Shambhala pocket classics

"Rene Daumal's Mount Analogue is a twentieth-century classic, combining the author's poetic gifts and philosophical accomplishments. Among other things, this is an allegory for the journey of life, as well as a tale in which the narrator/author, one of an intrepid company of eight, sets sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, the solid, geographically located, albeit hidden, peak that reaches inexorably towards heaven - as Mount Olympus reached to the home of the Greek gods, or Mount Sinai to the presence of Yahweh. Daumal, one of the greatest French writers of the twentieth century, died before the novel was completed, providing an uncanny one-way quality to the journey."--BOOK JACKET.

Contains 55 sonnets in English and German.

"The works of Henry David Thoreau contain some of the most beautifully written and inspiring observations of nature, yet most of his readers are familiar with only one of his books, Walden. Two other gems, The Maine Woods and Cape Cod, are travelogues containing some of his finest writing. Presented here are selections from the best of these two works, including Thoreau's record of his climb up Mount Katahdin, his arduous river journey by canoe down the Allegash River, the deadly shipwreck he encountered on his first trip to Cape Cod, as well as his wonderfully colorful and humorous portrait of a Wellfleet oysterman. These writings offer a vision of Thoreau struggling with the harsh realities of wild nature and of how people might live in harmony with the natural world."--Jacket.

Collection of essays about complex Asian concepts with a Western directness. Merton believed that there must be a little of Zen in all authentic creative and spiritual experience and the Study of Zen, then, is not a study of doctrine, still less a polemic about ultimate religious principles, it is simply an attempt to reach the ground of pure, direct experience which underlies all creative thought and activity. His essays approach this experience through Japanese art and philosophy (Kataro Nishida), through the Zen of Suzuki, and through the Classic Zen Masters themselves. Dialogue between Merton and Suzuki explores the many congruencies of Christian mysticism and Zen.

In this hardcover volume in the Shambhala Library, Thomas Merton (1915-1968) shares his enthusiasm for these fourth century monks who lived in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. They sought "purity of heart," fought the demons of the false self, and lived upright lives attuned as best they could to the Gospel. These pioneers, as Merton calls them, have much to teach us about the inner life: "What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous." Love animated these faithful souls and prayer was central to their lives. Merton compares the desert fathers to Indian Yogis and Zen Buddhist monks of China and Japan. His translations of their sayings model for contemporary Christians a life of diligent and serious spiritual practice.

Emily Dickinson lived as a recluse in Amherst, Massachusetts, dedicating herself to writing a "letter to the world" - the 1,775 poems left unpublished at her death in 1886. Today Dickinson stands in the front rank of American poets. This Modern Library edition presents the more than four hundred poems that were published between Dickinson's death and 1900. They express her concepts of life and death, of love and nature, and of what Henry James called "the landscape of the soul.". "No one can read these poems...without perceiving that he is not so much reading as being spoken to," observed Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish. "There is a curious energy in the words and a tone like no other most of us have ever heard....I know no poems in which the double structure of words as sounds and words as meanings - that curious relationship of the logically unrelated - will be found, on right reading, to be more comprehensive than it is in the poems of Emily Dickinson."