyssey of Yamuna Devi's devotional life recalled in her memories, talks, journals, and writings as well as the remembrances of the author and other associates and friends. It is supplemented with relevant complimentary music and narrative featuring Yamuna.

The timeless original text; required listening for anyone interested in strategy. This is a work of subtlety and paradox that shows the way to a clean and aesthetic triumph. Sun Tzu insisted that a skilled warrior observes, calculates, outwits, and outmaneuvers an adversary, and in doing so averts the destruction of battle.

Bhakti (love for the Beloved) is the highest pinnacle of any spiritual endeavor. Unlike other paths, it is a wholly selfless path in which the practitioner is unconcerned with personal gain or spiritual goals. The goal is simply to love God. In this path, one experiences the bliss of the divine from the very outset. As Ramakrishna says, God’s devotees are invited into the living room of God’s heart from the very beginning, while others have to wait outside until the very end. Bhakti is the simplest, easiest, most satisfying and most expedient path to the divine.

Distinguished philosopher Hilary Putnam, who is also a practicing Jew, questions the thought of three major Jewish philosophers of the 20th century - Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas -- to help him reconcile the philosophical and religious sides of his life. An additional presence in the book is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, although not a practicing Jew, thought about religion in ways that Putnam juxtaposes to the views of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas.

Akshaya is the hybrid daughter of a human mother and an alloy, a genetically engineered posthuman—and she’s the future of life on the planet Meru. But not if the determined Akshaya can help it. Before choosing where her future lies, she wants to circumnavigate the most historic orb in the universe—the birthplace of humanity: Earth.

This workbook for beginners contains seven basic lessons and exercises you can apply now to begin to slow down and stop your chattering mind and begin to enjoy living in "The Now", an experience that will grant you inner peace and freedom from illusion starting today. It presents the basic concepts, principles, and methods behind the spiritual teachings of Eckhart Tolle, Dalai Lama, Krishnamuti, and Meister Eckhart, among others.

Some of us were lucky enough to have one passionate, funny, inspiring English teacher who helped us fall in love with books. Add a lifetime of teaching Dharma - authentic, traditional approaches to meditation and awakening - and you get award-winning author Dean Sluyter. With droll humor and irreverent wisdom, he unpacks the Dharma of more than twenty major writers, from William Blake to Dr. Seuss, inspiring listeners to deepen their own spiritual life and see literature in a fresh new way: as a path of awakening.