At once profound, spiritual, and witty, Master of the Three Ways is a remarkable work about human nature, the essence of life, and how to live simply and with awareness. In three hundred and fifty-seven verses, the author, Hung Ying-ming—a seventeenth-century Chinese sage—explores good and evil, honesty and deception, wisdom and foolishness, and heaven and hell. He draws from the wisdom of the "Three Creeds"—Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism—to impress upon us that by combini...

The classic samurai-era text that fused Japanese swordsmanship with Zen philosophy—written by the incomparable Zen master Takuan SohoWritten by the seventeenth-century Zen master Takuan Soho (1573–1645), The Unfettered Mind is a book of advice on swordsmanship and the cultivation of right mind and intention. It was written as a guide for the samurai Yagyu Munenori, who was a great swordsman and rival to the legendary Miyamoto Musashi.Takuan was a g...

The classic novel of a quest for knowledge that has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers.Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadThough set in a place and time far removed from the Germany of 1922, the year of the book’s debut, the novel is infused with the sensibilities of Hermann Hesse’s time, synthesizing disparate philosophies–Eastern religions...

A Chinese classic of the "inner alchemy" of Taoism, this book was first translated by Richard Wilhelm (also translator, in the 1920s, of the Chinese philosophical classic the I Ching). Wilhelm, was German, and his translations from Chinese to German were later translated to English by Cary F. Baynes. According to Wilhelm, LuDongbin was the main originator of the material presented in the book suggests that the material is from Quanzhen School founder Wang Chongyang, a student of Lu Dongbin...

Classic writings from the great Zen master in exquisite versions by Thomas Merton, in a new edition with a preface by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries B.C., is the chief authentic historical spokesperson for Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (a legendary character kno...

Part poetry, part paradox, always stirring and profound, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching has been inspiring readers since it was written over two thousand years ago. This masterpiece is also one of the most frequently translated books in all of history, in part because the multiple meanings of the Chinese characters make it impossible to translate into a Western language in a strictly literal way. For this reason, many translations are either too loosely interpretive or are too overloaded ...

Albert Low, teacher and director at the Montreal Zen Center and dharma heir of Roshi Philip Kapleau, provides an engaging collection of talks, stories and commentaries on Zen. Though the entries range from dharma talks on koans to discussions on Buddhism and Christianity, they all address concrete concerns of our lives and reveal the author's profound insights.

No love is more consuming and passionate than that one has for God. And nothing is more beautiful than that love when it is expressed as poetry.In The Soul in Love, Deepak Chopra presents us with five great writers whose lives span seven centuries: Rumi, the sublime Persian poet who sang out his verses in ecstatic longing for God. Mirabai, an Indian princess who walked away from her life of privilege to be closer to her Dark Lord. Kabir, born to a lowly family of w...

A poetry collection honoring the haiku—complete with poet biographies, translator commentary, and Japanese artworkThis celebration of what is perhaps the most influential of all poetic forms takes haiku back to its Japanese roots. Beginning with poems by the seventeenth and eighteenth-century masters Basho, Busson, and Issa, the anthology goes all the way up to the late twentieth century to provide a survey of haiku through the centuries, in all its minimalist glor...

From the time of its earliest sages in prehistoric China, Taoism has looked to the underlying Way of all things (the Tao) as a guide to thoughts and actions. For the Taoists, the patterns of nature revealed the answers to their deepest spiritual questions and provided the inspiration for their unique teachings. Over the centuries, Taoism has blossomed into a profound tradition with a variety of forms—all united by a single, core philosophy of radical simplicity and natural living. Today, T...

A wonderfully diverse collection of Zen poetry from China and Japan—including works by Lao Tzu and Han Shan—presented by two of America’s premier poet-translatorsA Zen poem is nothing other than an expression of the enlightened mind, a handful of simple words that disappear beneath the moment of insight to which it bears witness. Poetry has been an essential aid to Zen Buddhist practice from the dawn of Zen—and Zen has also had a profound influence on the secular p...

The timeless wisdom of this classic Taoist text can become a companion on your own spiritual journey.The Chuang-tzu is the second major text of the Taoist tradition. It was compiled in the third century BCE and follows the lead of the best-known and oldest of all Taoist texts, the Tao-te-ching (Book of the Tao and Its Potency). Representing the philosophy of its main author, Chuang Chou, along with several other early Taoist strands, the text has inspired spiritual...