A handbook for the Refuge Tree of the Triratna Buddhist Order. Kulananda explains the significance and iconography of the historical buddhas, bodhisattvas and human practitioners visualised in the Going for Refuge and Prostration Practice. This new edition includes Dr Ambedkar and Anagarika Dharmapala, with additional text from Vajratara and updated images from Āloka.

The first comprehensive anthology of writings of Zen that presents both Eastern and Western sources. Illustrated.

Everyone dreams of a better life. All the things you’ve ever wanted — happiness, loving relationships, well-being, abundance, and peace of mind — are all qualities of enlightenment, a way of embracing our fullest potential that seemed unavailable to us, until now. For thousands of years, the secret to enlightenment has remained hidden in the distant reaches of the Himalayas, deep in wisdom impenetrable to all but the most dedicated seekers. For the first time in history, The Backdoor to Enlightenment burns the rules and barriers that have hindered our understanding and reveals the keys to immediate, profound realization to the rest of the world. Blending centuries-old texts with contemporary wisdom, readers of any faith can bypass the traps and limitations of modern life and achieve lasting peace every day. More than just a heartfelt story of mystery and discovery, this revolutionary work stands out as a smart, clear guide, showing step-by-step how you can use these astonishing truths to transform every aspect of your life. There might not be a shortcut to your dreams, but there is a Backdoor!

“[A] tour de force of global history...Bosma has turned the humble sugar crystal into a mighty prism for understanding aspects of global history and the world in which we live.”—Los Angeles Review of Books The definitive 2,500-year history of sugar and its human costs, from its little-known origins as a luxury good in Asia to worldwide environmental devastation and the obesity pandemic. For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary purpose in our diets, and extracting it from plants takes hard work and ingenuity. Granulated sugar was first produced in India around the sixth century BC, yet for almost 2,500 years afterward sugar remained marginal in the diets of most people. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How did sugar find its way into almost all the food we eat, fostering illness and ecological crisis along the way? The World of Sugar begins with the earliest evidence of sugar production. Through the Middle Ages, traders brought small quantities of the precious white crystals to rajahs, emperors, and caliphs. But after sugar crossed the Mediterranean to Europe, where cane could not be cultivated, demand spawned a brutal quest for supply. European cravings were satisfied by enslaved labor; two-thirds of the 12.5 million Africans taken across the Atlantic were destined for sugar plantations. By the twentieth century, sugar was a major source of calories in diets across Europe and North America. Sugar transformed life on every continent, creating and destroying whole cultures through industrialization, labor migration, and changes in diet. Sugar made fortunes, corrupted governments, and shaped the policies of technocrats. And it provoked freedom cries that rang with world-changing consequences. In Ulbe Bosma’s definitive telling, to understand sugar’s past is to glimpse the origins of our own world of corn syrup and ethanol and begin to see the threat that a not-so-simple commodity poses to our bodies, our environment, and our communities.

Ngapuhi is the largest iwi in New Zealand and its people have occupied the northern North Island, from Tamaki in the south to Te Rerenga Wairua in the north, from the time of their arrival from Hawaiki. Ko Tautoro, Te Pito o Toku Ao is Ngapuhi elder Hone Sadler's powerful account of the origins, history and culture of the Ngapuhi people - a profound introduction to the Sacred House of Puhi. Sadler illustrates the unbroken chain of Ngapuhi sovereignty by looking in-depth at his own hapu of Ngati Moerewa, Ngati Rangi and Ngai Tawake ki te Waoku of Tautoro and Mataraua. The narrative is told through weaving together karakia and whakapapa, histories and korero that have been part of the oral traditions of Ngapuhi's whanau, hapu and iwi and handed down through the generations on marae and other gathering places. Presented first to open the Ngapuhi's claim before the Waitangi Tribunal, Sadler's narrative is a powerful Maori oral account, presented here in te reo and English on facing pages, of the story of New Zealand's largest iwi.

From the early 1970s, the author worked on the neglected theory of C.G. Jung's depth psychology, incorporating it into modern knowledge about living organisms, and reflecting on the consequences of Jung's discovery for our worldview and religion. What is new about the present study is that the author approaches the religious metamorphosis from the perspective of the evolution of consciousness itself. The result of his exploration made the author realize that the development of European consciousness was not just an accidental historical process but a true evolutionary step: a "mega mutation" of consciousness. In this process, the basic parameter of the mythical understanding of our world was overcome and replaced by a completely new worldview which - after the discovery of the unconsious by Freud and Jung - was founded on scientific results empirically proved. This enables humanity to transcend the dilemma between knowledge and faith and to find a new understanding of both matter and mind that is adequate to today's knowledge of nature. From this point of view, a radically new access to spirituality and ethics becomes possible.