ON LIVING ALONE, FLOTSAM, AND JETSAM

Kurt Andersen, True Believers: A Novel(New York: Random House, 2012) ("Living alone has also made me much, much more conscious of the inconsequential things, the sweet banalities of a day in a life. I feel now as if I spent most of my previous time on earth in a state of perpetually frenzied obliviousness, intent on executing all the Important Tasks at Hand. The test to take. The application to finish. The man to marry. The job to get, the brief to write, the motion to file, the verdict to appeal, the meeting to schedule, the PowerPoint to prepare. The apartment to buy, the meals to organize, the two mile runs, the sex to have, the kids to get to school and playdates and doctors and volleyball games and SAT tutors and colleges. The marriage to end. The books to write. I was always good at screening out the noise and focusing exclusively on the signal, which made me successful in school and at work and (more or less) as a parent. Until I lived alone, I was not so good at understanding--really understanding beyond the obligatory modern lip service to smelling the roses and living in the moment--that the extraneous noise can be lovely. The Buddhist call it mindfulness, a word I sort of hate but an MO I've come to believe in.... We deprive ourselves if we ignore all the tiny, inconsequential bits and pieces, the flotsam and jetsam of life. Quarks and neutrinos and atoms and molecules, the earth, asteroids, stars, the shaft of light angling through the kitchen window right this second, illuminating the slow-motion Dance of Ten Thousand Dust Motes: isn't it all flotsam and jetsam?" Id. at 93-94.).

KALI'S BOON: CONFRONTATION AND ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH

David R. Kinsley, The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krsna, Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology, with a new preface (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: U. of California Press, 1975, 2000) ("The sound of Krsna's flute, though, is more than a melody. It is a summons, a call to come to him. It calls the souls of men back to their Lord." Id. at 33. "A central theme in Hindu spirituality is the idea of maya. Essentially maya is what prevents man form seeing the world as it really is. It is grounded in 'not-knowing' (avidya) and is said to be the result of superimposition. Man, in his ignorance, superimposes various structures and images upon things as they really are, thus preventing true 'seeing.' In this state of not-knowing, man comes to see the world as permanent, pleasant, and worthy of his ultimate attachments. He also see it as dual, fractured into bits and pieces, something 'out there' to which he must respond and react continually. Maya, therefore, both lures man into a false sense of security and reality and clutters and fragments his picture of reality." Id. at 133. "Kali quite clearly conveys maya as seen from the 'other shore.' She illustrates strikingly what the world of appearance looks like to the one who has seen beyond. She may be voluptuous and smiling in her later representations, suggesting the dark allure of the world based on not-knowing, but her overall presence, which is frightening, and her dwelling place in the cremation ground clearly mock the ultimate significance of a world grounded in the ego. For the pilgrim who has crossed to the other shore, who has torn the veil of maya, the world left behind or transcended is revealed in all its pretense. With awareness grounded in knowledge, the enlightened one is able to focus on the cremation ground as the end of worlds grounded in a grasping ego. The one who see truly no longer superimposes false and superficial images on the world as it is but rather focuses on the unmistakable reality of the world as painful and fleeting." "Kali, of course, not only represents the world of maya seen from the other shore of enlightenment. She also acts as a catalyst to one who strives to reach the other shore, who strives to see truly." Id. at 134-135. "The First Noble Truth of the Buddha is, 'All is suffering [duhkha],' a truth that the Hindu tradition, too, has assumed for most of its history. What the Buddha articulated in his formula and what duhkha means to the Indian tradition is not simply that life has its misfortunes, bad luck, or tragedies. Duhkha suggests something much more fundamental in Indian spirituality: it underlines the inevitable realities of sickness, old age, and death, the inevitable change and passing away of things. For  Buddhism, and to a great extent for Hinduism as well, the first step in man's spiritual quest is meditation on this point: sickness, old age, and death are the very texture of life, and to think otherwise is to remain hopeless deluded. To live is by definition to participate in these realities. This is the way things are, and nothing can be done to change it." "In a less linear, less formalized way, Kali conveys the same truth. The image of Kali in the cremation ground or as a shrunken, wrinkled, skeletal hag fastens one's attention on those aspects of life that cannot be avoided and must eventually result in pain, sorrow, and lamentation. As illustrative of maya and as the embodiment of uncaring, pulsing prakrti, Kali forces man's attention upon those aspects of life that cannot be kept at bay or successfully repressed. She is the mythological embodiment of those three 'passing sights' that provoked the Buddha himself to abandon the world in search of enlightenment, those same sights that are presupposed in his First Noble Truth: sickness, old age, and death." Id. at 138-139. "It seems that Kali's boon is some way has to do not so much with directing man's vision to liberation after death as to granting liberation before death. It seems that she is religiously efficacious not simply insofar as she scares man into rejecting the physical world by conveying its darker aspects. To her devotees she has also given a playful freedom in this life, painful through she reveals it to be. And this boon of freedom is not ... the boon of ignorance--an ignorance of the way things really are and a childishness based on futile hope. It is a freedom based on release from ignorance, a freedom that comes to see one who knows himself to be mortal, a freedom that enables him to revel in the moment, to accept the fullness of life as a gift to be reveled in rather than a curse to be gotten rid of." "Kali's boon is won when man confronts or accepts her and the realities she dramatically conveys to him. The image of Kali, in a variety of ways, teaches man that pain, sorrow, decay, death, and destruction are not to be overcome or conquered by denying them or explaining them away. Pain and sorrow are woven into the texture of man's life so thoroughly that to deny them is ultimately futile and foolish. For man to realize the fullness of his being, for man to exploit his potential as a human being, he must finally accept this dimension of existence. Kali's boon is freedom, the freedom of the child to revel in the moment, and it is won only after confrontation or acceptance of death.... To ignore death, to pretend that one is physically immortal, to pretend that one's ego is the center of things, is to provoke Kali's mocking laughter. To confront or accept death, on the contrary, is to realize a mode of being that can delight and revel in the play of the gods. To accept one's mortality is to be able to act superfluously, to let go, to be able to sing, dance, and shout. To win Kali's boon is to be childlike, to be flexible, open and naive like a child.... Kali is Mother to her devotees not because she protects them from the way things really are but because she reveals to them their mortality and thus releases them to act fully and freely, releases them from the incredible, binding web of 'adult' pretense, practicality, and rationality." Id. at 144-145. I will not ignore death. I will confront and accept death, my eventual death. I will strive to revel in the moment. I will learn to play, though not in any contrived, affected, or manufactured way. "Kali's overall presence may be understood as benign. Her raised and bloodied sword suggests the death of ignorance, her disheveled hair suggests the freedom of release, and her girdle of severed arms may suggest the end of grasping. As death or the mistress of death she grants to him who sees truly the ultimate boon of unconditional freedom, release from the cycle of samsara, release from pain, sorrow, and not-knowing. Her two right hands, the upper making the mudra of 'fear not' and the lower making the mudra of granting boons, convey to him who would seek his true spiritual destiny the knowledge that death is only the passing away of the nonessential and the gateway to ultimate freedom. Death is not to be feared but is seen as a boon. Kali's dark, menacing appearance does not frighten but attract one who has seen the world for what it really is: the ephemeral, phantasmagoric display of superimposition or the magic of the gods, a world fraught with pain and suffering, a world in which all things perish and pass away." Id. at 143-144. Previously, on this blog I have asserted a serious yoga practice involves confronting one's demons. In a recent class I was amused by an instructor's assertion that 'yoga practice is not about confronting one's demons.' Since I had never heard her (or, for that matter, anyone else at yoga) mention demons and whether yoga had anything to do with confronting one's demons, I could not help but wonder whether the instructor had read my blog and was asserting her disagreement. Of course, thinking so was pure conceit/ego on my part. That said, I think death itself and the fear of death and the denial of one's mortality are among demons which plague human existence. And, who can honestly deny that many, very many individual come to modern postural yoga because they fear physical aging (which is essentially a fear of death, is it not?). I understand where yoga studios do not highlight the possible confrontation with demons, especially the demon of death, in yoga class. Yoga studios are, after all, businesses, and they do not wish to market themselves as being in the demon hunting business. Yet, the standard format for studio-based yoga practice is to have the last asana, the last posture, be Savasana, the Corpse Pose. Savansana is a time to meditate on one's death. To confront and accept the demons of aging and death.).

FINDING JOY UNDER DIRE CIRCUMSTANCES

Julia Alvarez, A Wedding in Haiti (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012).

WHAT BECAME OF THE 'NEW' NEW DEAL?

Theda Skocpol, Obama and America's Political Future, with commentaries by Larry M. Bartels, Mickey Edwards, & Suzanne Mettler (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2012) ("Americans are, in short, philosophical conservatives and operational liberals. This means that even if Americans approve many specific measures furthered by President Obama and the Democrats, popular worries could be stroked by political opponents, As a young, change-oriented president, Obama would have faced such worries under any circumstances. But the spreading economic distress of 2009 and 2010 generated genuine fear that was readily exploited by political foes who equated even mild government activism with 'radicalism'." Id at 11-12. "Obama's failure to engage more consistently in high-profile public leadership on the economy constitutes, in an important sense, democratic political-malpractice. For much of his first tern, Obama botched a central function of the presidency in a period of economic crisis--and if he is not reelected to a second term, his early shortfall  in this vital area of democratic communication will be a significant part of the explanation." Id. at 37-38.).

SHORT READS RELATING TO BUDDHISM

Harvey B. Aronson, Buddhist Practice on Western Ground: Reconciling Eastern Ideals and Western Psychology (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004).

Damien Keown, Buddhist Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2005).

Thomas J. McFarlane, ed., Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings, with an Introduction by Wes Nisker (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2002) (From the backcover: "This unique collection of parallel quotes reveals how modern science and ancient Eastern thought lead us to the same deep truths. Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings shows how seemingly opposite endeavors--scientific observation and spiritual contemplation--have produced amazingly similar ideas about the nature of the universe and our place in it....").

HOME

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, translated from the French by Maria Jolas, with a Foreword by John R. Stilgoe (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) (From the backcover: "Thirty years since its first publication in English, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space remains one of the most appealing and lyrical exploration of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams.").

JUST THE FACTS

Dwight Macdonald, Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain, edited by John Summers, and with an Introduction by Louis Menand (New York: New York Review Books, 2011) (From "The Triumph of The Fact": "It is their respect for The Facts that makes most Americans so touchingly willing to give information to anyone who asks them for it.  We take easily to being profiled, galluped, kinseyed, luced, and otherwise made the object of journalistic or scientific curiosity.  With amazing docility, we tell the voice on the phone what TV program we are looking at (so that advertisers can plan their strategy for exacting $$$ from us) [blogger note: now we are facebooked, googleed, amazoned, etc., for it is through  and over the internet that we so readily disclosed the our personal facts], answer impertinent questions from reporters (whose papers then sell the answers back to us), co-operate on elaborate and boring questionnaires administered by sociologists (so they can get their, not our, associate professorships), and voluntarily appear as stooges on broadcast shows which bare the most intimate details of our lives or--if we miss out on a Fact question--put us through stunts as if we were laboratory animals in the  grip of a made scientist.  In the last instance there is, of course, 'something in it' for us, but the prizes seem not worth the humiliation, and I suspect are often more of an excuse than a motive, i.e., that the participant thinks of himself objectively--as an object, a Fact--and not subjectively--in value-terms like pride, honor, or even vanity--and so either welcomes or doesn't mind the public exposure of his Factuality; but that senses there is something monstrous in this detachment and is glad to conceal it by affecting greed, a base motive but at least a subjective one."  "In the thirty years I have been asking people questions as a journalist, I have often wondered why almost no one refuses to give an interview, even though, in many cases, there is more to be lost than gained by so doing.  There are some obvious reasons for this--vanity, the American illusion that publicity is always in some vague way to one's advantage, and the pleasure most people take in hearing themselves talk, especially when the listener is professionally sympathetic and informed.  A less obvious reason perhaps is that the gathering of facts by journalists has come to be accepted as a normal and indeed praiseworthy practice, and people seem to feel it their duty to 'co-operate.'  If the story is about themselves, they take the line they 'have nothing to hide,' they 'stand on the record,' and insist they 'just want to give you the facts and let you decide.'  In reality, they often have plenty to hide, but it would be a cynical and untypical American who would admit this even to himself."  Id. at 203-235, 215-216.  This blogger is a very cynical American (I would say "untypical American" as well, but that would be an effort to make myself into something exceptional and special).  Oops! Perhaps I should have hid those facts.).

THE RELIGION OF CONSUMERISM

Sulak Sivaraka, Loyalty Demand Dissent: Autobiography of an Engaged Buddhist, with a foreword by H. H. the Dalai Lama (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1998) ("On December 8, 1995, I received the Right Livelihood Award in the Swedish Parliament. The award committee cited the judgment from my recent acquittal in which the court stated, 'He warned the students not to live a luxurious, consumer lifestyle, not to worship being rich, not to admire people in power, and to be concerned about justice and righteousness.' The Right Livelihood Award is widely considered the alternative Nobel Prize...." "This award reflects my recent concern for developing an alternative to consumerism--the new, demonic religion. It reduces life to only one purpose--to  acquire money in order to consume, to put it very crudely. This new religion is very powerful. Even the churches and temples are building more and larger buildings, and the monks are leading a more luxurious lifestyle. The media teaches people to be aggressive, offering violence, crime, and sex. People learn to look down on their own family and cultural heritage. We are urged to consume more, and this leads to the destruction of the environment." Id. at 297.).

Sulak Sivaraksa, Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society, edited by Tom Ginsburg, with a foreword by H. H. The Dalai Lama, and a preface by Thich Nhat Hanh (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992) ("Western consumerism is the dominant ethic in the world today. You cannot walk down the streets of Bangkok, for example, without being bombarded by billboard touting the benefits of various soft drinks. Streets here are jammed with expensive, foreign cars that provide the owners with prestige and the city with pollution.Young people define their identities through perfumes, jeans, and jewelry. The primary measure of someone's life is the amount of money in his or her checkbook. These are all liturgies in the religion of consumerism." Id. at 3. "According to Buddhism, there are three poisons: greed, hatred, and delusion. All three are manifestations of unhappiness, and the presence of any one poison breeds more of the same. Capitalism and consumerism are driven by these three poisons. Our greed is cultivated from a young age. We are told that or desires will be satisfied by buying things, but, of course, consuming one thing just arouses us to want more. We all have these seeds of greed within ourselves, and consumerism encourages them to sprout and grow." "Consumerism also supports those who have economic and political power by rewarding their hatred, aggression, and anger. And consumerism works hand in hand with the modern educational system to encourage cleverness without wisdom. We create delusion in ourselves and call it knowledge. Until the schools reinvest their energy into teaching wholesome, spiritual values instead of reinforcing the delusion that satisfaction and meaning in life can be found by finding a higher-paying job, the schools are just cheerleaders for the advertising agencies, and we believe that consuming more, going faster and living in greater convenience will bring us happiness. We don't look at the tremendous cost to ourselves, to our environment, and to our souls. Until more people are willing to look at the negative aspects of consumerism, we will not be able to change the situation for the better. Until we understand the roots of greed, hatred, ad delusion within ourselves, we will not be free from the temptations of the religion of consumerism and we will remain stuck in this illusory search for happiness." Id. at 8-9. "Capitalism aims for profit, not for the welfare of the general public. Capitalists may indulge in some philanthropy, but since profit is their primary goal, they must take every advantage they can, starting with the workers and ending with the consumer." Id. at 40. "In a capitalistic system, the mass media stimulates desires for things that are not really needed. Customers are forced to choose between brands that in fact may be identical. The claim that capitalism gives freedom to the people by providing choice is not wholly true. Advertising becomes critical. Advertising agencies determine in large part what is sold, and they deceive the people in ways we scarcely realize. This is not real freedom. Under a dictatorship, at least the people know that the government is deceiving them, for the propaganda is usually quite crude. But deception that plays on people's greed is more difficult to perceive. In poor countries, wherever there is electricity, families feel that they must buy a television, no matter how poor they are. TV is a status symbol, and it plays an important part in deceiving the public. People will sell their land, if necessary, to buy a TV, and then they are told on that same TV that they need even more things to be happy." Id. at 40. "Can lifestyles that are unsustainable be moral? Asking this question forces us to look very seriously for alternatives, for the sake of our planet and for the sale of our souls." Id. at 43.).

Sulak Sivaraksa, The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddhist Economics for the 21st Century, edited by Arnold Kotler & Nicholas Bennett (Kihei, Hawai'i: Koa Booka, 2009) ("In the free-trade model of development, multinational corporations replace the village or community as the matrix for human interaction. The argument for free trade is predicated on the theory of comparative advantage brought forth in the nineteenth century by David Ricardo. According to this theory, free trade encourages each country to pursue the economic activities for which it is best suited, thereby promoting comparative advantage and economic efficiency for all. Significant considerations are, however, overlooked. Free-trade advocates do not concern themselves with which groups in society prosper and which ones fall behind. And the effects of trade on non-economic values are not addressed, because so-called developed societies see everything through the lens of economics, and then they transmit that hyper-materialist view into a global perspective. Governments become like machines to maximize opportunities for capitalist investors." Id. at 28-29. "Corporations move their production facilities to the country that allows the greatest exploitation of workers and the least protection of the environment. Reduced wages and erosion of workers' right are the cornerstone of the economic policies of countries that compete for the comparative advantage of having cheap labor. We are told that protecting workers' rights will be self-defeating, as it will cause employers to relocate to less conscientious countries. Nations and corporations, and the recent merger of the two, are often perpetrators of structural violence. Their policies increase disparities in wealth, deplete natural resources, and alienate individuals from the root cultures. Driven by profit, these policies seem indifferent to people's discontent." "As a Buddhist, I do not consider the exploitation of comparative advantage to be the ultimate objective of society. I am interested in a social organization's capacity to address human suffering, promote justice, and allow individuals to realize their potential...." Id. at 29-30.).

A FEW OF ANOTHER'S FAVORITE BOOKS

The October 11, 2012 posting on this blog prompted a few people to send emails regarding the list. One person sent a list of twenty-six books which were among her favorites. Of the twenty-six book, I had read seven only. At some point, and on a future (2013) posting, I will address her list (and those of others who forward their lists). I am already thinking about how I might play with it. So, stay tuned.

For now, let me mention the seven books I have read, and add several obvious recommendations.

Willa Cather, My Antonia, reprinted in Early Novels and Stories, edited by Sharon O'Brien  (New York: Library of America, 1987).

Tracy Chevalier, Girl With a Pearl Earring (New York: Dutton, 2000).

Ralph Helfer, Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant (New York: HarperCollins, 1997) (appears on a earlier posting).

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees: A Novel (New York: Viking 2002) (appears on a earlier posting).

Barbara Kingsolver, Barbara, Prodigal Summer (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1993) (appears on a earlier posting).

Caroline Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing (New York: Harmony Books, 1996) (appears on a earlier posting).

In addition to the other pieces in the Willa Cather text listed above, I would also recommend the following from Cather and Kingsolver:

Willa Cather, Later Novels, edited by Sharon O'Brien (New York: Library of America, 1990) (From The Garden Lodge, "There were two things she feared even more than poverty; the part of one that sets up an idol and the part of one that bows down and worships it." Id. at 52.).

Willa Cather, Stories, Poems, and Other Writings, edited by Sharon O'Brien (New York: Library of America, 1992).

Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams (Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1990).

Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Tree (Tenth Anniversary Edition)(New York: HarperFlamingo, 1998).

Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson: Essays From Nowhere (New York: HarperCollins, 1995). 

Barbara Kingsolver, Homeland and Other Stories (Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1989).

Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna: A Novel (New York: Harper 2009).

Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York: HarperFlamingo, 1998) ("'Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen, And if you are bad, you can still be lucky.'" "The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes." Id. at 496.).

Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder (New York: HarperCollins, 2002).

"WARRIORSHIP IS A CONTINUAL JOURNEY. TO BE A WARIOR IS TO LEARN TO BE GENUINE IN EVERY MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE." --CHOGYAM TRUNGPA

I am always surprised about what people read.

Listed below is an enhanced version of a list of "favorite books" provided to me by an acquaintance of mine. I took her eleven-book list, read those books, played with the list, nudged the list, then ran wild with the list so as to include related books or, what may be the same thing, books I might recommended based on the initial list. My enhanced list could be much, much, much longer--after all, a reader's list is always expanding--, but I wanted to be reasonable and not overwhelm the original list. However, I think I failed on that latter score. Oh well!

I do not think you can get to know people by merely reading their favorite books. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that your reading the books is not their reading of those books. We don't come to reading with a blank mind (at least I hope not), and what is in our minds differs by culture, experience, personality, prior readings, timing, etc. (In a real sense, none of us really reads the same book twice no matter when we read it or how many times we read it. On each subsequent reading we see passages we seem to have missed or deemphasized the in the previous reading(s), or, because we have changed, certain passages are understood differently.) Though, if you already know the person, reading their favorite books might provide a little nuance to your understanding.

I encourage you to read at least some of the books on this list. Some of them are true gems. Several are thought provoking. Still others are just plain fun.

Jean Morrison Brown, Naomi Mindlin & Charles H. Woodford, eds., The Vision of Modern Dance: In the Words of Its Creators, 2d ed. (Hightstown, NJ, Princeton Book Company, 1979, 1998) ( From Jose Limon, "On Dance," 97-105: "The chest can be made empty, to fall inwards and downwards to an utter inversion, a defeat. It can rise with the breath, like a plant growing up and out from the pelvis, and there be suspended, noble and affirmative and aspiring. It can extend beyond this to attitudes of pride and arrogance, and overextend further to the comic, the pompous, the absurd. This region of the chest, the breath, is the fecund source of movement, and its range is limited only by one's inventiveness and imagination." Id. at 101.).

Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times  (Shambhala Classics) (Boston: Shambhala, 2002) ("Confess your hidden faults. / Approach what you find repulsive. / Help those you think you cannot help. / Anything you are attached to, let it go. / Go to places that scare you." Advice from her teacher to the Tibetan Yogini Machik Labdron. Id. at ii. "I offer this guide on the training of the compassionate warrior." Id. at 2. "Bodhichitta training offers no promise of happy endings. Rather, this 'I' who wants to find security--who wants something to hold on to--can finally learn to grow up. The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?" Id. at 6. "I still know men and women who are addicted to falling in love. Like Don Juan, they can't bear it when that initial glow begins to wear off; they're always seeking out someone new." Id. at 15. "So in all activities, not just sometimes when things are going well or are particularly bad, train with the bodhichitta slogans of Atisha. But remember, 'Don't try to be the fastest,' 'Abandon any hope of fruition,' and 'Don't expect applause'!" Id. at 35. "Forgiveness is an essential ingredient of bodhichitta practice. It allows us to let go of the past and made a fresh start." Id. at 81. As to forgiveness, see my blog post--titled "Forgiveness"-- of October 1, 2012.).

Andrew Eccles (photographer), Ailey Ascending: A Portrait in Motion, with a Preface by Judith Jamison; Foreword by Anna Deavere Smith; Introduction by Khephra Burns & Susan L. Taylor; and an Afterword by Andrew Eccles (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008).

Ana T. Forrest, Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit (New York: HarperOne, 2011) (I have been in some very dark places in my life, and I am grateful for the fact that my dark places have been no where near as dark as Ana Forrest's. "The beauty of the Death Meditation is that it strips everything away, leaving you with clarity about your deepest regrets--I never got to write that book. I never became a teacher. Your regrets can help you track and hunt your heart and Spirit's desire. My evolution has been in direct proportion to my ability to ask good questions: What does it mean to be human? If I'm going to be on this planet, where is home? Go on a quest to find your own purpose, your own home." "The Death Meditation allowed you to separate all those noble responsibilities--I must pay the mortgage, I must raise the kids. I must care for my ailing parents.--and focus instead on the dreams that go buried. We carry much more than we are actually responsible for. The sweetness of the Death Mediation is that it lets us look at the unnecessary weight on our shoulders and know we must lay it down in order to pursue our true desires. And it gives us the courage to do is. Now it's time to take the next step." Id. at 119-120. In reading this book I felt that I was reading a Women's empowerment guide, with a yoga twist. The anger leaped from the pages. [I pass no judgment of the legitimacy of the anger, that not my competence. I am just saying that  could feel the anger.] And, I wonder whether whatever valuable lessons are contained therein are off set by all the negative karma the reader is expose. Also, I kept saying, this is not the path to enlightenment. The path to enlightenment is a path without attachments, without desires, etc. I just can't buy into the Forrest philosophy. My dark places are pretty dark, but just not that dark. And I am a tribe of one, or rather a tribe of none. I am anti-tribe, anti-cult. Forrest warriorship is not my kind of warriorship. So, I will stick with Forrest Yoga to work on my core; but will pretty much take its philosophy with a grain of salt or a ounce or two of skepticism.).

Julia L. Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (Chapel Hill & London: U. of North Carolina Press, 2002).

Ralph Helfer, Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant (New York: HarperCollins, 1997) (Loving-Kindness: "The relationship between the trainers and animals was, to say the least, different from that in any other circus. The credit was Josef's. Following in his father's footsteps, he schooled each trainer in a unique style of training his family had developed many years ago." "Respected and admired by all, his way with animals was seen in the gentleness and love the animals and the trainers had for one another. He based his teaching on love, not fear. In fact, an enormous amount of love and patience, interlaced with eating, cleaning, and sometimes even sleeping together, bound them together affectionately. The animals were constantly being bathed, touched, and preened. There seemed to be no separation between the two-legged and the four-legged--but common sense was always practiced and never forgotten. The trainers knew that the animals, because of their wild heritage, had a potential of becoming dangerous." Id. at 8. "With outstretched hands he walked toward Mo. She leaned forward, stretching out her trunk. He reached over and gently touched its tip. It seemed that to her this was like receiving an electric shock, or, more accurately, a jolt of pure energy. At what Ralph believed must have been her first human touch in many, many years, she started to trumpet. Tail held high, head up, ears forward, she pranced around. Both men were thrilled. What ecstasy!" "Ralph move in close. Mo gently laid her trunk over his shoulder, ran it down the full length of his body, and encircled the tip around his toes. Then she started to shake. Her belly rumbled. As a naturalist, he knew this was her way of greeting him. Yet, as an animal lover, he also knew this was the sobbing of joy, expressing years of pent-up pain and hunger and the deprivation of solitary confinement. Animals, like people [that is, nonhuman animals, like human animals], experience loneliness, boredom, and despondency when the comfort of a friendly voice, a familiar smell, or a gentle touch no longer brightens their day." Id. at 301-302.).

Christopher Hitchens, Mortality, with a Foreword by Graydon, and an Afterword by Carol Blue (New York & Boston: Twelve, 2012) ("To the dumb question 'Why me? the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?" Id. at 6.).

Barbara Hurd, Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003) ("The best advice for managing a squeeze comes from Buddhism. The squeeze, Buddhists say, is the unbearable place. The place that makes us want, more than anything else, to be elsewhere. The uncomfortable, embarrassing place where the irrational, the fearful, the panicking parts of ourselves want out, to jump ship, to leave. Buddhists are talking, of course, about mental squeezes, when one part of the mind presents us with irrefutable evidence of something another part of the mind absolutely will not acknowledge. What to do? The usual reaction is to suppress one part and carry on as if it doesn't exist, meaning something in us shrinks. It's a strategy we resort to often. Getting a little smaller, after all, means gaining a little more wiggle room. Now maybe we can squirm another inch, sidle sideways, slip out of the the crack. But if we're tired of shrinking in the grip of a real squeeze, denial doesn't work anymore and all the evidence becomes palpable. You can't live with him and you can't live without him. About the one big thing, you know if you say yes, disaster follows; if you say no, catastrophe. There's no more forward and there's no backward. There's a rock to the front of your face and there's a rock digging into your back." Id. at 15. Ah! Yes, life is a squeeze. Just be. "The only thing that matters in a cave, they told me, is your ability to stay calm in dark spaces." Id. at 160.).

Barbara Hurd, Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001) ("What goes on in the margins is not always visible. Sometimes, of course, that's because the edges are teeming with what the center does not want to see--the homeless, the abused, the disenfranchised, whatever does not fit the current definitions of normal. We love high drama in this country, mountain peaks and soap operas. They offer us something to tilt our lives toward--that triumph of ascent, the heart-pounding eye-to-eye intensity, that feeling of being wildly alive. Our nature aesthetics sound like movie reviews: We thrill to the surprising twist in the road that reveals the vast panorama, the unexpected waterfall. We canonize beauty that can be framed on the walls, in the camera, or on the postcard." "To love a swamp, however, is to love what is muted and marginal, what exists in the shadows, what shoulders its way out of mud and scurries along the damp edges of what is most commonly praised.... Here there is room for thought not fully formed to stretch, roll over, poke its eye above water." Id. at 7-8. "The mud of the swamp reminds me of what daily I forget: something is always stirring, nuzzling, and trying to lick us into shape. We are more malleable than we know, more flexible and lithe, still 90 percent water, still pliant enough to be stirred, congealed into something we can only guess at. This notion of our concrete selves--I, you, they--as beings within our rigid armor, it's all a clumsy, brittle scaffolding. Dunk it into the mud here and see what sloughs off. I can barely keep my skin on. Something is moving here, quickening; something is patting us all, pressing into our hearts. Will we harden and resist or relax and respond?" Id. at 26-27. "Conversation dwindles. I become acutely aware of the ceaseless mind-chater that jangles inside my head. Of all the species, human seem to to be the only one cursed with almost incessant pra ttle and gab. We talk to ourselves, each other, into telephones, to televisions, to our dogs. We talk, someone said, because we have mouths, And such talk isn't, of course, always empty." "One of the hardest thongs about learning to sit in meditation is to quiet the mind, to ceae the endless blather." Id. at 41. "The gift of ambiguity is that it stretches us. Makes us less rigid. Nudges us out of the either/or thinking." Id. at 71. "The present is always ambiguous. We never know whether we're headed in a good direction or straight into disaster. The most we can do is look back occasionally, see where we're been, what patterns we're prone to." Id. at 74. "Much of human history could be told as the history of our clearings, our impulse to clear forests for farms, swamps for cities. We seem to associate the cleared with the civilized. We clear a man of false accusations, we clear off old scores, we clear the decks and our throats. We tidy and clean. But inside, we're a mess, a yammering conglomeration of instinct and reason, reverie and logic. Maybe the impulse to clear brush, drain swamps, manicure our forest signals our discomfort with our own cluttered interiors. I'm struck, at times, many times, by the glut of long-winded chatter that goes on inside my head, the cluttered, muttering hybrids of feelings and thoughts that can whirl into a decent line of poetry or leave me stranded, speechless or gibbering drivel.... If only we could relax, simply acknowledge our tangled and messy inconsistencies. If only we could see profusion of paradox for what it is--rich, full of possibility. It's hard; the specter of foolishness looms. We set fire to field, pick up shears, a bottle of malathion. In a clearing, interior or exterior, we can tell if we're making progress. And we like that. It's reassuring." "In contrast, in the natural world, uncomplicated by emotional gnarls, the impulse is to cover, not clear.... Id. at 120-121.)

Andrea Kettenmann, Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954: Pain and Passion (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2002).

Dilgo Khyentse, Enlightened Courage: An Explantation of Atisha's Seven Point Mind Training, translated from the Tibetan by the Padmakara Translation Group (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1993) ("By the gracious Lama's blessings, / May I see whatever adverse events and sufferings befall me / As tricks of the evil spirit of ego-clinging / And use them as the path of Bodhichitta." Id at 104.).

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees: A Novel (New York: Viking 2002) (" 'This is the spinner'.... 'It separates out the honey,' she said. 'Takes out the bad stuff, leaves in the good. I've always thought how nice it would be to have a spinner like this for human beings. Just toss them in and let the spinner do its work.' " Id. at 77. "Up until then I'd thought white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan." Id. at 209. "I knew that being a snitch was considered the lowest sort of person...:" Id. at 179.).

Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life (New York: Bantam Books, 1993) ("To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy--material or spiritual. We need a warrior's heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities. This courage allows us to include every aspect of life in our spiritual practice: our bodies, our families, our society, politics, the earth's ecology, art, education. Only then can spirituality be truly integrated into our lives." Id. at 8-9. "Often from our seeming weaknesses we can learn a new way. The things we do well, where we have developed our greatest self-confidence, can become habitual, bringing a sense of false security. They are not where our spiritual life will best open. If it is our strength to think through things carefully, then thoughts will not be our best spiritual teacher. If it is already our way to follow our strong feelings, then feelings are not where we will learn best. The place where we can most directly open to the mystery of life is in what we don't do well, in the places of our struggles and vulnerability. These places always require surrender and letting go: When we let ourselves become vulnerable, new things can be born in us. In risking the unknown we gain a sense of life itself. And most remarkably, that which we have sought is often just here, buried under the problem and the weakness itself." Id. at 79-80. "There is a specific teaching in the Buddhist tradition that can help us understand how the compartmentalization and separation that operates in us is repeated in spiritual life. It is called The Near Enemies. The near enemies are qualities that arise in the mind and masquerade as genuine spiritual realization, when in fact they are only an imitation, serving to separate us from true feeling rather than connecting us to it." An example of near enemies can be seen in relation to the four divine states of Buddha described as loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Each of these states is a mark of wakefulness and the opening of the heart, yet each state has a near enemy that mimics the true state, but actually arises of separation and fear rather than genuine heartfelt connection." "The near enemy of loving-kindness is attachment...." The near enemy of compassion is pity, and this also separates us..... The near enemy of sympathetic joy (the joy in the happiness of others) is comparison, which looks to see if we have more of it, the same as, or less than another...." The near enemy of equanimity is indifference...." Id. at 190-191. "Codependence and unhealthy compassion arise when we have forgotten our own role in the balancing act of human relationships or when we disregard the true consequences of the actions of others around us. The roots of codependence...inner wounds, low self-esteem, and unworthiness. Codependence also arises when we discount our own intuitions and emotions (because of low esteem) or out of fear of the disapproval of others." Id. at 219.).

Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True (New York: Regan Books, 1998).

Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992) ("Mine is a story of craving: an unreliable account of lusts and troubles...." Id. at 17. "Grandma kept referring to Ma's date as Mario Pepperoni. 'Of course, years ago,' she told me, 'you wouldn't even play with the Eyetalians. They were dirty, my father said. One step up from the coloreds.'" Id. at 66. "'Well, anyway, I'm probably not even going to go to college,' I said. 'It's what my mother wanted, not me.' 'Oh, go! she said. 'Try it at least. Think of it as an adventure.' She rinsed my hair with warm water and toweled it dry, then wrapped it in a turban. 'What if I don't like adventures?' I said. Ruth dragged over a kitchen chair and sat down facing me. 'Then cultivate a taste for it. Take a chance. That's how you grow.'" Id. at at 171. "'It must have been hard when she left. What did you do?' 'Let's see. First thing I did was whack the shit out of the bathroom wall with a crowbar. Then I Sheetrocked it back up again before Jemal saw it. Memorized the pancake recipe by heart, Learned to iron. Jemal was in parochial school then. Used to get noted from the nuns about his sloppy uniforms . . . After a while we hit our stride, though. And we both convinced Claud to drop her custody thing. That's about the time I started going to night school and became an existentialist. Lift's absurd. Live authentically. stop whining. Bam! I got into it.'" Id. at 441. "I uncap the Bic, meaning to rail about negatives: unfairness, infertility. But something different comes out, something I hadn't planned. I write: Love is like breathing. You take it in and let it out." Id. at 462.).

David Loy, Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism (New York: Humanity Books, 1996) (Every fear is fear of death. --Stekel. "According to Buddhism, letting go of myself and merging with the no-thing-ness leads to something else: When consciousness stops trying to catch its own tail, I become no-thing, and discover that I am everything--or, more precisely, that I can be anything. Then, when I on longer strive to make myself real through things, I find myself 'actualized' by them, says Dogen." Id. at 96. "So our most problematic dualism is not life fearing death but a fragile sense-of-self dreading its own groundlessness, according to Buddhism. By accepting and yielding to that groundlessness, I can discover that I have always been grounded in Indra's Net, not as self-enclosed being but as one manifestation of a web of relationships which encompass everything. This solves the problem of desire by transforming it. As long as we are driven by lack, every desire becomes a sticky attachment that tries to fill up a bottomless pit. Without lack, the serenity of our no-thing-ness, that is the absence of any fixed nature, grants the freedom to become anything." Id. at 101.).

David R. Loy, Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2008) ("Buddhism faces its biggest transition yet. To influence the modern world, Buddhism must adapt to it. But is its present popularity another fraternal hug? The threat today is not Western religions but psychology and consumerism. Is the Dharma becoming another form of psychotherapy? Another commodity to be bought and sold? Will Western Buddhism end up all too compatible with our individualistic consumption patterns, with expensive retreats and initiations catering to over-stressed converts eager to pursue their own enlightenment? let's hope not, because Buddhism and the West need each other." Id. at 2-3. "The fall is the disillusionment that later occurs: the discouraging fact that, whether or not one marries, the relationship never quite works out to be as satisfying as expected, whether or not one eventually separates. We should recognize the uncomfortable truth that sex and romance cannot provide the long-term fulfillment--the end of dukkha--that we usually hope for from them. Sex is always nature's trick, and romance an emotional gloss on it. We anticipate that our partner will somehow make us feel complete, but that never happens, because no one else can ever do that for us." Id. at 75. "Buddhism is a personal path of spiritual transformation, not a program for political or economic revolution. Is it always clear, however, where the one ends and the other begins? Or is this another duality of the sort that Buddhism likes to critique/deconstruct? Together, our ways of thinking and acting create society, but the opposite is also true: social institutions condition how we think and what we do. This means that, sooner or latter, the bodhisattva's concerns to end dukkha and devotion to the awakening of everyone will bump up against the constraints of present economic and political systems, which in order to thrive need our complicity as consumers and defenders of that way of life." Id. at 139.).

Miyamoto Musashi, The Complete Book of Five Rings, edited by Kenji Tokitsu (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2010) ("Before [Musashi's] death  he wrote: 'I respect the Buddha and the gods, but I do no rely on them.'" Id. at 28. "That which a warrior must always have in mind is the way of death. But the way of death is not reserved only for warriors. A monk, a woman, a peasant--any person--can resolve to die for the sake of a social obligation or honor." Id. at 34-35. "In the standing meditation used in the art of the sword, the practitioner tries to arrive at an empty state of mind that augments his lucidity and provides a foundation for exercises with energy. Starting from that, he tries to imagine various movements of techniques and movements in the combat situation, without moving. In this way he studies in depth the sensations inherent in the movements so as to arrive at the essence of the movement of the technique. This is the point from which one of the paradoxes of the teaching of budo is derived: Speed is the not worth as much as slowness; slowness is not worth as much an immobility. To perceive true movement, it is necessary to be immersed immobility--this is the significance of the exercise of standing Zen." Id. at 154, fn 84. From "The Texts Preceding the Gorin no sho": "The mind should be neither solemn nor agitated, neither pensive nor fearful; it should be straight and ample. This is the state of mind that should be sought after. The will should not be heavy, but the depth of one's awareness should be; in this way you make your mind like water that reacts appropriately to shifting situations. Whether it is a drop or an ocean with blue depths, it is water. You should examine this well." Id. at 97.).

Caroline Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing (New York: Harmony Books, 1996) ("Our attitudes and belief patterns, whether positive or negative, are all extensions of how we define, use, or do not use our power..... Our relationship to power is at the core of our health." Id. at 45. "When people say they are 'hooked' on someone or something in a negative way, or are overidentifying with an object or possession, they are unconsciously conducting an intuitive diagnosis--they are identifying how they are losing power. I call such people acquisitioners." Id. at 50. "I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough: the targets to which acquisitioners connect their energy circuits are people or objects to which they have surrendered their power--specifically, the power to control them." Id. at 51. "Our spiritual task in this lifetime is to learn to balance the energies of body and soul, of thought and action, of physical and mental power." Id. at 64. "By far the strongest poison ti the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person." Id. at 84. Or, to turn it around, "The bravest man in the universe is the one who has forgiven first." From the title song to Bobby Womack's album 'The Bravest Man in the Universe' (2011); lyrics by Damon Albarn, Bobby Womack, & Richard Russell. "More than releasing from blame the people who caused our wounds, forgiveness means releasing the control that the perception of victimhood has over our psyches. The liberation that forgiveness generates comes in the transition to a higher state of consciousness--not just in theory, but energetically and biologically." Id. at 215. "[W]e should never intentionally judge another person or ourselves negatively. Negative judgments create negative consequences, both in the body and in the external environment." Id. at 87 "Spiritual maturity is measured not by the sophistication of a person's opinions, but by their genuineness and the courage necessary to express and maintain them.... Spiritual maturity ... is the capacity to stand one's ground as a reflection of a genuine inner belief." Id. at 288. "In becoming conscious one is able to detach from subjective perceptions and see the truth or symbolic meaning in a situation. Detachment does not mean ceasing to care. It means stilling one's fear-driven voices. One who has attained an inner posture of detachment has a sense of self so complete that external influence have no authority within his or her consciousness. Such clarity of mind and self is the essence of wisdom...." Id. at 239. "Honor the body, honor the mind, honor the spirit." Id. at 255.).

Osho, Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously (Insights For a New Way of Living) (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999) ("The word courage is very interesting. it comes form a latin root cor, which means 'heart.' So to be courageous means to live with the heart. And weaklings, only weaklings, live with the head; afraid, they create a security of logic around themselves. Fearful, they close every window and door--with theology, concepts, words, theories--and inside those closed doors and windows, they hide." "The way of the heart is the way of courage. It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move in the unknown. It is leaving the past and allowing the future to be. Courage is to move on dangerous paths. Life is dangerous, and only cowards can avoid danger--but then, they are already dead. A person who is alive, really alive, will always move into the unknown, There is danger there, but he will take the risk. The heart is always ready to to the take the risk, the heart is a gambler. The head is a businessman. The head always calculates--it is cunning. The heart os noncalculating." Id. at 6-7. "There are many things to be understood--otherwise it is very difficult to get out of the rut of misery. The first thing: that nobody is holding you there; it is you who has decided to remain in that prison of misery. Nobody holds anybody. A man who is ready to get out of it, can get out of it right this moment. Nobody else is responsible. If one is miserable, one is responsible, but a miserable person never accepts the responsibility--that is his way of remaining miserable. He says, 'Somebody else is making me miserable.'" Id. at 60-61. "Love is very rare. To meet a person at his center is to pass through a revolution, because if you want to meet a person at his center you will have to allow that person to reach to your center also. You will have to become vulnerable, absolutely vulnerable, open." It is risky. To allow somebody to reach your center is risky, dangerous, because you never now what that person will do to you. And once all your secrets are known, once your hiddenness has become unhidden, once you are exposed completely, what that other person will do you never know. The fear is there. That's why we never open." "With just an acquaintance, we think love has happened. Peripheries meet, and we think we have met. You are not your periphery. Really, the periphery is the boundary where you end, just the fencing around you. It is not you! The periphery is the place where you end and the word begins." Id. at 78. "Love is a rare flowering. It happens only sometimes. Millions and millions of people live in the false attitude that they are lovers. They believe that they love, but that is their belief only." "Love is a rare flowering. Sometimes it happens. It is rare because it can happen only when there is no fear, never before. That means love can happen only to a very deeply spiritual, religious person. Sex is possible for all. Acquaintance is possible for all. Not love." Id. at 80. "When you hate, your ego is fulfilled. The ego can exist only if it hates, because in hating you feel superior, in hating you become separate, in hating you become defined. In hating you attain a certain identity. In love the ego has to disappear. In love you are no longer separate--love helps you to dissolve with others. It is a meeting and a merger." Id. at 96. "The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom." "Buddha has actually called it the lion's roar. When a man reaches an absolutely silent state he roars like a lion. For the first time he knows what freedom is because now there is no fear of anybody's opinion. What people say does not matter. Whether they call you a saint or a sinner is immaterial...." Id. at 109-110. "There are many fears, but fundamentally they are only offshoots of one fear, branches of one tree. The name of the tree is death. You may not be aware that this fear is concerned with death, but every fear is concerned with death." Id. at 134. "You cannot be truthful if you are not courageous / You cannot be loving if your are not courageous / You cannot be trusting if you are not courageous / You cannot inquire into reality if your are not courageous / Hence courage comes first / and everything else follows." Id. at xiii.).

Anne Rice, Blackwood Farm (The Ninth Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 2002) ("'Knowledge drifts in and out of mind,' said Lestat with a little look of honest distress and a shake of his head. 'I devour it and then I lose it and sometimes I can't reach any knowledge that I ought to possess. I feel desolate, but then knowledge returns or I seek it out in a new source.'... 'But you love books, then,' Aunt Queen was saying, I had to listen. 'Oh, yes,' Lestat said. 'Sometimes they're the only thing that keeps me alive.' 'What a thing to say at your age,' she laughed. 'No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate,' he said frankly. 'And books, they offer one hope--that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that new universe, one is saved.'" Id. at 51.).

Anne Rice, Blood and Gold or, The Story of Marius (The Eighth Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York & Toronto: Knopf, 2001) ("'Let my stories do what stories always do. Let them keep you from your darker dreams and from your darker journey.'" Id. at 50. "But I lived the lie. I lived it out of anger. This is what I'm trying to tell you. I have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger, and I cannot admit the irrationality of love." Id. at 77-78.).

Anne Rice, Blood Canticle (The Tenth Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 2003) ("But I'd never really lose her. Because I wouldn't lose the lesson of love i'd learned through her. And this she had given me as I had tried to give it to her." Id. at 305. ""And then my heart cries out, my heart will not be still, my heart will not give up, my heart will not give in--the blood that teaches life will not teaches lies, and love becomes again my reprimand, my goad, my song." Id. at 306.).

Anne Rice, Interview With a Vampire (The First Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 1976, 2002) ("'I saw my life as if I stood apart from it, the vanity, the self-serving, the constant fleeing from one petty annoyance after another, the lip service to God and the Virgin and a host of saints whose names filled my prayer books, none of whom made the slightest difference in a narrow, materialistic, and selfish existence. I saw my real gods . . . the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity. Cinders.'" Id. at 14.).

Anne Rice, Memnoch The Devil (The Fifth Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 1995) ("I am proud, I am an egomaniac of a being; I do love the attention; I want glory; I want to be wanted by God and the Devil. I want, I want, I want, I want." Id. at 24. "I am here, still, the hero of my own dreams, and let me please keep my place in yours." Id. ay 354.).

Anne Rice, Merrick (The Seventh Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 2000) ("'David, I'm weary,' he said, 'and I would swap one pain for another. There is something she said, you see, which I can't forget. She asked if I would give up my comforts for her? Do you remember?' 'No, old man, you've got it wrong. She asked if you'd give up your comforts for death, but she never promised that she would be there! That's just the point. She won't be. Good Lord, how many years in the Talamasca did I study the history of apparitions and their messages, how many years did I pore over first person accounts of those who'd trafficked with ghosts and recorded their wisdom. You can choose what you will believe about the hereafter. It doesn't matter. But once you choose death, Louis, you can't choose life again. Beliefs ends. Don't make that choice. I implore you. Stay for me, if you won't for any other reason. Stay for me, because I need you, and stay of Lestat he needs you as well.'" Id. at 260-261.).

Anne Rice, The Queen of The Damned (The Third Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 1988) (" 'How magnificent it would have been if centuries had schooled me in forgiveness, if my soul had opened to understand all the wrongs done me and my people. 'But I tell you, it is the soul of humankind which moves towards perfection over the centuries, the human race which learns with each passing year how better to love and forgive. I am anchored to the past by chains I cannot break.' " Id. at 382. " 'Men and women are learning animals. If you do not see what they have learned, you're blind. They are creatures ever changing, ever improving, ever expanding their vision and the capacity of their hearts. You are not fair to them when you speak of this as the most bloody century; you are not seeing the light that shines ever more radiantly on account of the darkness; you are not seeing the evolution of the human soul!' " Id. at 403-404.).

Anne Rice, The Tale of the Body Thief (The Fourth Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 1992) (" 'There are many nights when I lie awake, fully aware that there may be no personal God, and that the suffering of the children I see every day in our hospitals will never be balanced or redeemed. I think of those old arguments--you know, how can God justify the suffering of a child? Doestoevsky asked that question. So did the French writer Albert Camus. We ourselves are always asking it. But it doesn't ultimately matter.' 'God may or may not exist. But misery is real. It is absolutely real, and utterly undeniable. And in that reality lies my commitment--the core of my faith. I have to do something about it.' 'And at the hour of your death, if there is not Good . . .'  'So be it. I will know that I did what I could. The hour of my death could be now.' She gave a little shrug. 'I wouldn't feel any different.' " Id. at 246-247.).

Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand (The Sixth Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 1998) ("'You can't take this back with you,' said the priest. 'You'll forget all the particular things you learned here. But remember the overall lesson, that your love for others, and their love for you, that the increase of love in life itself around you, is what matters.' It seemed a marvelous and comprehensive thing! It seemed no simple small cliche. It seemed so immense, so subtle, yet so total that all mortal difficulties would collapse in the face of its truth." Id. at 130. "'[F]or men knew what was real evil, and real evil was hunger, and want, and ignorance and war, and cold.'" Id. at 380.).

Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat (The Second Book in The Vampire Chronicles) (New York: Knopf, 1985, 1994) (" 'It was you who killed the wolves. You're the hunter, the warrior. You're stronger than anyone else here, that's your tragedy.' " Id. at 34. " 'Well, use your preternatural brain, my blue-eyed one,' she answered, 'my golden-haired son, my handsome wolfkiller. It is very possible that God made the world as Armand said.'... 'Of course, God is not necessarily anthropomorphic,' she said. 'Or what we would call, in our colossal egotism and sentimentality, "a decent person." But there is probably God. Satan, however, was man's invention, a name for the force that seeks to overthrow the civilized order of things. The first man who made laws--be he Moses or some ancient Egyptian king Osiris--that lawmaker created the devil. The devil meant the one who tempts you to break the laws. And we are truly Satanic in that we follow no law for man's protection. So why not truly disrupt? Why not make a blaze of evil to consume all the civilizations of the earth?' " Id. at 293.).

Larry Rosenberg & David Guy, Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation (Shambhala Classics), with a Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004) ("One time when I was visiting a friend, he kept playing with his dog, throwing a plastic bone for the dog to go fetch. It not only wasn't a real bone, it wasn't even a convincing fake; pieces of meat were painted on the plastic. Yet no matter how many times he threw the bone, the dog ran after it, with great excitement. He kept chasing this plastic bone, which has no nourishment whatsoever, as if it could somehow satisfy him. Suddenly I realized: that's my mind, chasing after thoughts. The mind doesn't think it's chasing a plastic bone with pieces of meat painted on it, of course. It thinks it's pursing something that will have a vital effect on its life. But if we look more closely at the objects that the mind chases, we notice a similar lack of nourishment." "In contrast to that, think of a lion. Can you imagine how a lion--sitting in that majestic way they have--would react if you threw him a bone (especially a plastic one)? He wouldn't even notice. He'd just stare at you. Lions stay focused on the source. That's the attitude we need to have, sitting with that deep calm, that steadiness of purpose, not chasing after every bone that flies our way. We need to develop lion mind." Id. at 22. Though the authors do not understand the human-dog game of fetch, we get their point.  "With all that we've learned, we human beings have not solved even the simple problem of living together. We have incredible technology, which can put us in touch with people on the other side of the world, but we don't know how to get along with the people in our own neighborhood, even in our own house." " One part of our culture is soaring, and another part is barely crawling. We are caught up in an illusion, a marvelous conjuring trick that has convinced us that the things we produce will make us happy. Not only are we the audience for this trick, we are also the magician, We have convinced ourselves." Id. at 186.).

Larry Rosenberg & David Guy, Living in the Light of Death: The Art of Being Truly Alive (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2000) ("The larger subjects of this book--sickness, aging, and death--are extremely intimate. How could anything be closer to us? But we have a remarkable capacity to run away from them. We are running away from that which is closest to us. We can't really do that, of course, The basic facts of our lives are always right here. But we keep trying to do it, and thereby become intimate strangers with ourselves." Id. at 142.).

Gabrielle Roth (& John Loudon), Maps to Ecstasy: Teachings of an Urban Shaman, with a foreword by Shakto Gawain (San Rafael, CA: New World Library, 1989) ("If you live in inertia--'waking sleep,' Guedjieff called it--as your basic energy level, as most of us do, your reality is comprised of a structure of unquestioned beliefs and frozen attitudes which are a bulwark against change. The status quo seems to offer a haven of security. Truthfully, you're a wallflower at the dance of life, refusing every offer to move, out of fear of the unknown or of making a fool of yourself; you don't make the effort. But this holding back--hanging on tight to everything, especially your body, which becomes the repository of all your repressed feeling, thoughts, and action--uses up all your physical, emotional, and mental energy. And there is nothing to show for this utilization of your energy but the same old patterns and a deteriorating body and spirit. Because you don't dare to breathe life in and let it out, you live on a very restricted energy supply." "At bottom, inertia is the level of being unconscious, the home of the victim, the place where life just happens to you and you're unaware of your responsibility to create your own reality...." "In inertia we want our life and friends to be stable, predictable, homogenized. It's much easier to be in control when things around us don't change and we have the security of the known. We stay in an unhappy marriage or job or situation for years and years rather than risk the uncertainty, the adventure, the pain of venturing forth. In fact, all our 'adventure' is planned and prepackaged, innocuous and ultimately dissatisfying--we buy the hype of cruises, cars, beer, movies, to sate our frustrated desire for true novelty and authentic experience." Id. at 179-180.).

Seung Sahn, The Compass of Zen (Shambhala Dragon Edition  (Boston & London: Shambhala, 1997) ("Many centuries ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates used to walk through the streets and marketplace of Athens, teaching his students. He would say to them, 'You must understand yourself! You must understand yourself! You must understand your self.' Then one day a student said, 'Sir, you always say we must understand ourselves. But do you understand your self?' 'No, I don't know myself,' Socrates replied. 'But I understand this "don't know".' This is very interesting teaching. Buddhist practice points at the same experience, because most human beings pass through their lives without the slightest sense of what they are." "We understand may things about this world, but we don't understand ourselves. So why do human beings come into this world? Why do we live in this world? For love? For money? For respect or fame? Do you live for your wife, husband, or children? Why do you live in this world? If someone asked you these questions, you might answer, 'I live for my children. I live to earn enough money for them, or maybe just to have a good life.' Most people think like thais. They live only for their family, for some fleeting social respectability, perhaps to enjoy arts or to get some powerful position. Everyone wants to have a good situation for themselves. If you look at this world very closely, it is easy to see that most people eat and sleep and live merely for their own personal happiness. Yet these things are not the real purpose of human beings' life. They are just temporary means for living in the world. If human beings cannot find out who they are, how can they ever be truly happy?" Id. at 13-14. "But human beings are very interesting. Human beings are the smartest animals, yet they make the most suffering for themselves and this world. This is simply because most human beings cannot follow their situation. We are attached to some idea about freedom, so we cannot follow even those rules that are intended to help us. We have a broken situation. Human beings only think about 'my' feelings, 'my' condition, and 'my' situation. This feeling is often not in harmony with the way the universe runs, so it is a broken situation. Having a broken situation comes from not keeping their natural rules, or precepts. Human being only want a good feeling, a good time, a good situation. This is only desire. But these come from where? You must decide something, and only do it, from moment to moment. If you can practice in this way, using the precepts as your guide, your mind-energy becomes clearer and stronger. As your mind gets stronger, then a good situation doesn't move you, and also a bad situation doesn't throw you off. You can digest your experience, then when  bad situation appears, 'Ah haa!--you get suffering and cannot function clearly for others. When a good situation appears, 'Ahhhhh,' you feel some happiness, perhaps lose your direction and stop practicing so much, and then get suffering when this good situation changes. So your mind is always moving as outside conditions change." "The most important thing is to keep your correct direction for all beings regardless of whether you have a good or bad situation. Don't attach to a good situation; don't attach to a bad situation. But always perceive how to make a bad situation or a good situation correct, so that you can use whatever situation you are in only to help other beings. Then a true good situation appears: true good feelings, true good condition, and true happiness. That is already Great Love and Great Compassion, the Great Bodhisattva Way. " Id at 32. "But originally, 'impurity' is not impure. Our ideas about pure and impure come from thinking and are determined by our thinking. Human beings don't like shit. But there are many kinds of animals that actually like to eat shit. Maggots eat shit. Ants eat shit. Flies eat shit. Also, many dogs like to east cat shit. Horses will stay away from grass that has their own waste on it, but many sheep will happily eat grass that is smeared with their own waste. There is a special kind of pork you can buy in certain parts of Asia that is made from pigs raised on human excrement. The pigs are fed human shit every day. Later they are butchered, and this pork is a delicacy in parts of Asia. It is very expensive pork. That is very interesting. Some people will pay a lot of money to buy this pork in restaurants. So these animals and insects have some consciousness, and this consciousness likes shit. Their sense of impurity is not the same as our own." "If this is so, then what actually is impurity? There is only this thought: 'I don't like shit.' Such-and-such is impure.' That thought makes 'pure' and 'impure.' That is one some human beings' idea. But other animals like shit. Which is correct? The answer is, Don't make 'purity' and 'impurity.'" Id. at 46.).

Seung Sahn, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn, compiled and edited by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Grove Press, 1976) ("Soon after Chung Gang attained enlightenment at the age of twenty-two, he went to see Zen Master Mang Gong. Mang Gong said to him, 'Buddhas became enlightened upon seeing the morning star in the eastern sky. But there are many stars. What is your star?' Chung Gang dropped to his hands and knees and began to feeling around on the floor. Mang Gong said, 'Ah, you have truly become a Buddha,' and gave him Transmission." Id. at 186.).

Seung Sahn, Only Don't Know: The Teaching Letters of Zen Master Seung Sahn (Cumberland, RI: Primary Point Press, 1982) ("Zen is the great work of life and death. What is life? What is death? When you attain this, then everything is clear, everything is complete, and everything is freedom." Id. at 48. "This bear had become so attached to his cage that he had forgotten all about freedom. Everyone does this. Everyone has a cage that they have become attached to--a doctor's cage, a lawyer's cage, a professor's cage, a job cage, a friendship cage, a family cage. People live in these cages and so they don't really understand freedom. This means they don't understand the rest of the world. They only understand life in their cage." Id. at 153.).

Seung Sahn, Ten Gates: The Kong-an Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn , Rev'd and Updated  Edition, edited by Zen Master Dae Kwang, with a Foreword by Robert Aitken (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2007) ('Today, the body of traditional kong-ans number 1,750. From these, Zen Master Seung Sahn selected ten, which he calls the Ten Gates and through which he requires his students to pass." Id. at x. "Our body is our house. If you take care of your house, your house will stay strong and beautiful, no problem. If you do not take of your house, it will soon become dirty, have problems, and will not be so beautiful. If you are attached to your body, however, you become your home's attendant. If you become only an attendant, that's a hindrance and a problem." Id. at 91.).

Seung Sahn, Wanting Enlightenment Is a Big Mistake: Zen Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn, compiled and edited by Hyon Gak, foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2006) ("A student once asked en Master Seung Sahn's grandteacher, the legendary Zen Master Man Gong, 'Why don't more people practice Zen Meditation?' "'People live their whole lives with the hope that good things will always come to them. But they don't know that when you get a good thing, you also get a bad thing. That is just the rule of this universe. Then they are surprised at getting this bad thing, and suffer. For all their lives, they go around and around and around, chasing good things, avoiding what is unpleasant.'" "'So, as you practice the Way, you have to give up this human route. You must become deaf, dumb, and blind, and refrain from chasing and avoiding things. Don't make anything. Don't want anything. Then your true self will be realized naturally.'" Id. at 42. "One day, one of Zen Master Seung Sahn's female American students asked him, 'Sir, are there any women Zen masters in Korea?' 'No, no, no! he quickly replied. 'Of course not!' The student was completely shocked, even angered by this, more so because Zen Master Seung Sahn himself had always treated his female students with complete equality, and even formally authorized several of them to teach. 'How could he think like this?' she thought. 'This is completely outrageous.' After a few moments, she stammered out, 'But how is this possible?' Eyeing her and half-smiling, he replied, 'Because women cannot get enlightenment!' This was unbelievable! Half-expecting that he was joking, she looked up, but by then he had already marched into another room. She followed him, where he had busied himself with some things, almost as if the conversation had never occurred. 'I have been practicing with you for several years now,' she continued. 'You have always just taught us to believe in our true self 100 percent. How can you possibly now say that women cannot get enlightenment?' Wheeling around sharply, Zen Master Seung Sahn pointed his finger at her and, looking into her eyes strongly, said, 'So, you're a "woman"?' The student was silent as his teaching sank in." Id. at 166-167.).

Seung Sahn, The Whole World Is A Single Flower: 365 Kong-ans for Everyday Life, with questions and commentary by Zen Master Seung Sahn, with a foreword by Stephen Mitchell, edited by Jane McLaughlin, JDPSN & Paul Muenzen (Boston: Charles E, Tuttle Company, 1992) ("If kong-ans are questions we work on only in the interview room or on our meditation cushions, they are of limited value...." "Kong-an practice teaches us to wait under the cloud of unknowing, looking where there is nothing to see, listening where there is nothing to her. Eventually we understand that all solutions come to us by themselves, from the well of bring, if only we stop trying to control. The secret is trust. When we trust ourselves to not-know, we learn how to trust the radiant creativity of the Tao, the intelligence of the universe." Id. at ix. "Don't Attach to Anything." "If you have no 'I-me-my.' then moment-to-moment, keeping correct situation, correct relationship, and correct function is possible. If you are holding something or attached to something, when you die you will go straight to hell. Layman No worked every day only for his mother. He heard one word and understood himself. If you don't hold anything, you can attain your true self and freedom from life and death. That is very, very wonderful!" Id. at 17. "The dog never says, 'I am a dog.' But the dog is barking. The cat never says, 'I am a cat.' But the cat is meowing. Name and form do not matter. The dog, the tree, and the flower all understand their jobs, but Buddha doesn't understand Buddha's job; human beings don't understand human being's job. Very stupid! Put it all down. What are you doing now? Just do it! That's all." Id. at 33. "Don't check--moment to moment just do it." Id. at 225. "A dog understands a dog's job, and a cat understands a cat's job. Human being appear--what are they to do? They want fame, money, food, sex, and sleep. After that, then what? But one ting is clear. It swallows everything--the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, water--everything. If you find that, you attain 'you,' and freedom from life and death. Then go drink tea." Id. at 34. "One mind appears, the whole world appears. One mind disappears, the whole world disappears. Don't check--just do it." Id. at 87. "Silence is better than holiness. If you are tired, go to your room and sleep." Id. at 98. "Silence is better than holiness, so opening your mouth is a big mistake. But if you use this mistake to save all beings, this is Zen." Id. at 174. "Wake up from your dream! What do you see now? What do you hear now? The mountain is blue, the water is flowing." Id. at 129. "One action is better than ten thousand words." Id. at 132. "Correct action is better than the Buddha's speech." Id. at 135. "Don't tell your dreams to a rockhead." Id. at 137. "The rocks don't care about Buddhas or mind. The tree doesn't want truth or correct way. They only do it. They attain it." Id. at 193. "The tree, the water, the ground and the sky have no speech, but they teach us completeness. If you don't understand the correct way, truth, and correct life, you must ask the sun and the moon." Id. at 194. "Originally nothing. Condition appears and becomes red and white. But if you are not attached to red and white, you are free." Id. at 155. "The hero kills many enemies to help his country. Where will he repent?" Id. at 158. "The Hwa Ten Sutra says, 'Each particle has Buddha-nature, so everything already became Buddha.' If someone wants to become Buddha, it's already a big mistake. Be careful." Id. at 179. "Time passes like an arrow. Thinking appears, yesterday and today appear. Thinking disappears, all days disappear. Is this a good day or a bad day? Look at the sky, always blue." Id. at 203. "Foolish Man. When a superior man hears of the Tao, / he immediately begins to embody it. / When an average man hears of the Tao, / he half believes it, half doubts it. / When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud. / If he didn't laugh, / it wouldn't be the Tao. // Thus it is said: / The path into the light seems dark, / the path forward seems to go back, / the direct path seems long, / true power seems weak, / true purity seems tarnished, / true steadfastness seems changeable, / true clarity seems obscure, / the greatest art seems unsophisticated, / the greatest love seems indifferent, / the greatest wisdom seems childish." Id. at 167. "The airplane has complete freedom of movement in the sky yet cannot land wherever it wants. The superior man keeps a mind which is clear like space. He can do anything yet his mind's function is meticulous, meticulous, complete, complete." Id. at 168.).

Marcia B. Siegel, Howling Near Heavan: Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006).

Patti Smith, Just Kids (New York: Ecco, 2010) ("I went to get Robert some water and a voice called to me from across the hall. It was hard to tell whether it was male of female. I looked and saw a somewhat battered beauty wrapped in ragged chiffon sitting on the edge of a bed. I felt safe with him as he told me his tale. He had once been a ballet dancer but now he was a morphine addict, a mix of Nureyev and Artaud. His legs were still muscled but most of his teeth were gone. How glorious he must have been with his golden hair, square shoulders, and high cheekbones. I sat outside his door, the sole audience to his dreamlike performance, drifting through the hall like Isadora Duncan with chiffon streaming as he sang an atonal version of 'Wild Is the Wind'." Id. at 87.).

Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (New York: Knopf, 2012) ("I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be--strong, and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good. And the PCT would make me that way. There, I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous." "But here I was, on the PCT, ridiculous again, though in a different way, hunching in an ever-more-remotely upright position on the first day of my hike." Id. at 57. "'The father's job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse and ride into battle when it's necessary to do so. If you don't get that from your father, you have to teach yourself.'... 'This isn't about strength,' said Pat. 'And you may not be able to see this yet, but perhaps there will come a time--it could be years from now--when you'll need to get on your horse and ride into battle and you're going to hesitate. You're going to falter. To heal the wound your father made, you're going to have to get on that horse and ride into battle like a warrior.'... To heal the wound your father made, you're going to have to get on that horse and ride into battle like a warrior. Puff-croak. Rewind. Repeat." Id. at 204-205.).

Twyla Tharp, Push Comes To Shove: An Autobiography (New York: Linda Grey/ Bantam Books, 1992).

Twyla Tharp & Mark Reiter, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life: A Practical Guide (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).

Sallie Tisdale, Women of the Way: Discovering 2,400 Years of Buddhist Wisdom (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006) (From the bookjacket: "It is tradition in Zen monasteries to chant a lineage of male teachers from the Buddha's time to the present day. As Buddhism took root in the West, increasing numbers of American Buddhists began to ask: 'What about the women?' Scholarly research has uncovered accounts of extraordinary women Buddhists, many of whom were recognized by their contemporaries for their powerful practice but excluded from their place in history. By drawing on these discoveries, several Buddhist center have created women's lineages of their own, and it is this bright thread of untold legend that Sallie Tisdale follows in this groundbreaking work. By rescuing some of the most significant and inspiring tales from obscurity, Tisdale traces women Buddhist masters and teachers across continents and centuries....").

Chogyam Trungpa, The Lion's Roar: An Introduction to Tantra, edited by Sherab Chodzin (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2001) ("One of the slogans that comes out of the tantric Buddhist tradition of Tibet is tampe ton ni jikpa me, which the Vidyadhara chose to translate, 'The proclamation of truth is fearless'." Id. at viii. "STUDENT: Do you think that the visualization is implanted by particular conceptions of Buddhism, or is it something that emerges on its own? [] It seems kind of like the figure of the samurai the way it is portrayed in the movies. The samurai always seems to appear in immaculately clean dress and is immaculately together with his situation. TRUNGPA RINPOCHE: I think so, yes. It seems it's all right for him to be uncompassionate, but nevertheless he is clean and precise. The interesting thing about watching samurai films is the way they clean the blood from their swords. It's very beautiful. It is as though a work of art is being practiced rather than there is a bloody mess on the stairs that has to be gotten rid of." Id. at 151.).

Chogyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation, edited by John Baker & Marvin Casper, illustrated by Glen Eddy, and with a foreword by Pema Chodron (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2002) ("The warrior without a sword, / Riding on a rainbow, / Hears the limitless laughter of transcendent joy. / The poisonous snake becomes amirita." Id. at xvi. "As long as we follow a spiritual approach promising salvation, miracles, liberation, then we are bound by the 'golden chain of spirituality.' ... As long as one's approach to spirituality is based upon enriching ego then it is spiritual materialism, a suicidal process rather than a creative one." Id. at 5. "The 'Lion's Roar' is the fearless proclamation that any state of mind, including the emotions, is a workable situation, a reminder in the practice of meditation. We realize that chaotic situations must not be rejected. Nor must we regard them as regressive, as a return to confusion. We must respect whatever happens to our state of mend. Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news." Id. at 69. "It is extremely important to work, as long as you are not using work as an escape, as a way of ignoring the basic existence of a problem, particularly if you are interested in spiritual development. Work is one of the most subtle ways of acquiring discipline. You should not look down on someone who works in a factory or produces materialistic things. You learn a tremendous amount from such people. I think that many of our attitudinal problems about work come from a pseudo-sophistication of the analytical mind. You do not want to involve yourself physically at all. You want only to work intellectually or mentally." "This is a spiritual problem. Usually people interested in spiritual development think in terms of the importance of of mind, that mysterious, high and deep thing that we have decided to learn about. But strangely enough the profound and the transcendental are to be found in the factory. It may not fill you with bliss to look at it, it may not sound as good as the spiritual experiences that we have read about, but somehow reality is to be found there, in the way in which we relate with everyday problems. If we relate to them in a simple, earthy way, we will work in a more balanced manner, and things will be dealt with properly. If we are able to simplify ourselves to that extent, then we will be able to see the neurotic aspect of mind much more clearly. The whole pattern of thought, the internal game that goes on, becomes much less of a game, It becomes a very practical way of thinking in situations." Id. at 84-85. "The spiritual path is not fun--better not begin it. If you must begin, then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time.... So stepping on the path involves you in continual growth, which may be tremendously painful since you sometimes try to step off the path. You do not really want to get into it fully; it is too close to the heart. And you are not able to trust in the heart. Your experiences become too penetrating, too naked, too obvious. Then you try to escape, but your avoidance creates pain which in turn inspires you to continue on the path. So your setbacks and sufferings are part of the creative process of the path." Id. at 149.).

Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (Shambhala Dragon Editions), edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian (Boston & London: Shambhala, 1988) ("Shambhala is about the path of warriorship, or the path of bravery, that is open too any human being ho seeks a genuine and fearless existence." Id. at 13. "Warriorship here does not refer to making war on the other. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Here the word 'warrior' is taken form the Tibetan pawo, which literally means 'one who is brave.' Warriorship in this context is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness." Id. at 28. "The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are. Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself. Shambhala visions teaches that, in the face of the world's great problems, we can be heroic and kind at the same time. Shambhala vision is the opposite of selfishness, When we are afraid of ourselves and afraid of the seeming threat the world presents, then we become extremely selfish. We want to build our own little nests, our own cocoons, so that we can live by ourselves in a secure way." Id. at 28-29. "The fundamental aspect of bravery is being without deception. Deception in this case is self-deception, doubting yourself so that you are cut off from the vision of the Great Eastern Sun." Id. at 108. "Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others." Id. at 46. "The point of warriorship is to work personally with our situation now, as it is." Id. at 44. "By the confidence of the Golden Sun of the Great East / May the lotus garden of the Rigdens' wisdom bloom / May the dark ignorance of sentient beings be dispelled / May all beings enjoy profound brilliant glory." Id. at 205.).

Brian L. Weiss, Many Lives Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives  (20th Anniversary Edition), with a new afterword by Brian L. Weiss (New York: A Fireside Book/ Simon & Schuster, 1998) (Psychiatrist Brian Weiss was approached for treatment by Catherine, a 27-year-old suffering from anxiety, depression, panic attacks and phobias. Many Lives, Many Masters tells the story of Catherine's treatment and its contribution to Weiss's work. I knew that the Roman Catholic Church opposes the concept of reincarnation. However, here is something I did not know. "During the week I had reviewed my textbook from a comparative religions course taken during my freshman year at Columbia. There were indeed references to reincarnation in the Old and the New Testaments. In A.D. 325 the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, along with his mother, Helena, had deleted references to reincarnation contained in the New Testament. The Second Council of Constantinople, meeting in A.D. 553, confirmed this action and declared the concept of reincarnation a heresy. Apparently, they thought this concept would weaken the growing power of the Church by giving humans too much time to seek their salvation. Yet the original references had been there; the early Church fathers had accepted the concept of reincarnation. The early Gnostics--Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint Jerome, and many others--believed that they had lived before and would again." Id. at 35-36.).

Marion Woodman & Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness (Boston: Shambhala, 1997) ("With the broader perspective, we can see that the words positive and negative do not ultimately apply. They become judgmental words. The fact is the Goddess who gives life is the Goddess who takes life away. That fact allows for no sentimentality. In feminine thinking, we hold the paradox beyond the contradictions. She is the flux of life in which creation gives place to destruction, destruction in service to life gives place to creation." Id. at 7. "For most people, it takes a lifetime for the psyche to find its relationship to the Goddess. She appears in the psyche in her threefold nature, sometimes Virgin, sometimes Mother, sometimes Crone. However, it is the Crone that our culture has brutally repressed. The wise woman, the healer, the transformer has been one of the greatest threats to the patriarchal world. Ironically, with the founding of universities (centers of oneness) in the eleventh century, women's natural talents for counseling, healing, and being a source of wisdom were curtailed; women were barred form attending. Public services could be rendered only by someone with the proper credentials and, since women were not allowed to acquire these credentials, they were effectively removed from the intellectual life of the community, Many who were burned as witches were among the most gifted women of the time." Id. at 133-134. "The Crone has been missing from our culture for so long that many women particularly young girls, know nothing of her tutelage. Young girls in our society are not initiated by older women into womanhood with its accompanying dignity and power. Instead, for their models, they look to fashion magazines, where they see the kinds of bodies and faces that they themselves can never have. Paradoxically, these are the ideals that are held up for them if they want to be successful, particularly with men. A recent survey of  teenage girls in North America showed that 'while 13-year-old girls are nearly as confident as 13-year-old boys, by age 16 the females' sense of self worth has plummeted." Id. at 139-140 (citation omitted). "When a woman stands her own ground, exercises discipline, or lays down her terms and conditions with 'straight talk,' she speaks with the voice of the Crone. 'Straight talk' is not language that is writhing in a complex. Too often, complexed women unconsciously overprotect, or try to placate, or manipulate others into doing something or into behaving in a certain way--usually with disastrous results, because they do not know their own voice. If a woman becomes identified with any one role--wife, mother, teacher--she has no mirror in which to see the situation objectively. She is hiding behind the role without exploring her own reality. Crone energy is energy that has been distilled through years of attempting to speak straight from our own reality, One day we are surprised by the sound of our own voice coming straight from its ground in our own body." Id. at 140.).

I would be remiss were I not to thank that person, whose list of favorite books are the cornerstone of the extended list of books above, for sharing her list with me. Thanks!