Now And Zen

'In Japan we have an expression, 'Float like Cloud, Flow like Water'. Its meaning is: to live free and unconstrained' In this short introduction to Zen Buddhism, a practising Japanese monk shares the many lessons he has learned from life inside a temple. With charm and humour, he guides us through everything from meditation to tea-drinking ceremonies, the meaning of koans to preparing Zen food. Accompanied by the author's own illustrations, this book invites you to change your perception through the wisdom of monastic life.

If you're craving something uncommonly delicious, but uncomplicated to prepare, look no further. From the Now & Zen Restaurant in San Francisco comes an imaginative collection of recipes that harmoniously blends distinctive cuisines—French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Indian—in tempting vegan dishes. Acclaimed bakery chef and plant-based food innovator Miyoko Schinner shares her latest creations in this updated version of her popular gourmet vegan cookbook.

This book explores how each of us knows what we know. It considers claims that we see only illusions and that behind it all there is an indescribably beautiful reality - both a God and a Nirvana. The book goes on to explain in simple terms how these two ideas, so different on the surface, may not be so different at all. Ranging across the centuries the book draws on the teachings of a wide variety of thinkers from vastly different cultural, philosophical and religious backgrounds. The message they each bring is distilled into one consistent story in which our everyday sense of reality can be thought of as a deceptive and rather pale reflection of what's really going on. And although our thinking processes are seriously limited, the book describes how we can all transcend these limitations and experience Ultimate Reality through the simple practice of mindfulness - for mindfulness meditation offers freedom from thinking.

Nori Tanaka is thrilled to be studying abroad in Tokyo, Japan, but it isn't exactly what she had imagined. She expected tranquil gardens and swoopy-roofed houses, not concrete and neon. And everyone assumes that, with her traditional Japanese features, she's a native instead of the naïve Japanese-American that she really is. Even Erik, a gorgeous German student, mistakes Nori for Japanese, and treats her like a personal tour guide. Nori is sure that he'll like her for who she is once he gets to know her, so what harm can come of temporarily pretending to be Japanese? It doesn't take long to realize that she has a lot to learn about Japan, and about herself, before she can pass for a native. But after exploring the karaoke clubs in Tokyo, the peaceful temples in Kyoto, and the tranquil heights of Mt. Fuji, Nori knows she has a good chance of finding the hidden Japanese spirit and Zen mindset within herself.

On the Trail of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Zen and Now is the story of a story that will appeal to the 5 million readers of the original and serve as an initiation to a whole new generation. Since its original publication in 1968, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values has touched whole generations of readers with its serious attempt to define “quality” in a world that seems indifferent to the responsibilities that quality brings. Mark Richardson expands that journey with an investigation of his own – to find the enigmatic author of Zen and the Art, ask him a few questions, and place his classic book in context. The result manages to be a biography of Pirsig himself – in the discovery of an unknown life of madness, murder and eventual resolution – and a splendid meditation on creativity and problem-solving, sanity and insanity.

A spiritualist, in the first place, knows he is not going to be born again. If he has not come to that point, he has no right to call himself a spiritualist. A person who has known his spirituality has no need to come back to any body, in any reincarnation. This imprisonment in the body is only up to the point when you become a buddha. When you become a buddha, you have learned everything that life could teach you, and you have not only learned the outside world, you have learned your inner world also.

Explores the relationship between the philosophical underpinnings of Advaita Vedanta, Zen Buddhism And The experiential journey of spiritual practitioners.