Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers

Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers
Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2011
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0861716914

"The Guys in this Book are my Heroes, and Perle Besserman and Manfred Steger have done a tremendous job of bringing their stories to life. It's important to put a spotlight on the radical, rebellious characters who have shaped the Zen Buddhist lineage. I really like this book."---Brad Warner, Author of Hardcore Zen --

Grassroots Rising

Grassroots Rising
Author: Ronnie Cummins
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-02-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1603589759

Grassroots Rising is a passionate call to action for the global body politic, providing practical solutions for how to survive--and thrive--in catastrophic times. Author Ronnie Cummins aims to educate and inspire citizens worldwide to organize and become active participants in preventing ecological collapse. This book offers a blueprint for building and supercharging a grassroots Regeneration Movement based on consumer activism, farmer innovation, political change, and regenerative finance--embodied most recently by the proposed Green New Deal in the US. Cummins asserts that the solution lies right beneath our feet and at the end of our forks through the transformation of our broken food system. Using regenerative agriculture practices that restore our agricultural and grazing lands, we can sequester massive amounts of carbon in the soil. Coupled with an aggressive transition toward renewables, he argues that we have the power to not only mitigate and slow down climate change, but actually reverse global warming. In synergy with the Sunrise Movement and the growing support of a Green New Deal, Grassroots Rising will impact millions of conscious consumers, farmers, and the general public during the crucial 2020 election year and beyond. This book shows that a properly organized and executed Regeneration Revolution can indeed offer realistic climate solutions while also meeting our everyday needs. If you're wondering what you can do to help address the global climate crisis, joining the Regeneration Revolution might be the best first step. " Grassroots Rising] is a 'good news' instructional book for Regeneration, a practical, shovel-ready plan of action for the United States and the world to transition to climate stability, peace, justice, health, prosperity, cooperation, and participatory democracy." --Ronnie Cummins

Grassroots Zen

Grassroots Zen
Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT
ISBN: 9781939681690

Rooted in a spiritual partnership model based on "power-sharing," Grassroots Zen emphasizes gender equality and is oriented to social engagement.

Zen Master Who?

Zen Master Who?
Author: James Ishmael Ford
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2006-10-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0861715098

Surprisingly little has been written about how Zen came to North America. "Zen Master Who?" does that and much more. Author James Ishmael Ford, a renowned Zen master in two lineages, traces the tradition's history in Asia, looking at some of its most important figures -- the Buddha himself, and the handful of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese masters who gave the Zen school its shape. It also outlines the challenges that occurred as Zen became integrated into western consciousness, and the state of Zen in North America today. The author includes profiles of modern Zen teachers and institutions, including D. T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, and such topics as the emergence of liberal Buddhism, and Christians, Jews, and Zen. This engaging, accessible book is aimed at anyone interested in this tradition but who may not know how to start. Most importantly, it clarifies a great and ancient tradition for the contemporary seeker.

A New Zen for Women

A New Zen for Women
Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2007-04-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0230610854

Perle Besserman's adventures in a Japanese Zen monastery provide the groundwork for this lively, heartwarming narrative of a woman's life in Zen. Engaging in cross-cultural dialogues with nuns and laywomen in India, China, Japan, and more, Besserman dispels the notion that women had nothing to do with the founding and sustaining of Zen. She shows how women continue to transform traditional Zen in new and creative ways, integrating the practice of meditation into their lives. Both informative and entertaining, A New Zen for Women offers a new look at Western women encountering Zen.

Grassroots Spirituality

Grassroots Spirituality
Author: Robert K. C. Forman
Publisher: Imprint Academic
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2004
Genre: Religious life
ISBN: 9780907845683

In Grassroots Spirituality, Robert Forman documents an important and profound shift in the nature of spirituality in North America, that strongly influences Europe as well. His exciting survey graphically illustrates the possibility of this "grassroots" movement shaping a creative era that responds to new and old needs of religiosity.

The Spirit of Zen

The Spirit of Zen
Author: Sam van Schaik
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300240511

An engaging introduction to Zen Buddhism, featuring a new English translation of one of the earliest Zen texts Leading Buddhist scholar Sam van Schaik explores the history and essence of Zen, based on a new translation of one of the earliest surviving collections of teachings by Zen masters. These teachings, titled The Masters and Students of the Lanka, were discovered in a sealed cave on the old Silk Road, in modern Gansu, China, in the early twentieth century. All more than a thousand years old, the manuscripts have sometimes been called the Buddhist Dead Sea Scrolls, and their translation has opened a new window onto the history of Buddhism. Both accessible and illuminating, this book explores the continuities between the ways in which Zen was practiced in ancient times, and how it is practiced today in East Asian countries such as Japan, China, Korea, and Vietnam, as well as in the emerging Western Zen tradition.

Upside-Down Zen

Upside-Down Zen
Author: Susan Murphy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2006-11-13
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 086171279X

"Upside-Down Zen" invites readers to explore the vivid spirit of Zen Buddhism in fresh ways. Recalling, in another vein, the warm, lyrical style of Lin Jensen's "Bad Dog!, " author Susan Murphy offers a multifaceted take on the spiritual, grounded in the everyday. She uses her skills as storyteller, filmmaker, and poet to uncover the connections between Zen and Western cinema, as well as between Zen and traditions as diverse as Australian aboriginal beliefs and Jewish folktales. In the process, she finds spirituality where it has always belonged -- wherever life is happening. Murphy helps readers make sense of Zen koans, the often oversimplified and misunderstood teaching stories of the tradition, and highlights their wisdom for any reader on the spiritual path. A strong new voice in Western Buddhism, Murphy speaks for the many "unrecorded" women of Zen while bringing a lively, literate approach to a sometimes daunting genre.

The Making of Buddhist Modernism

The Making of Buddhist Modernism
Author: David L. McMahan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2008-11-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199884781

A great deal of Buddhist literature and scholarly writing about Buddhism of the past 150 years reflects, and indeed constructs, a historically unique modern Buddhism, even while purporting to represent ancient tradition, timeless teaching, or the "essentials" of Buddhism. This literature, Asian as well as Western, weaves together the strands of different traditions to create a novel hybrid that brings Buddhism into alignment with many of the ideologies and sensibilities of the post-Enlightenment West. In this book, David McMahan charts the development of this "Buddhist modernism." McMahan examines and analyzes a wide range of popular and scholarly writings produced by Buddhists around the globe. He focuses on ideological and imaginative encounters between Buddhism and modernity, for example in the realms of science, mythology, literature, art, psychology, and religious pluralism. He shows how certain themes cut across cultural and geographical contexts, and how this form of Buddhism has been created by multiple agents in a variety of times and places. His position is critical but empathetic: while he presents Buddhist modernism as a construction of numerous parties with varying interests, he does not reduce it to a mistake, a misrepresentation, or fabrication. Rather, he presents it as a complex historical process constituted by a variety of responses -- sometimes trivial, often profound -- to some of the most important concerns of the modern era.

Fay's Men

Fay's Men
Author: Perle Besserman
Publisher: Running Wild, LLC
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2024-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1955062951

Fay' s Men traces the adventures and misadventures of Fay Watkins, a Texas-born dancer and spiritual seeker, on the poignantly funny, circuitous path to self-realization. Prompted by her na&ï ve, almost quixotic idealism, Fay' s quest inspires hasty decisions in love and a disillusioning spiritual encounter that nearly knocks her off course. Undaunted, she boldly pursues her goal, journeying from home to an initiatory stint as a revolutionary in Mexico, then to New York, where she leaps into marriage with a wacky psychiatrist, then to an Israeli Zen center and a Japanese monastery, followed by a hilariously disastrous trip to Paris with her Zen master, and an unintended admission as a patient in the psychiatric ward of her husband' s hospital— an experience that finally propels her to self-discovery on a palm-fringed beach in Hawaii.