Introducing an innovative four-pronged approach to self-liberation, this intriguing guide shows how to dissolve the debilitating stories we tell ourselves, which in turn allows the truth of "what is" to give rise to a life of new fulfillment and happiness. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.
“A unique and special kind of masterpiece.” —John Banville Stephen Mitchell’s gift is to breathe new life into ancient classics. In Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness, he offers us his riveting novelistic version of the Biblical tale in which Jacob’s favorite son is sold into slavery and eventually becomes viceroy of Egypt. Tolstoy called it the most beautiful story in the world. What’s new here is the lyrical, witty, vivid prose, informed by a wisdom that brings fresh insight to this foundational legend of betrayal and all-embracing forgiveness. Mitchell’s retelling, which reads like a postmodern novel, interweaves the narrative with brief meditations that, with their Zen surprises, expand the narrative and illuminate its main themes. By stepping inside the minds of Joseph and the other characters, Mitchell reanimates one of the central stories of Western culture. The engrossing tale that he has created will capture the hearts and minds of modern readers and show them that this ancient story can still challenge, delight, and astonish.
Stephen Mitchell is widely known for his ability to make ancient masterpieces thrillingly new, to step in where many have tried before and create versions that are definitive for our time. His celebrated version of the Tao Te Ching is the most popular edition in print, and his translations of Jesus, Rilke, Genesis, and Job have won the hearts of readers and critics alike. Stephen Mitchell now brings to the Bhagavad Gita his gift for breathing new life into sacred texts. The Bhagavad Gita is universally acknowledged as one of the world's literary and spiritual masterpieces. It is the core text of the Hindu tradition and has been treasured by American writers from Emerson and Thoreau to T. S. Eliot, who called it the greatest philosophical poem after the Divine Comedy. There have been more than two hundred English translations of the Gita, including many competent literal versions, but not one of them is a superlative literary text in its own right. Now all that has changed. Stephen Mitchell's Bhagavad Gita sings with the clarity, the vigor, and the intensity of the original Sanskrit. It will, as William Arrowsmith said of Mitchell's translation of The Sonnets to Orpheus, "instantly make every other rendering obsolete.
Enhanced by Stephen Mitchell’s illuminating commentary, the next volume of the classic manual on the art of living The most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living. Following the phenomenal success of his own version of the Tao Te Ching, renowned scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell has composed the innovative The Second Book of the Tao. Drawn from the work of Lao-tzu’s disciple Chuang-tzu and Confucius’s grandson Tzussu, The Second Book of the Tao offers Western readers a path into reality that has nothing to do with Taoism or Buddhism or old or new alone, but everything to do with truth. Mitchell has selected the freshest, clearest teachings from these two great students of the Tao and adapted them into versions that reveal the poetry, depth, and humor of the original texts with a thrilling new power. Alongside each adaptation, Mitchell includes his own commentary, at once explicating and complementing the text. This book is a twenty-first-century form of ancient wisdom, bringing a new, homemade sequel to the Tao Te Ching into the modern world. Mitchell’s renditions are radiantly lucid; they dig out the vision that’s hiding beneath the words; they grab the text by the scruff of the neck—by its heart, really—and let its essential meanings fall out. The book introduces us to a cast of vivid characters, most of them humble artisans or servants, who show us what it means to be in harmony with the way things are. Its wisdom provides a psychological and moral acuity as deep as the Tao Te Ching itself. The Second Book of the Tao is a gift to contemporary readers, granting us access to our own fundamental wisdom. Mitchell’s meditations and risky reimagining of the original texts are brilliant and liberating, not least because they keep catching us off-guard, opening up the heavens where before we saw a roof. He makes the ancient teachings at once modern, relevant, and timeless. Listen to a special podcast with Stephen Mitchell:
“I love The First Christmas. What a charming way Stephen Mitchell has found to tell my favorite story of all, the Nativity, character by character (I love the donkey and the ox), with wise and thrilling interludes about God, reality, truth.” –Anne Lamott In The First Christmas, Stephen Mitchell brings the Nativity story to vivid life as never before. A narrative that is only sketched out in two Gospels becomes fully realized here with nuanced characters and a setting that reflects the culture of the time. Mitchell has suffused the birth of Jesus with a sense of beauty that will delight and astonish readers. In this version, we see the world through the eyes of a Whitmanesque ox and a visionary donkey, starry-eyed shepherds and Zen-like wise men, each of them providing a unique perspective on a scene that is, in Western culture, the central symbol for good tidings of great joy. Rather than superimposing later Christian concepts onto the Annunciation and Nativity scenes, he imagines Mary and Joseph experiencing the angelic message as a young Jewish woman and man living in the year 4 bce might have experienced it, with terror, dismay, and ultimate acceptance. In this context, their yes becomes an act of great moral courage. Readers of every background will be enchanted by this startlingly beautiful reimagining of the Christmas tale.
A magnificent compilation of sacred writings from all traditions and the perfect companion to Stephen Mitchell's poetry collection, The Enlightened Heart, and the bestselling Tao Te Ching.
From the author of The Gospel According to Jesus comes a new adaptation of the psalms. Leading biblical scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell translates fifty of the most powerful and popular bible psalms to create poems that recreate the music of the original Hebrew verse.
The bestselling, widely acclaimed translation from Stephen Mitchell "Mitchell's rendition of the Tao Te Ching comes as close to being definitive for our time as any I can imagine. It embodies the virtues its translator credits to the Chinese original: a gemlike lucidity that is radiant with humor, grace, largeheartedness, and deep wisdom." — Huston Smith, author of The Religions of Man In eighty-one brief chapters, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao—the basic principle of the universe.
Vivid, enjoyable and comprehensible, the poet and pre-eminent translator Stephen Mitchell makes the oldest epic poem in the world accessible for the first time. Gilgamesh is a born leader, but in an attempt to control his growing arrogance, the Gods create Enkidu, a wild man, his equal in strength and courage. Enkidu is trapped by a temple prostitute, civilised through sexual experience and brought to Gilgamesh. They become best friends and battle evil together. After Enkidu's death the distraught Gilgamesh sets out on a journey to find Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Great Flood, made immortal by the Gods to ask him the secret of life and death. Gilgamesh is the first and remains one of the most important works of world literature. Written in ancient Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C., it predates the Iliad by roughly 1,000 years. Gilgamesh is extraordinarily modern in its emotional power but also provides an insight into the values of an ancient culture and civilisation.
This is the first comprehensive study of the history of Asia Minor in antiquity to be written for nearly fifty years and the first attempt to treat Anatolian history as a whole over the millenium from the time of Alexander the Great to the peak of the Byzantine Empire. The first volume is in two parts. The first examines the region in the Hellenistic period, when it was dominated by Celtic tribes who settled in the interior of Asia Minor in the first half of the third century B.C. The second covers the period of the Roman Empire and looks in detail at the changes brought about by imperial rule" -- Amazon.com.
Internationally acclaimed, bestelling author Byron Katie’s most anticipated work since Loving What Is We live in difficult times, leaving far too many of us suffering from anxiety and depression, fear and anger. In her new and most anticipated work since Loving What Is, beloved spiritual teacher Byron Katie provides a much-needed beacon of light, and a source of hope and joy. In A Mind at Home with Itself, Byron Katie illuminates one of the most profound ancient Buddhist texts, The Diamond Sutra (newly translated in these pages by Stephen Mitchell) to reveal the nature of the mind and to liberate us from painful thoughts, using her revolutionary system of self-inquiry called “The Work.” Byron Katie doesn’t merely describe the awakened mind; she empowers us to see it and feel it in action. At once startlingly fresh and powerfully enlightening, A Mind at Home with Itself offers us a transformative new perspective on life and death. In the midst of a normal American life, Byron Katie became increasingly depressed and over a ten-year period sank further into despair and suicidal thoughts. Then one morning in 1986 she woke up in a state of absolute joy, filled with the realization of how her own suffering had ended. The freedom of that realization has never left her. Its direct result, The Work, has helped millions of people all over the world to question their stressful thoughts and set themselves free from suffering.
This text centres on the narrator's spiritual growth. It tells of his quest for enlightenment and his search for the eternal questions - what God is, what love is, how we should live and how we can respond to evil. The book gives a profound and humourous insight into a wide variety of spiritual practices ranging from a broccoli smoking Jewish community through to a formidable tradition of Zen teachers. Tracing its lineage to the reverent irreverence of the Zen masters and the dialogues of Plato, it meets the reader at the crossroads of humour and profound wisdom.
The classic, in-depth history of psychoanalysis, presenting over a hundred years of thought and theories Sigmund Freud's concepts have become a part of our psychological vocabulary: unconscious thoughts and feelings, conflict, the meaning of dreams, the sensuality of childhood. But psychoanalytic thinking has undergone an enormous expansion and transformation since Freud's death in 1939. With Freud and Beyond, Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black make the full scope of twentieth century psychoanalytic thinking—from Harry Stack Sullivan to Jacques Lacan; D.W. Winnicott to Melanie Klein—available for the first time. Richly illustrated with case examples, this lively, jargon-free introduction makes modern psychoanalytic thought accessible at last.
If Mr. Mitchell gives an eloquent account of the effects of Job's poetry in his introduction, in the translation itself he does even better: he makes those effects come alive. Writing with three insistent beats to the line, and hammering home a succession of boldly defined images, he achieves a rare degree of vehemence and concentration." — John Cross, New York Times The Book of Job pulses with moral energy, outrage, and spiritual insight; it is nothing less than human suffering and the transcendence of it. Now, The Book of Job has been translated into English by the eminent translator and scholar Stephen Mitchell, whose versions of Rilke, Israeli poetry, and the Tao Te Ching have been widely praised. This is the first time ever that the Hebrew verse of Job has been translated into verse in any language, ancient or modern, and the result is a triumph.
“Byron Katie is one of the truly great and inspiring teachers of our time. I encourage everyone to immerse themselves in this phenomenal book.” –Dr. Wayne W. Dyer In her first two books, Loving What Is and I Need Your Love–Is That True? Byron Katie showed how suffering can be ended by questioning the stressful thoughts that create it. Now, in A Thousand Names for Joy, she encourages us to discover the freedom that lives on the other side of inquiry. Stephen Mitchell–the renowned translator of the Tao Te Ching–selected provocative excerpts from that ancient text as a stimulus for Katie to talk about the most essential issues that face us all: life and death, good and evil, love, work, and fulfillment. With her stories of total ease in all circumstances, Katie does more than describe the awakened mind; she lets you see it, feel it, in action.
Discover the truth hiding behind troubling thoughts with Byron Katie’s self-help classic. In 2003, Byron Katie first introduced the world to The Work with the publication of Loving What Is. Nearly twenty years later, Loving What Is continues to inspire people all over the world to do The Work; to listen to the answers they find inside themselves;and to open their minds to profound, spacious, and life-transforming insights. The Work is simply four questions that, when applied to a specific problem, enable you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light. Loving What Is shows you step by step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. In this revised edition, readers will enjoy seven new dialogues, or real examples of Katie doing The Work with people to discover the root cause of their suffering. You will observe people work their way through a broad range of human problems, learning freedom through the very thoughts that had caused their suffering—thoughts such as “my husband betrayed me” or “my mother doesn’t love me enough.” If you continue to do The Work, you may discover that the questioning flows into every aspect of your life, effortlessly undoing the stressful thoughts that keep you from experiencing peace. Loving What Is offers everything you need to learn and live this remarkable process, and to find happiness as what Katie calls “a lover of reality.”
0060172495 In this highly acclaimed translation, Stephen Mitchell conveys in English the simplicity, dignity and powerful earthiness of the original Hebrew. More than just interpreting it, he also separates stories that were combined by scribes centuries after they were written, explaining their sources and omitting all verses that are recognized as scribal additions. Like removing coat after coat of lacquer from a once-vibrant masterpiece, this allows readers to appreciate the clarity of the original tales. Genesis is an extraordinarily beautiful book that is accessible in a way that no other translation has ever been. It will shed new light on readers' understanding of this seminal work of sacred scripture.
When clearing out his mother's fl at Stephen discovers a tin of old photographs under her bed. Each image evokes a memory of childhood and we get to meet the people who inhabit those memories wayward friends and sensible friends, strict teachers and hopeless teachers, ugly girls and gorgeous girls, Aunts who are not Aunts and Uncles who are not Uncles and a grandfather who revels in the art of mischief. In this funny and sometimes moving novella Stephen Mitchell wonders whether our memories can really be relied upon to provide an accurate reconstruction of our childhood years and especially those of an ordinary child growing up in the North of England in the 1960s.
Ray D. Shosay is a Hollywood screenwriter who is living--or hiding out--in the Hotel Georges V in Paris where he intersects with characters of all sorts and opines on the issues of our time. His journal is a window on his world. Ray D. Shosay, if said quickly, rhythms with "rez-de-chaussee," which means ground floor in French. The author describes Ray as an oblivious savant and in addition to serving as an extraordinary carnet d'adresses, Ray's journal offers commentary on movies, language trends, politics and anything else that comes to Mr. Shosay's attention in a manner that would be familiar to fans of Terry Southern. "Ray is our man in Hollywood--in Paris!
The city of Pisidian Antioch was founded in the hellenistic period by the Seleucids, in what is now south-west Turkey. Under the emperor Augustus it became the most important Roman colony of the eastern empire. The city flourished until the sixth century AD. It has left dramatic and extensive ruins. This comprehensive and fully-illustrated study, a sequel to Mitchell's Cremna in Pisidia, is based on a new survey of the site. It also includes the results of the most recent Turkish field work as well as detailed information from the important but unpublished 1924 excavation by the University of Michigan.
A political satire wherein one very powerful Senator is able to turn the entire country upside-down so as to match the conditions of his own personal life.Stephen Mitchell's Ignorance is Bliss takes us into the myopic and inebriated world of Martin Bliss, a senior Senator and an important figure on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He comes from a privileged background—his father held sway over the Senate Ways and Means Committee—and Martin is striving to create his own legacy. Unfortunately, he will do just that!“Stephen Mitchell is America's answer to Martin Amis!”
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