Lila

Lila PDF

Author: Robert Pirsig

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2013-11-06

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0307764214

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In this bestselling new book, his first in seventeen years, Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, takes us on a poignant and passionate journey as mysterious and compelling as his first life-changing work. Instead of a motorcycle, a sailboat carries his philosopher-narrator Phaedrus down the Hudson River as winter closes in. Along the way he picks up a most unlikely traveling companion: a woman named Lila who in her desperate sexuality, hostility, and oncoming madness threatens to disrupt his life. In Lila Robert M. Pirsig has crafted a unique work of adventure and ideas that examines the essential issues of the nineties as his previous classic did the seventies.

On Quality

On Quality PDF

Author: Robert M. Pirsig

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2022-04-26

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 006308466X

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Featuring long-awaited selections from Robert M. Pirsig's unpublished writings, from before and after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an original collection illuminating the central theme of Pirsig's thought: “Quality” “The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment." —Robert M. Pirsig, 1962 More than a decade before the release of the book that would make him famous, Robert M. Pirsig had already caught hold of the central theme that would animate Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “Quality,” a concept loosely likened to “excellence,” “rightness,” or “fitness” that Pirsig saw as kindred to the Buddhist ideas of “dharma” or the “Tao.” As he later wrote in Zen, “Quality is the Buddha.” Though he was revered by fans who considered him a guru, the famously private Pirsig published only two books and consented to few interviews and almost no public appearances in later decades. Yet he wrote and thought almost continually, refining his “Metaphysics of Quality” until his death in 2017. Now, for the first time, readers will be granted access to five decades of Pirsig’s personal writings in this posthumous collection that illuminates the evolution of his thinking to an unprecedented degree. Skillfully edited and introduced by Wendy K. Pirsig, Robert’s wife of four decades, the collection includes previously unpublished texts, speeches, letters, interviews, and private notes, as well as key excerpts from Zen and the Art of the Motorcycle Maintenance and his second book, Lila. Since its publication in 1974, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has established itself as a modern classic of popular philosophy; selling millions of copies and inspiring a generation, while serving as a perennial touchstone for the generations that follow. On Quality is a remarkable contribution to our understanding of one of the most influential thinkers and writers of our time.

Zen and Now

Zen and Now PDF

Author: Mark Richardson

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2009-09-08

Total Pages: 5

ISBN-13: 0307373150

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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.

Lila's Child

Lila's Child PDF

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2003-01-14

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13: 9781403357540

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Poetry, true poetry, begins in the heart, rides luminous shock waves into the dark, and brings light to our shaking continent. Fred Marchman artist, seer, gardener of earthly paradise, rishi gone-beyond, maverick bronco buster riding bareback his Blakean colt opens a shimmering path into the visionary cave of deep-speaking Angels, that most holy womb "accessible but unassessable," that "Garden where thee Spring gushes," that place which, ultimately, we have no name for but to which we arrive in moments of trance (thus, "entrance"), or while moving body and bones in prayer, or driving the road in carefree, spirited Kerouacian tomfoolery, or during moments of solitude, purifying the soul inside those "Golden Chords of Harmony" that heaven occasionally grants us. Like a spelunker, Fred shines his light down through rough-walled fathoms to make brilliant the waiting welcome mat to the "Heavenly Inn," the source of the divine breeze, the "Beautiful Wind," the breath of Heaven that lights the wick of inspiration and brings shakti-divine female energy to "Thee Cozmos." Marchman takes us through the jeweled dawn, the sunwashed portals, along the path of higher consciousness to give us entry into the "Throne Room" of "Radiant loving Holiness & Heartfelt Happiness." As the book opens and the pages turn, we too open, turn, spin and join the esoteric dance of an American sufi, a Mobile-lite, an alchemic maestro from the American South one knowledged in the esoteric ways of Blavatsky, the poetry of Dante, the etchings of Blake, the lectures of Watts, the revolt of Siddhartha, the architects of Angkor Wat, the Duende of Lorca, and, certainly, the Swamp-boogie queens, Sir Bourbons of Honk, and steel-guitar strummers of the sultry thicklands of imagination's Delta. Yes! John Brandi Quandry, NM Epiphany (January 7) 2001

Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance PDF

Author: Ron Di Santo

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 1990-11-19

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 0688060692

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When Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was first published in 1974, it caused a literary sensation. An entire generation was profoundly affected by the story of the narrator, his son, Chris, and their month-long motorcycle odyssey from Minnesota to California. A combination of philosophical speculation and psychological tension, the book is a complex story of relationships, values, madness, and, eventually, enlightenment. Ron Di Santo and Tom Steele have spent years investigating the background and underlying symbolism of Pirsig’s work. Together, and with the approval of Robert Pirsig, they have written a fascinating reference/companion to the original. Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance serves as a metaphorical backpack of supplies for the reader’s journey through the original work. With the background material, insights, and perspectives the authors provide, Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is destined to become required reading for new fans of the book as well as those who have returned to it over the years.

The Eye of the Prophet

The Eye of the Prophet PDF

Author: Kahlil Gibran

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2008-01-29

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9781556436970

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The Eye of the Prophet is a luminous collection of Gibran's writings translated from Arabic into French and now into English. Here the author is the poetic, philosophical moralist, grounded in Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity, seeking the best in people, refusing to separate humankind from the natural world. Ordinary work and life, he says, has the potential to be inherently noble, if we can learn to enact our affairs with the sublimity of nature's creations. Gibran’s descriptions celebrate the dignity and freedom of animals, birds, the seasons, oceans, clouds. His is a poet’s eye; he abhors the “tentacles of government” and calls on citizens to question all ideologies. In this book he writes about life’s great moments and passages (The First Kiss, The First Glance, The Mystery of Love, Youth); eternal essences (Earth, The Nature of Woman, Marriage, Love, Truth, Poetry), and grapples with nationalism, religion, and spiritual growth. The Eye of the Prophet blends Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist ideals into a great spiritual tapestry that transcends all cultural divisions. With its vibrant, rhythmic language, it speaks to our challenging times as a worthy companion to The Prophet.

Secular Buddhism

Secular Buddhism PDF

Author: Stephen Batchelor

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0300223234

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An essential collection of Stephen Batchelor's most probing and important work on secular Buddhism As the practice of mindfulness permeates mainstream Western culture, more and more people are engaging in a traditional form of Buddhist meditation. However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition? Is there an ethical framework that can underpin and contextualize these practices in a rapidly changing world? In this collected volume of Stephen Batchelor's writings on these themes, the author explores the complex implications of Buddhism's secularization. Ranging widely--from reincarnation, religious belief, and agnosticism to the role of the arts in Buddhist practice--he offers a detailed picture of contemporary Buddhism and its attempt to find a voice in the modern world.

The Evolution of Morality

The Evolution of Morality PDF

Author: Richard Joyce

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2007-08-24

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0262263254

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Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.

Lila

Lila PDF

Author: Robert M. Pirsig

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 9780553078732

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Phaedrus has traded in his motor cycle for a sailboat, his traveling companion, son Chris, for Lila, a woman he met in a bar, and his focus on values for a concentration on morals.