Adyashanti
Asturias, Miguel Angel
Barks, Coleman
Brown, Dan
Burnham, Sophy
Cameron, Julia
Campbell, Joseph
Cather, Willa
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Cunxin, Li
Delaney, Frank
Eco, Umberto
Faulkner, William
Fuentes, Carlos
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
Gyatso, His Holiness Tenzin
Hemingway,
Ernest
Hughes, Robert
Jenkins, John Major
Joyce, James
Kappraff, Jay
Kazantzakis, Nikos
Kingsolver, Barbara
Levitt,
Atma Jo Ann
Llywelyn, Morgan
Luke, Helen M.
Markale, Jean
McCarthy, Cormac
Milton, John
Neruda, Pablo
Oates, Joyce Carol
Padura
Fuentes, Leonardo
Penrose, Roger
Rice, Anne
Rinpoche, Sogyal
Rushdie, Salman
Stephens, John Lloyd
Stephenson, Neal
Twain, Mark
Whitman, Walt
Wilson, Robert Anton
Wolfgang von Hagen,Victor
IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, Scribner Paperback Fiction 1995, copyright 1986 by Mary Hemingway. et. al
This novel was not in finished form at the time of the Hemingway’s death. Some cuts and copy editing were made and a small number of minor interpolations for clarity and consistency. The publisher states, however, that nothing was added and in every significant respect the work is all Hemingway. It's a short novel and you can read it in one or two sittings.
The setting is the French Riviera in the 1920's. Hemingway takes a profound interest in his characters, young American writer David Bourne, his glamorous wife, Catherine, and a young woman with whom they both fall in love. He unfolds an intensive study of Catherine's mental state and her husband's response to her. She is uncontrollably envious of her husband's success as a writer, so much so that she yearns to change her gender.
Hemingway's writing is wonderfully taut and lean, simply
refreshing. He gives hints of his approach to writing through his
character David who is writing a novel about his childhood in Africa. He
writes:
"In the story he had tried to make the elephant come alive again
as he and Kibo had seem him in the night when the moon had risen. Maybe
I can..no I can’t do it. The elephant was old and if it had not
been his father (who killed it), it would have been someone else.
There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was.
So write each day better than you possible can and use the sorrow that
you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always
remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be
there in the writing and you won’t betray them. Writing is the only
progress you make." p. 167 In the Garden of
Eden
ADIÓS HEMINGWAY Copyright 2005, published by Canongate Books Ltd. Edinburgh, Scotland. 2005, First American Edition Canongate, 841 Broadway, New York , NY 10003. Translated from the Spanish by John King.
Padura Fuentes writes a murder mystery weaving the story of Papa Hemingways’s last years in Cuba with a murder investigation by ex-cop and writer Mario Conde. The skeletal remains of a man murdered by a shotgun surface on the Havana Estate of Ernest Hemingway forty years after Hemingway's death. Conde investigates the crime and provides ample details of his own experience of Hemingway and his last days in Havana. Implicating Hemingway in the murder provides fascinating albeit fictionalized insight into what led the author to suicide shortly thereafter. The story maintains its suspense consistently and creates a believable historical setting of Hemingway in Havana.
EMPTINESS DANCING, Selected Dharma Talks of Adyashanti Open Gate Publishing, Los Gatos, California, copyright 2004 by Adyashanti
Adyashanti lives an ordinary life while demonstrating an extraordinary gift for transmitting a simple truth: liberation is the birthright of us all. He awakened to his true nature after many years of ZEN practice. He began teaching in 1996. His teachings have been the source of inspiration and awakening for many students from diverse traditions.
In Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti reveals valuable
insights and explores important relevant themes. Discovering our true
nature could be called the discovery of emptiness--the vast stillness
and loving silence that lies beyond and within all that exists. He says
our lives are the dance of this emptiness as it flowers into form.
Adyashanti
by The
Mosaic Maker
PILGRIM OF LOVE, The Life and Teachings of Swami Kripalu Monkfish Book Publishing Company, Rhinebeck, New York, Copyright 2004 by Atma Jo Ann Levitt
This creative work provides a heart-felt introduction to the life of Swami Kripalvananda and the life-transforming yogic principles that are his legacy. Although Kripalu visited the United States from 1977 to 1981, few of his writings have been translated into English and the full impact of his wisdom is yet to be felt in the West. He was one of the greatest Kundalini yogis of the 20th century. In addition, he was a scholar, classical musician, composer, playwright, athlete, actor and consummate story-teller. He was most renowned for his practice of sahaj or spontaneous yoga and his encyclopedic writings on yoga and classical music. He lived in India, in the western state of Gujarat from 1913 to 1981.
Atma Jo Ann Levitt is a senior Kripalu Faculty member who has designed and developed many of Kripalu Center's personal growth programs. Kripalu Center is the largest residential yoga center in the world and is located in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts.
MAO'S LAST DANCER, Penguin Books Australia, Division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd., 2003, copyright Li Cunxin, 2003
In Mao’s Last Dancer Li Cunxin (b. 1961) relates the moving and unforgettable experience of his life growing up in a small, desperately poor village in north-east China during the time of Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution. If this were all you were to read, it would be memorable enough, for it is a beautiful, rich first hand account Mao’s China amid revolution and chaos and its affect on the lives of the peasants. But there’s more! One day, by the thinnest thread of a chance, the course of this small boy’s life is changed. He is inadvertently selected by Madame Mao’s visiting cultural delegates to participate in Chairman Mao’s great vision for China: he will audition for the Beijing Dance Academy.
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Rite of Spring
In time he will defect to the West and will dance with some of the greatest ballet companies of the world, become friends with a president and first lady, with movie stars and the most influential people in America. Li Cunxin tells his story with great honesty, dignity and pride.
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IRELAND, HarperCollins Publishers Inc, New York, Copyright 2005 by Frank Delaney
Ireland is an inspired book of jeweled images created and woven with a delight that transports the reader magically into the Celtic world. It is an epic novel that captures the passionate texture of the Irish spirit and the people’s connection to the land. In 1951 an itinerant storyteller, the very last practitioner of a fabled tradition extending back hundreds of years, tells his stories to a group which includes a nine year old boy. Young Ronan grows so entranced that he devotes his life to searching out the elusive wandering storyteller. His search becomes a journey of self-discovery and immersion into the histories of his native land. The book travels through the centuries interweaving the young Ronan’s quest for the Storyteller with the evocative unfolding of the great moments in Irish history from the Ice Age to the present.
LION OF IRELAND, a Tom Doherty Associates book, New York, copyright 1981 by Morgan Llywelyn
Morgan Llywelyn has a great talent for historical fiction. In the Lion of Ireland she writes about the life of Brian Boru, the greatest king Ireland has ever known. With Llywelyn’s convincing characterizations and vivid detailed descriptions, Boru is a very human man who leads his people to the peak of their golden era. The story is set against the barbaric splendors of the tenth century and is rich in truth and legend where friends become deadly enemies, bedrooms turn into battlefields and dreams of glory are finally fulfilled. This book is an enjoyable excursion into Irish history.
WOMEN OF THE CELTS First published in French under the title La Femme Celte by Editions Payot in 1972, copyright 1972 by Editions Payot. English Translation copyright 1975 by A. Mygind, C. Hauch and P. Henry. First U.S. Edition 1986 by Inner Traditions International, Ltd. Rochester Vermont
Women of the Celts illuminates a much neglected historical period of a people who stood halfway between earlier matriarchal societies and the later patriarchal Indo-European cultures. The first section examines authentic records of Celtic law and then interprets in detail the Celtic myths relating to women. In the Celtic sphere, history is the myth. Therefore thought provoked by the myth takes on an active power because it influences real life.
The second section explores fully the following myths: The Submerged Princess, Our Lady of the Night, The Great Queen, The Rebellion of the Flower-Daughter, The Grail or the Quest for Woman and Iseult or the Lady of the Orchard. The third part explores theories of women in social life, marriage, sexual liberation and love.
The author describes woman, “like poetry is a continuous creation, a crucible in which scattered energies are melted down, and which embraces the unique act that resolves all contradictions, abolishes time, breaks the chains of loneliness, and leads back to a lost unity.” It is a quest for the Holy Grail deep within the unconscious. The author author takes us deep into a mythical world where both man and woman become whole by realizing the feminine principle in its entirety.
ST FRANCIS by Nikos Kazantzakis translated from the Greek by P. A. Bien, New York Simon & Schuster, copyright 1962
Nikos Kazantzakis (1885-1957) gives a passionate and highly personally vision of the life of St. Francis and goes beyond the mere telling of a story and enters the sublime world of the spirit.
He says, “While writing this legend which is truer than truth itself, I was overwhelmed by love, reverence and admiration for St Francis, the hero and great martyr. Often large teardrops smeared the manuscript; often a hand hovered before me in the air, a hand with an eternally renewed wound; someone seemed to have driven a nail through it, seemed to be driving a nail through it for all eternity. Everywhere about me, as I wrote, I sensed the Saint’s invisible presence because for me St Francis is the model of the dutiful man, the man who by means of ceaseless supremely cruel struggle succeeded in fulfilling our highest obligation, something higher even than morality or truth or beauty, the obligation to transubstantiate the matter which God entrusted to us, and turn it into spirit.”
Francis’ companion a cheerful monk, Brother Leo, is his narrator--weak in many ways of the flesh, but faithful to the master he does not fully understand. Through Brother Leo’s eyes we see the endless strife between flesh and spirit, the bitter wanderings over Europe and the Holy Land, and the struggle against complacent and entrenched men in the Church that finally led to the founding of the Franciscan Order.
It is a wonderful and captivating historical novel in
all the misery and glory of medieval Italy. St Francis is tempted by life,
but driven by his own restless spirit to assert his faith, goodness and
submission to Christ. By his example, ordinary men discover the ability
to leave their daily occupations and pleasures behind and dedicate themselves
to a noble ideal often at the cost of their lives. The book will move all
who read it.
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THE ESTATIC JOURNEY: The Transforming Power of Mystical Experience by Sophy Burnham, Ballantine Books, New York , copyright 1997
| Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight - RUBAlYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM |
In The Ecstatic Journey Sophy Burnham describes her journey into mystical awareness, a journey of confusion, uncertainty, transition, and change. It is an inspiring book, one you will not want to put down. And when you do, it will be like saying goodbye to a dear friend.
She describes mystical experience as experiencing sensations as a form of knowledge that one responds to by surrendering to the last coherent thought and beyond. The result is immersion in a sweetness words cannot express. Her experiences set her apart and encouraged her to seek the truth of it all. She took heart in the writings of the great mystics and in addition to her own journey, she includes many quotes and stories of the great mystics. The Ecstatic Journey relates the drama and mystery of mystical experience and its power to transform your life.
Of all that God has shown me |
It was granted me to perceive in one instant |
To the extent
that my hands grew accustomed to labor, that my eyes and ears
learned to see and hear and my heart to understand what is in
it, my soul too learned to skip upon the hills, to rise, to soar
. .. to embrace all
the land round about, the world and all that is in it, and to
see itself embraced
in the arms of the whole universe. |
I trust all joy. |
Before anything
is brought back into order, it is quite normal for it to be brought
first into a kind of confusion, a virtual chaos. In this way,
things that fit together badly are severed from each other; and
when they have been severed, then the Lord arranges them in order. |
There are hundreds
of mute and unnamed mystics for everyone who writes a book. In
fact, the most important interpreters of mysticism in all periods
are those persons
who quietly practice the presence of God . .. without
even being conscious that they are rare and unusual
persons and often without knowing the meaning of the
word 'mystic. |
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ (1928-
THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH by Gabriel García Márquez translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, copyright 1990
García Márquez, a Colombian who lives in Mexico City, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. He wrote the internationally acclaimed novels Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude and many others.
In The General in His Labyrinth, García Márquez recounts the turbulent life of the great Simon Bolivar. It is a wonderfully creative story transmuting historical truth into magical narrative. He shows us Bolívar, the Liberator, the dreamer fired by the vision of a South America united and free from Spanish domination--a vision he both succeeded and failed in realizing. He shows Bolívar as the dazzling orchestrator of political and military intrigue, the lover, the libertine, the fighter capable of heroism, mercy and ruthlessness. He is a man of flesh and blood worthy of both adoration and anger.
The framework of the story is a seven month voyage down the Magdalena River from Bogotá to the Sea. Bolivar is not yet fifty, but made old by the pressures of war, passion, triumph and treachery. Now, forced from power, he embarks with his retinue on a journey from port to port--both a fantasy of triumph and a nightmare of loss and delusion.
As Bolivar re-examines his life, he confronts phantoms of the past and relives campaigns and amorous offensives. The General in His Labyrinth immerses you in the decades-long adventure that Bolivar set in motion and that ultimately shaped the destiny of a continent. It is a powerful re-creation of history. How Bolivar died was a stunning revelation.
PYRAMID OF FIRE: THE LOST AZTEC CODEX by John Major Jenkins and Martin Matz, Bear & Company, Rochester, Vermont, copyright 2004.
In 1961 the Lost Aztec Codex, Pyramid of Fire or Codex Matz-Ayauhtla, was acquired in by Marty Matz from a Mazatec Indian shaman who was a keeper of the ancient wisdom. Matz transcribed the original pictographic form of the codex, a hieroglyphic manuscript, into English. He held on to it guarding its wisdom for thirty-three years until he finally sent a copy of it to John Major Jenkins in 1994.
The Nahuatl (Aztec) religion regarded all things on earth as impermanent, transitory and subject to the laws of birth, growth and death. The Nahuatl poet-philosophers (the tlamatinime) searched for and found a higher source and ground of being that, like the perennial wisdom itself, is undying.
The codices were mnemonic devices (memory aids) for recording all the sciences and wisdom of which the Aztecs had knowledge. They found in the rhythm of poetry an easy and accurate way of remembering the meaning of the hieroglyphs inscribed in their manuscripts.
Poetry was crucial in shaping the forms and thoughts expressed by their high culture and great civilization. Without knowledge of what the Aztecs called "flower and song" (poetry), it is almost impossible to understand and appreciate the true greatness of their achievements.
The wise men of Mexico did not believe they could form rational images of what is beyond, but they were convinced that through metaphors, by means of poetry, truth was attainable. This attitude was rooted in their belief in the divine orgin of poetry, that it comes from above. Poetry intoxicates, enraptures, and by intensifying the emotions and the perceptual powers, it enables the poet to perceive what would ordinarly be undetectable.
From page 11 of the 13 page codex:
1 There is an occult energy in the heart that comes from Tonatiuh, the Sun and if man releases it, returning it consciously to the Sun, he becomes immortal.
But to liberate this energy, sacrifice is necessary.
Man must sacrfice the desires and habits that he adores, sacrifice them in himself and turn the knife against the enemy that he carries within himself that keeps his heart a prisoner.
8 In recent times men still remembered these words, but they have now forgotten their significance. They have made enemies of other men
to sacrifice them and tear out their hearts
believing such offerings would propitiate Tonatiuh.
Such is their degneeration, such is their superstition.
14 When fear unites with knowledge, terrible things are done.
15 It is the self within ourselves that we have to sacrifice.
It is our own heart that has to be torn out of the false being and offered to the light.
18 May Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord of Fire, burn my false being,
May Itzli, Osidian Knife liberate my heart.
click for larger picture
Quetzalcóatl, Aztec God,
link between the gods and man