The ultimate challenge Eugen faces ends up being the smooth release of the bowstring and arrow without conscious intent, "like the ripe fruit falls from the tree", "like a baby's hand releases one object to grasp another", "like the bamboo leaf slowly bends under the weight of the snow, then releases the clump of snow without thought". Eugen, during a summer sabbatical, develops a "technique" that he believes will solve this problem and nearly gets himself thrown out of the program for "offending the Spirit of Zen". There is also an interesting account of an after-hours meeting where his teacher gives an amazing demonstration of quiet mastery in order to raise Eugen's morale and level of understanding.

I had read the book several times and decided to get the tapes to listen to while driving. Ralph Blum's sonorous voice is perfect for the reading and I enjoyed listening to the book as much or more than reading it. There is much that this little book has to offer and its message will live in your heart for a long time.

When the Year 1000 was drawing near, people took it as an omen when Halley's Comet streaked across the heavens. Did this portend Doomsday or the advent of the Messiah? Was Man marching inexorably into the dusk or the dawn? Another thousand years later, we still don't positively know the answer to that question.

The eminent historian, Eugen Weber, delivers his latest work, "Apocalypses", just in time to ponder our status on the brink of the new millennium and to give us insight into the hopes and fears of previous generations who found themselves hesitating before the looming gateway of a new era, weighing prophecies or confronted with phenomena consisting of "lamps of fire, angels, plagues, lightenings, thunderings, earthquakes, falling stars, fire, blood, hail, black sun and bloody moon". Weber writes: "When the world ends, it could be argued that all that ends is the world we know. The end of the world was really only the end of one world, not the end of time but of our time, not the annihilation of mankind but the end of a way of life and its replacement by another."

While some contemplated finales, optimists dreamed and wrote of their hopes for an enlightened, repentant world and the regeneration of the human race: "They speak, earth, ocean, air; I hear them say 'Awake, repent, 'ere we dissolve away!" Yet others faced the unknown and dire forebodings armed with their wit. According to Weber, when Pope Benedict XIV was informed that the AntiChrist had come and was now three years old, the pontiff quipped, "Then I shall leave the problem to my successor."

Eugen Weber must be the world's most fascinating conversationalist. One gets the impression, from reading "Apocalypses", that he has the entire saga of mankind stored in his marvel of a brain and can conjure up imagery, names, anecdotes and dates from it with the same fluency that some of us have when writing a chatty postcard home, describing an exciting day in a far-away locale. This is not to imply that, although Weber's style is urbane and witty, that "Apocalypses" is an easy read. It is not. Eugen Weber is never ponderous, but he makes it plain that he is first and foremost an historian and only secondarily a raconteur. Or perhaps thirdly, because Weber as philosopher is also very much a presence in the book. In fact, it is his own thoughts and comments that leave the most lingering impressions, reminding us that, while the deeds of Man are fleeting, it is his "death-defying thoughts", set down on paper, that are like the nacreous bits of shell that remain gleaming on the beach after the great tides of history have flooded and ebbed. For an academic, Eugen Weber is a very good writer, indeed.

How different our "fin de siecle" seems from bygone chronological milestones. No longer moved by superstition and too jaded for optimism, we await the Millennium with a kind of dull signation. Our popular heroes are all dead or aging and nobody has emerged to replace them. The close of the century seems characterized by vapidity, greed and a lack of concern for the health of the planet we call home. Could there be a more fitting commentary on the status quo than that our direst prophecy for the Year 2000 concerns the imminent failure of the Machine, upon which we have formed such a frightening dependency? Eugen Weber doesn't have an email address. Perhaps he never will. Intellectually speaking, his address is the universe, his understanding cosmic. Doubtless he would like to offer greater comfort, but the honest scholar can only counsel, while commenting on the recent trend toward apocalyptic films and literature: "Adversity is good for faith, and adversity is ever present. Ages of decadence always suggest an end; few ages have not struck their contemporaries by their decadence" and "We suffer and suffering is catastrophic, sometimes unbearable, sometimes final....We yearn for some explosive, extraordinary escape from the inescapable and, none forthcoming, we put our faith in an apocalyptic rupture whereby the inevitable is solved by the unbelievable...in the end, salvation from sin and evil--meaning anxiety, travail and pain."

Marianne Luban is a freelance writer living in Minnesota. Her short fiction collection, "The Samaritan Treasure", is published by Coffee House Press

The Sixth Meditation not only lays the foundations for the idea of a transcendental theory of method, ie. methods of the "how to" performing the phenomenological reduction of human cosciousness, but also plans to endevour into a phenomenology of phenomenology. Fink was to have written the so-called "Seventh Metaphysic", from which actual metaphysical renderings were to have grounded phenomenology as a metaphysics, as ontology - and hence as a truely accepted rational science. Before this could be completed the Nazi political movement came to power and Fink was exiled from Germany.

This dialectic masterpiece also has textual notations by Husserl contained in the Appendices at the end of the book where Husserl applies Finks groundings of the transcendental methodic. The Appendices discuss actual political extractions for phenomenology.......with such things as "the phenomenological community" Husserl reveals his interest for phenomenology as a globalized state of co-awakening human consciousness.

Here I will sample quotes from Part One of the book:

"Instead of inquiring into the being of the world, as does traditional "philosophy" dominated by the dogmatism of the natural attitude, or, where inquiry is not satisfied with that, instead of soaring up over the world "speculatively", we, in a truly "Copernican revolution", have broken through the confinenment of the natural attitude, as the horizon of all our human possibilities for acting and theorizing, and have thrust forward into the dimension of origin for all being, into the constituitive source of the world, into the sphere of transcendental subjectivity"

"The phenomenological system itself as the architectonic of transcendental philosophy cannot be drawn up ahead of time, but is only to be obtained from the "matters themselves" by passing through concrete phenomenological work"

"transforming himself through the deepest self-reflection, man transcends himself and his natural human being in the world, by producing the transcendental onlooker, who as such, does not go along with the belief in the world, with the theses on being held by the world-experiencing human"

"In the phenomenological reduction there occurs the "awakening" of the transcendental constitution of the world, and the process of coming to transcendental self-consciousness is accomplished. In and by the thematizing of the phenomenological onlooker constituitive cosmogony comes to itself, steps out of darkness and "being-outside-itself" into the luminosity of transcendental "being-for-itself""

What is interesting to note in the development of phenomenology is the effect Heideggers ontology in Being and Time has had on Husserls writtings. For the pressence of a concern for being, and justifications for pure phenomenology, justifications for the subordination of phenomenology over hermeneutic ontology is made clear in Finks book. Both the language and the intent behind the dialectic has changed, for Husserls Cartesian Meditations and this Sixth Meditation by Fink. For me, this book is the cullmination of all phenomenological efforts, the ressolution of the phenomenological movements place in history and the foundation for future institutions of evolutionary thought-science.

Bruzinas translation of Finks manuscript is courageously correct, nothing in this translation has been compromised or dummied down. Not only that but the fonting, bracketing, and italics used complement the cryptic elegance of the text. I reccomend this publication to anyone who seeks the deepest truths and has a likeing for the most advanced systems of knowledge.

I ordered "The Heraclitus Seminar", perhaps naively, in order to gain a better understanding of Heraclitus and his Metaphysics--I came away from the ordeal completely dumbfounded. This is partially my own fault--I knew going in that Heidegger makes for difficult reading, and that his precipitous works are, almost without exception, extremely abstruse. As such, his books require great dedication and patience. This, I was prepared for. However, I came to an impasse with the book almost immediately. This resulted from the multitude of passages that were written, within the body of the text, in Attic Greek--with *no* translations. (no kidding)

This one is better left for the later grad students and/or their profs--that is, unless you happen to be an extremely patient novice, who can read Greek without a lexicon, and who has a penchant for Heideggarian analysis of the pre-Socratics.

This brief book (81 pages) can be read in an hour or two, but it has become a classic in the literature about Zen, the inspiration for "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and other works. In the 1950s, German philosopher Eugen Herrigel traveled to Japan, studied under Buddhist monks, and wrote about the experience of a Westerner trying to comprehend Zen Buddhism.

Herrigel detailed his archery training at the hands of Buddhist monks, of not being allowed to draw a bow for months and months, and finally, in a scene worthy of a Hollywood movie, of being shown a demonstration of incredible archery skill by a monk in the dead of night.

There are many ways one may go from this book: One of the main themes of Zen in the Art of Archery is "art becoming artless", which is also at the core of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's bestselling study of creativity in "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience".

Someone who is interested in the spiritual qualities that (sometimes) come with the practice of martial arts might like to read "Iron and Silk" by Mark Salzman - don't expect anything holy or warrior-like, though.

Zen-Buddhism is covered in countless books. One of my favorites is Alan Watts's "The Spirit of Zen". A rather unorthodox, funny, skeptic and disrespectful look at Zen Buddhism can be gained from Janwillem van de Wetering's trilogy "The Empty Mirror" (my favorite of the three), "A Glimpse of Nothingness", and "Afterzen".

1) de hecho = in fact (cannot be translated literally)
2) sin embargo = however (cannot be translated literally)
3) a primera vista= at first sight (common, everyday expression. Easy to understand)
4) dar la lata = to make a nuisance of oneself ( cannot be translated word for word, common expression)
5) tener mala pata= to have bad luck (common everyday expression)

This book not only contains idioms but everyday short frases that sometimes are hard to express correctly if one has not learned the correct way or has not heard it used prior. An example of this would be #1 and #2 above. These types of short frases are important because they are of everyday usage and the more one knows the more authentic the Spanish will sound. If you are looking to enrich your Spanish regardless of your current level, this book will definitely be of great help and will broaden your overall knowledge and understanding of the language.

Part of his story was that he originally was going to convert to Christianity as a result of a discussion he had with his friend Eugen Rosenstock. However, after attending a Jewish holy day ceremony, he dove into his then minimal Jewish faith with great enthusiasm. After that, he and Rosenstock exchanged letters that give a fascinating account of Rosensweig's ideas. He has done some deep thinking with regard to how the Church and Jews can coexist, and how they can view each other. He has appropriated "the stubbornness of the Jews" as a Jewish theology of pride in the eternal Jew who refuses to be bent by culture. As a Christian, there is much for me to learn about how my own faith has often been co-opted by culture.

Sometimes this dialogue is hard to follow, but if you stay with it to the end, you are rewarded with some great nuggets of inspiration and thought. And it is fascinating to see how Rosensweig has developed his thoughts. A wonderful book for anyone who is serious about Jewish and Christina dialogue.

Unfortunately, as happens with many books I like, it is not in publication anymore. Go to your local library. You will not be disappointed!