I loved this book for the way Nobel prize winner Yasunari Kawabata tells the story of the old Go master
clashing with the young pretender.
It is the invincible up against the kind and
quiet challenger and is largely set in the beautiful hill town of Hakone. High
above are the slopes of Mount Fuji; down here is the Go board and pieces, the
blossom and bubbling river, and a game of high strategy. A single game of Go
can take months.
The story moves with the tectonic pace of clashing
civilizations, and like epics, you feel you know the ending from the start. This
tears your heart in half and reveals so much of a changing Japan in the 1930s.
We finish with insights into how to live a good life.
Go is a game of strategy in which two players attempt to surround each other's black or white stones. Simple in its fundamentals, infinitely complex in its execution, it is an essential expression of the Japanese sensibility. And in his fictional chronicle of a match played between a revered and invincible Master and a younger, more progressive challenger, Yasunari Kawabata captured the moment in which the immutable traditions of imperial Japan met the onslaught of the twentieth century.
The competition between the Master of Go and his opponent, Otake, is waged over several months and layered in ceremony. But beneath…
This book is simply a delight, as Eleanor Parker takes us
on an almanac journey through the Anglo-Saxon year.
A sparrow flies from one
end of the hall, over the people sitting around their flickering hearths, and
disappears into the dark at the far end. And so our lives play out this way, too. Some of the world’s greatest literature comes from this period, from
Beowulf to The Wanderer to The Seafarer. This is no dry history of a dark age.
It is bright as a brooch, alive with the cries of seabirds and struggles
through winter sorrowful and rimed with frost. Haunting and magical, and if you
wish, a thousand years later, full of wise instruction that works superbly well
today.
Winters in the World is a beautifully observed journey through the cycle of the year in Anglo-Saxon England, exploring the festivals, customs and traditions linked to the different seasons. Drawing on a wide variety of source material, including poetry, histories and religious literature, Eleanor Parker investigates how Anglo-Saxons felt about the annual passing of the seasons and the profound relationship they saw between human life and the rhythms of nature. Many of the festivals we celebrate in Britain today have their roots in the Anglo-Saxon period, and this book traces their surprising history, as well as unearthing traditions now long…
This book is a lantern, shining light into all sorts of hidden
spaces.
Joan Sutherland uses koans to undertake a spiritual and literary
journey and shows us how to listen to the world and how to attend to our own
lives.
A koan is a gate, and we often stop or feel imprisoned by habits and
history on one side. Walking through the door is like taking a problem into a
wide meadow. Suddenly, you see distant mountains, there are bees in the flowers, and you hear the water of a stream babbling over stones. The voice of a cuckoo
calls.
Joan Sutherland is co-founder of the Pacific Zen School and explains,
guides, and teaches through consistently wonderful words. Stories of this sort
are spells; they cast charms and magic.
An intimate spiritual and literary journey exploring how Zen koans make us permeable to the joys and the anguish of this life—and to the primordial mystery we glimpse behind the veil of the everyday.
In Through Forests of Every Color, renowned Zen teacher Joan Sutherland reimagines the koan tradition with allegiance to the root spirit of the koans and to their profound potential for vivifying, subverting, and sanctifying our lives. Her decades of practicing with koans and of translating them from classical Chinese imbues this text with a warm familiarity, an ease still suffused with awe.…
The Low-Carbon Good Life is about how to reverse and repair four
interlocking crises of climate, growing inequality, nature loss, and food-related ill-health.
Across the world today and throughout history, good lives are
characterized by healthy food, connections to nature, being active,
togetherness, personal growth, a spiritual framework, and sustainable
consumption. A low-carbon good life offers opportunities to live in ways that
will bring greater happiness and contentment. Slower ways of living await.
Dropping old habits is hard, and large-scale impacts will need fresh forms of public
engagement and citizen action. Local to national governments need to act equally; they need pushing by the power and collective action of citizens.
