Jacqueline Buswell's first collection of poems is a very solid contribution to contemporary Australian poetry. Hers is a journey with eyes wide open, a well-tuned voice and firm steps into evocations and ironic reflections. A great fusion of rhythms and forms, themes and personal experiences. Lucidity and compassion.' - Mario Licón Cabrera. 'Jacqueline Buswell is an interpreter and translator with an intense interest in Spanish/English communication. Many of her poems are concerned with the lack of justice and insensitivity at world trouble spots. If the inequities of the world can only be lamented, we can at least attempt with our communication "a bridge of paper" "fragile as a great-aunt's femur" to build strong communities, friendships and love relationships. The political and personal merge with gusto.' - Julie Chevalier.
Buddhists across Asia have often aspired to die with a clear and focused mind, as the historical Buddha himself is said to have done. This book explores how the ideal of dying with right mindfulness was appropriated, disseminated, and transformed in premodern Japan, focusing on the late tenth through early fourteenth centuries. By concentrating one’s thoughts on the Buddha in one’s last moments, it was said even an ignorant and sinful person could escape the cycle of deluded rebirth and achieve birth in a buddha’s pure land, where liberation would be assured. Conversely, the slightest mental distraction at that final juncture could send even a devout practitioner tumbling down into the hells or other miserable rebirth realms. The ideal of mindful death thus generated both hope and anxiety and created a demand for ritual specialists who could act as religious guides at the deathbed. Buddhist death management in Japan has been studied chiefly from the standpoint of funerals and mortuary rites. Right Thoughts at the Last Moment investigates a largely untold side of that story: how early medieval Japanese prepared for death, and how desire for ritual assistance in one’s last hours contributed to Buddhist preeminence in death-related matters. It represents the first book-length study in a Western language to examine how the Buddhist ideal of mindful death was appropriated in a specific historical context. Practice for one’s last hours occupied the intersections of multiple, often disparate approaches that Buddhism offered for coping with death. Because they crossed sectarian lines and eventually permeated all social levels, deathbed practices afford insights into broader issues in medieval Japanese religion, including intellectual developments, devotional practices, pollution concerns, ritual performance, and divisions of labor among religious professionals. They also allow us to see beyond the categories of “old” versus “new” Buddhism, or establishment Buddhism versus marginal heterodoxies, which have characterized much scholarship to date. Enlivened by cogent examples, this study draws on a wealth of sources including ritual instructions, hagiographies, doctrinal writings, didactic tales, courtier diaries, historical records, letters, and relevant art historical material to explore the interplay of doctrinal ideals and on-the-ground practice.
Thirteen Australian women have composed an atypical collection of travel writings which cover a period of more than 50 years. Some visited Mexico several times for work and/or pleasure; some visited by chance and chose to remain; some returned to stay after a long absence, pulled back by something Mexican which they certainly feel strongly. Not all their experiences are pleasant, but the outcome is almost inevitably life affirming. Discover a different Mexico through the words - reminiscences, letters and poems - and images of these Australian women. Prose and poetry.
Everything you could ever want to know about Jacqueline Wilson and her books in one adorable, small, pink package. This is a must-have for fans, bursting with new titbits from Jacky herself, info about the characters and plots, artwork from Nick Sharratt and more.
Based on the life and books of the popular and acclaimed children's author, this is a must-read for tween fans! The annual is packed with exclusive stories, interviews, writing tips, and drawing fun with Jacky's signature illustrator, Nick Sharratt.
Original enlightenment thought (hongaku shiso) dominated Buddhist intellectual circles throughout Japan’s medieval period. Enlightenment, this discourse claims, is neither a goal to be achieved nor a potential to be realized but the true status of all things. Every animate and inanimate object manifests the primordially enlightened Buddha just as it is. Seen in its true aspect, every activity of daily life—eating, sleeping, even one’s deluded thinking—is the Buddha’s conduct. Emerging from within the powerful Tendai School, ideas of original enlightenment were appropriated by a number of Buddhist traditions and influenced nascent theories about the kami (local deities) as well as medieval aesthetics and the literary and performing arts. Scholars and commentators have long recognized the historical importance of original enlightenment thought but differ heatedly over how it is to be understood. Some tout it as the pinnacle of the Buddhist philosophy of absolute non-dualism. Others claim to find in it the paradigmatic expression of a timeless Japanese spirituality. According other readings, it represents a dangerous anti-nomianism that undermined observance of moral precepts, precipitated a decline in Buddhist scholarship, and denied the need for religious discipline. Still others denounce it as an authoritarian ideology that, by sacralizing the given order, has in effect legitimized hierarchy and discriminative social practices. Often the acceptance or rejection of original enlightenment thought is seen as the fault line along which traditional Buddhist institutions are to be differentiated from the new Buddhist movements (Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren) that arose during Japan’s medieval period. Jacqueline Stone’s groundbreaking study moves beyond the treatment of the original enlightenment doctrine as abstract philosophy to explore its historical dimension. Drawing on a wealth of medieval primary sources and modern Japanese scholarship, it places this discourse in its ritual, institutional, and social contexts, illuminating its importance to the maintenance of traditions of lineage and the secret transmission of knowledge that characterized several medieval Japanese elite culture. It sheds new light on interpretive strategies employed in pre-modern Japanese Buddhist texts, an area that hitherto has received a little attention. Through these and other lines of investigation, Stone problematizes entrenched notions of “corruption” in the medieval Buddhist establishment. Using the examples of Tendai and Nichiren Buddhism and their interactions throughout the medieval period, she calls into question both overly facile distinctions between “old” and “new” Buddhism and the long-standing scholarly assumptions that have perpetuated them. This study marks a significant contribution to ongoing debates over definitions of Buddhism in the Kamakura era (1185–1333), long regarded as a formative period in Japanese religion and culture. Stone argues that “original enlightenment thought” represents a substantial rethinking of Buddhist enlightenment that cuts across the distinction between “old” and “new” institutions and was particularly characteristic of the medieval period.
Readers who wish to know more about the woman and her life will delight in this deluxe facsimile of the complete, unedited will of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, containing a four-color frontispiece portrait of Mrs. Onassis.
Tracy couldn't have imagined a worse start to her freshman year. The weekend before she's supposed to start school at the recently integrated Mason High in Bakersfield, Alabama, a fatal car accident threatens the fragile peace her town has experienced since it was forced to desegregate. Maybe it's an omen, but Tracy is determined not to let it slow her down. With segregation slowly dying across the South, she sees change happening and is determined to use it to her advantage. Tracy dreams of making it to Harvard, and she won't let anything stop her from becoming an Ivy League-trained lawyer. Aware of the amount of dedication and personal sacrifice it will take to achieve this goal, she is willing to give up weekends out, and is prepared for her teachers, friends, and even family to stand in her way. What she hasn't counted on, however, is falling in love. Derek doesn't know what he wants from the future. Lacking ambition, and happily settled in Bakersfield, the only thing the two of them seem to have in common is their dislike for each other. When a high school project forces them to work together, Tracy finds herself falling for him. But in her quest to achieve the impossible, there's no room for deviation or compromise-and there's certainly no room for love. As Tracy struggles with her developing feelings, she realizes that in life, it's never as simple as black and white.
Buddhists across Asia have often aspired to die with a clear and focused mind, as the historical Buddha himself is said to have done. This book explores how the ideal of dying with right mindfulness was appropriated, disseminated, and transformed in premodern Japan, focusing on the late tenth through early fourteenth centuries. By concentrating one’s thoughts on the Buddha in one’s last moments, it was said even an ignorant and sinful person could escape the cycle of deluded rebirth and achieve birth in a buddha’s pure land, where liberation would be assured. Conversely, the slightest mental distraction at that final juncture could send even a devout practitioner tumbling down into the hells or other miserable rebirth realms. The ideal of mindful death thus generated both hope and anxiety and created a demand for ritual specialists who could act as religious guides at the deathbed. Buddhist death management in Japan has been studied chiefly from the standpoint of funerals and mortuary rites. Right Thoughts at the Last Moment investigates a largely untold side of that story: how early medieval Japanese prepared for death, and how desire for ritual assistance in one’s last hours contributed to Buddhist preeminence in death-related matters. It represents the first book-length study in a Western language to examine how the Buddhist ideal of mindful death was appropriated in a specific historical context. Practice for one’s last hours occupied the intersections of multiple, often disparate approaches that Buddhism offered for coping with death. Because they crossed sectarian lines and eventually permeated all social levels, deathbed practices afford insights into broader issues in medieval Japanese religion, including intellectual developments, devotional practices, pollution concerns, ritual performance, and divisions of labor among religious professionals. They also allow us to see beyond the categories of “old” versus “new” Buddhism, or establishment Buddhism versus marginal heterodoxies, which have characterized much scholarship to date. Enlivened by cogent examples, this study draws on a wealth of sources including ritual instructions, hagiographies, doctrinal writings, didactic tales, courtier diaries, historical records, letters, and relevant art historical material to explore the interplay of doctrinal ideals and on-the-ground practice.
Older and wiser, the humans and nonhumans of Molt Brother now suffer the consequences of their actions. They have stirred the karma of their lifetimes lived billions of years ago - when they were responsible for the destruction of a Galactic Civilization, the First Lifewave. Now they must seize the object of power that corrupted them the first time - to keep it from the hands of an implacable enemy. Can they resist its lure and save the Second Lifewave?
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