While it seeks neither to define Zen nor answer its most famous koan (a riddle unanswerable by conventional thinking, in this case the sound of one hand clapping), this bestselling little book with 437,000 copies in print possesses a maverick Zen spirit that points to a different way of looking at the world. With each page featuring a quote, phrase, story, koan, haiku, or poem, Zen Companion combines the feeling and format of a meditation book with 2,500 years of wisdom-from Lao-tzu and Groucho Marx, William Carlos Williams and The Little Prince, D. T. Suzuki and Walker Percy, the Buddha and the Bible, Einstein and Gertrude Stein. It's a celebration of intuition: "If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark"-St. John the Cross. Individuality: "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought."-Basho. Uncomplicated nature: "Among twenty snowy mountains/The only moving thing/Was the eye of the blackbird."-Wallace Stevens. Childlike spontaneity: "Goodnight stars. Goodnight air."-Margaret Wise Brown. Irreverent paradox: "Wakuan complained when he saw a picture of bearded Bodhidharma: 'Why hasn't that fellow a beard?'" And above all, the simple pleasure of life lived in the moment. "Chop wood, carry water."

Part of a new series celebrating and exploring the philosophies, religions and civilizations of the world, this inspirational book shows that Zen is a way of life. Accompanied by beautiful illustrations, the concise text discusses Zen's origins in Buddhism, how to find enlightenment through meditation and contemplation, and even how to cook and garden in the spirit of Zen.

Sell Your Ideas While Achieving Peace of Mind Sick of the frenzied whirlwind your life becomes when a deadline looms? Stressed about relying on that last-ditch overnight service to squeeze your proposal in under the wire? Does even thinking about writing a proposal or making a presentation freeze you in a crippling panic? Help is here. Whether you are requesting a raise, laying out a radically new marketing concept, pitching a book, or seeking a grant, The Zen of Proposal Writing provides solid advice, tangible examples, and the keys to remaining calm and in control. Drawing on the techniques and wit of Zen, Kitta Reeds shares her secrets as a seasoned professional--illustrating the stages of proposal writing with classic Zen parables coupled with on-point advice and practical instruction, including: * One Hand Clapping: The Sound We Make When We Forget to Connect with Our Readers * Zazen Meditation: How to Write that Proposal in Spite of Yourself * The Simplicity of a Zen Garden: How to Grow Strong Verbs and Clean Up After Yourself * Right Speech: How to Give a Sweet Pitch--and Win Over Your Audience With an expert at your side, learn to eliminate stress, hand-wringing, and procrastination while you calmly compose an effective and winning proposal, the Zen way.

Includes music.

"Once Upon ASOUL" invites everyone who recognizes that there is more to Heaven and Earth than the readily visible and who yearns to explore the deeper mysteries of life, to share the collective wisdom of science, psychology, and spirituality as it integrates mind, body, and spirit into a satisfying wholeness. "Once Upon ASOUL" speaks to an enduring, eternal core of Consciousness, a sacred essence that each of us carries deep within our being. "Once Upon ASOUL" invites each of us to participate with Consciousness Itself, in order to explore the sacred and deep mysteries beyond ordinary existence. Transpersonal self is guardian of the environment and an instrument for peace...partner and co-creator of our world. Dr. Kovelman's book attempts a synthesis of ancient spiritual traditions, transpersonal/humanistic psychologies, and quantum physics. There are several other excellent books on this topic but Dr. Kovelman's tome expresses its ideas in a more personal way than most others, thus is both Reader-friendly and easily accessible. Dr. Kovelman has stated that her goal is offering process to help the reader attain contact with the numinous and, in doing so, she espouses the multi-level, multi-faced and multi-dimensional nature of the psyche. Her book is a milestone in the effort to orient psychology toward an embrace with the sacred and spiritual aspects of life. Without this, much of what makes people human will be ignored -- to the detriment of both science and humanity.

The short fictions collected in Public Works explore the extremes of human nature and literary technique. From the manic, single-sentence fiction "Public Sentence" to the carefully structured and plot-twisting "We Stand Here, Swinging Cats," Grimes' stories have an idiosyncratic and associative quality-nothing follows predictably from anything, and beginnings never foreshadow ends. While reading, one has the sense that, despite recognizable voices and themes, this imagination seems alien, as though divvying up and parceling out the world by its own rules. In "Glue Trap," a one-legged shopkeeper offers expert instruction in the art of one-on-one combat with a rat. In "Making Love: a Translation," the stream of consciousness creates a fiction as simple as Hemingway, as wistful and dissociative as Julio Cortazar. Ultimately, Grimes' stories question the grids and schemas we impose on "reality." His is a formal defiance of the tyranny of traditional narrative, expressed with a thematic daring that moves between the contemplation of ordinary buckets and high art.

Psychotherapist A.M. Matthews writes that each of us has an "indestructible core of calm" waiting to be tapped. All we need to do is remove the obstacles in our way. This easy-to-understand and remarkably effective program shows how to clear a path to our naturally calm centre, and how to choose calm over anxiety on a daily basis. Using parables and examples to illustrate her points, Matthews lays out seven steps for transforming a "Busy Mind" into a "Calm Mind". Incorporating psychological and spiritual viewpoints, empathy and humour, and wisdom, both age-old and contemporary, Matthews spells out how to stop trying to control the uncontrollable and how to embrace change rather than resist it.

Faith Popcorn has been called "America's most highly regarded trends forecaster" (Newsday). She first identified the concepts of Cocooning, Female Think and Icon Toppling; predicted the fall of New Coke; and has helped create and market many of America's most successful new products. Her astonishingly accurate predictions are an invaluable asset to the American business world, and Clicking, which sold over 100,000 copies in hardcover, appeared on bestseller lists ranging from the New York Times and USA Today to the Chicago Tribune and Business Week. Now Popcorn, coauthor Lys Marigold, and Popcorn's company, BrainReserve, share even more of their remarkable insights about how we will conduct our businesses and live our lives in the future. Clicking is about positioning one's business, and one's self, to be poised to take the fullest advantage of upcoming trends. Loaded with telling anecdotes and inspiring examples, packed with ideas, products and people who have successfully mastered trends, or "clicked," this up-to-the minute revised report (including a major trend not identified in the hardcover) reveals the shape of the future.