| PAGE ONE Fall, 2001 Issue: Spirit & Crisis EDITOR'S NOTE BUDDHASCOPE DHARMATALK FOUNDOBJECTS GUESTCOLUMN QUOTES POETRY READING ROOM REVIEWS CONTACT US SITE INDEX SUBSCRIBE |
GIFT GUIDE Sections
- 1. BOOKS: Awakening the Buddha; Plain Mindfulness; Wherever You Go; Daily Dalai Lama; a Pocket Buddha.
- 2. TAPES: The Art of Thich Nhat Hahn; Beginner's Mind via Peter Coyote; Rumi's Timeless Tape Recordings.
- 3. OBJETS D'BUDDHIST: Inquiring T-shirts; Zen Blocks for Kids and Adults; Bargain Zafus & a few other things.
- 4. GIFTS of SERVICE & AID: Don't give them an object, but give the bee's knees to someone in their name.
- 5. NO COMMENT: Third Eye Enhancers and other items that show that in the name of the spirit, people try anything.
TAPES
AS WITH BOOKS, there are now so many Buddhist and meditation-oriented tapes for sale you could probably have a different teacher crooning inspirational guidance to you via speakers every day of the new year if you wanted. You don't want that. Too much cognitive noise. What you want---or what you should wish for the right person on your spiritual hit list for the holidays---are road-tested tapes like the ones below, that bear repeated listenings and are good to come back to time and time again.
Thich Nhat Hanh, "The Art of Mindful Living" tapes, 2 cassettes (3 hours). Available for $18.95 through this link. Also, "Mindful Living" gift-boxed edition with 5 cassettes (7 hours) available for $39.95 through this link
If you've had the privilege and the deep satisfaction of having attended a retreat with the Vietnamese-born master Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, you very well likely already have some tapes of him. You just want to bring home with you some of that enveloping kindness and all-embracing spirituality that he radiates. For those who haven't had the chance to see him, tapes are the next best thing to being there.
"The Art of Mindful Living" is a good sampling of Thich Nhat Hanh's gentle and yet incisive teaching style, full of useful practices and insights for becoming more completely awake to the life in and around us. And then, there's his "mindfulness bell." It's a big ol'l bell rung during retreats and dhamma talks so as to call one back from forgetfulness and self-absorption, and to return full attention to the moment. It rings throughout these tapes. Would that mindfulness bells were used in other settings like, say, presidential and parliamentary debates, TV sit-coms and World Trade Organizations meetings.
These tapes would be an excellent gift for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, especially for folks who may not meditate regularly but who enjoy inspirational tapes and are eager to work on the ebb and flow of their daily lives.
"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind," by Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, read by Peter Coyote (2 cassettes). Order for $13.56 though this link
Here is a classic that should be read---or, as in this case, heard by any serious student of meditation. In 1958, Suzuki-Roshi, an esteemed Zen master in Japan, arrived in America and was to become one of the most significant Zen teachers of his day by the time he died in 1971. (He died at the Zen Mountain Center in San Francisco, the very first Zen training monastery outside the confines of Asia).
This book, published one year before his death, is a compact, yet sweeping statement of purpose---and non-purpose (he's a Zen guy, after all) ---about the art of meditation and spiritual endeavor. He offers up brain-rattling insights, lateral thinking about effort and non-effort, and practical advice on how to sit. Some of the particulars of sitting may differ from what your teachers or the books you have read may have taught. But the trick with this work is simply to listen with your "beginner's mind"---that open, spacious, non-discriminating place often obscured by the hubbub of our intellect. I recommend this particular reading most highly by actor Peter Coyote---his rich voice wraps around you like a warm blanket on a cold night.
NOTE: Unlike the other book ordering links in this article---which take you to www.amazon.com---the link for this tape goes to the Barnes and Noble site at www.bn.com. Amazon only had an abridged, single cassette version of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." The Barnes and Noble site appeared to be the 2-cassette unabridged version, which is far preferable.
"Poems of Rumi," translated and performed by Robert Bly and Coleman Barks (2 cassettes). Order for $15.95 through this link at www.audioliterature.com. E-mail: audiolit@aol.com. Phone: (800) 383-0174
What's Buddhist about the 13th century Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Rumi? Almost everything, in my humble opinion, even though he spoke in the language of ecstatic love, mentioned God and wrote homages to red, red wine. Possibly the greatest spiritual poet who ever lived, Rumi (1207-1273) paid heed to an unfathomable, all-embracing, all-pervading love that knew no bounds. His declamations about the path to ecstatic union and identification with the source of all being sounds like the songs of a singing bodhisatva. The original words are 750 years old, but they are as vivid and heartening as yesterday's dawn.
This tape features Robert Bly and Coleman Barks trading off reading their own translations of Rumi's words, accompanied by sitar, tabla, flute and percussion. Don't expect slick , facelessHollywood readings. Bly and Barks have gruff, odd voices, which makes the readings all the more intriguing and arresting once you get used to them. Matched to the energetic Eastern music and Rumi's life-enhancing words, this is a precious gift. I've almost worn my tapes out from repeated listenings. The tapes are especially recommended for fans of poetry and theater who have a strong spiritual bent.
PAGE 5: Some nice Objets d'Buddhist...