Used price: $8.00
Collectible price: $13.99
Used price: $9.50
As a Chinese, I assure you that Tao Te Ching would be voted as one of the ten greatest book of our culture. It touches every part of our daily life and so the application of its principles on business/life/love is popular in the eastern world (similar to Sun Tzu's Art of War). Mitchell's translation is the best I read so far (though so little). Autry's intrepretation of it matches those of the mainstream Chinese and Japanese scholars.
So, if you buy in TQM, Theory Y/Z and self actualization kind of stuff, read this book and you will gain something. Otherwise, spend your money and time elsewhere.
Used price: $1.37
This book is amazing.. If you want tips, and hints, and behind the scene things this is the best place to get it! It takes you though the "world" telling you about places to eat, and what rides have lines when, and hints. This is a great book for those who have a family or travel alone. It will help you with planning out your trip. One thing that I thought was great was the hint in the books about the monorail! You'll have to get the book to see what I mean! But it's worth it!
They have lots of pictures, and lots of information. I HIGHLY suggest this book for disney fans, and personally everytime I get a new one. i can't wait to walk thru the turnstyle into the magic kingdom. I love that disney air!
thank you :)
Used price: $21.13
Zen is the ultimate psychology of self knowledge, and it's misleading to think that koan study helps achieve anything.
The reason I give the book five stars is also why I think the last reviewer is a bit off: Zen is NOT "the ultimate psychology of self knowledge" or anything else fitting so neatly into what we'd like it to be. Let go of "Zen," then what is this? Just this! What can you do?
Bring me the sound of the cicada, asks one of the koans. Seung Sahn might say, Put it all down, put down "psychology" and "self knowledge" and "Zen is supposed to be this," and bring me the sound of the cicada.
(And to clarify: I've never been a student of Seung Sahn's. Unfortunately.)
Winslow AZ, who wrote the extremely negative review, is right on one point --- these stories, questions, and commentaries can seem incomprehensible if you read them the way you'd read, say, a review on Amazon.com. Well, hey, I'm a mathematician and mathematics papers are incomprehensible if you read them that way too. So, no, this isn't a book for people wanting an introduction to Zen Buddhism, whether philosophical or practical, and it isn't an analytical text for students working toward their PhD's either.
What it is is the real thing, a contemporary snapshot of a living tradition, and that's its value. People practicing in the very particular tradition of the Kwan Um School of Zen refer to this book regularly, just as the Mumonkan and Blue Cliff Record (most or all of whose cases are incorporated here, but with different commentary) have been referred to regularly for over 1,000 years. Kong-ans resonate with some people and not with others; for those for whom they resonate they are invaluable. If you want a taste of the living tradition, whether as a practitioner or a scholar, check this book out.
Used price: $1.95
Collectible price: $5.95
List price: $14.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $4.99
Buy one from zShops for: $5.00
List price: $49.99 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $19.98
Collectible price: $34.40
Buy one from zShops for: $33.23
List price: $13.95 (that's 20% off!)
Used price: $2.15
Collectible price: $7.00
Buy one from zShops for: $2.90
Used price: $4.50
Buy one from zShops for: $6.41
What you're ordinarily _not_ getting is a straight-up translation of the source text; you're getting Mitchell's attempt to render the source text into a fine English poem that expresses the spiritual insights he wants it to express. (Examples: his excellent interpretive renderings of the Psalms and the Tao Te Ching. They are excellent interpretive renderings; they are _not_ translations.)
Even when the translation _is_ straightforward, he tends to chop the text to bits and just keep the parts he agrees with. (Examples: his translation of the book of Genesis, which includes the entire text but relegates the "spiritually suspect" parts to an appendix, and his rendering of the book of Job, which includes some terrific translation but omits the speech of Elihu and the poem in praise of wisdom.)
And now he's done the Bhagavad Gita. Has he translated it, or has he interpretively rendered it?
Well, the first point to make is that he _has_ included the entire text and limited himself to offering commentary on the parts he doesn't agree with. (Incidentally, I tend to disagree with the same parts and I understand that there have been Hindu scholars who have at least raised the same questions that Mitchell does.) This point alone means that Mitchell's Gita is a landmark: he hasn't chopped up the text in order to leave out the "spiritually inferior" portions.
So how good is his translation? Well, Mitchell says his own Sanskrit is "rudimentary," but that doesn't mean (as some reviewers seem to think) that he doesn't know any at all. (This is a bit different from his Tao Te Ching, in which he admits that he just doesn't read Chinese.) And this _is_ called a "new translation" rather than a "new interpretation."
But I don't know any Sanskrit at all, so I've just done some short comparisons with other translations. Based on spot-checks against the versions of Barbara Stoller Miller and Juan Mascaro, it looks to me as though Mitchell has stayed pretty close to the source. This is of course not an expert opinion of any kind and I'm prepared to be corrected by anyone who knows better. (And it may not even be much of a test, as Miller's translation in particular was one of the handful Mitchell consulted in preparing his own.)
Either way, what Mitchell is up to here is what he's up to nearly everywhere: he uses the traditional text as a medium to convey his own spiritual insights. And it's pretty clear from the get-go that he regards Lao-Tzu (i.e., _his_ Lao-Tzu) as spiritually superior to the author(s) of the Gita. Some readers may well agree with this evaluation (and I may be one of them; you guess). But all readers should be aware that Mitchell isn't trying to present a reverent discussion of the teachings of the Gita; he's sifting through it to see what parts of it measure up to his own Buddhist-Taoist-Jewish insights.
I am _not_ criticizing this enterprise; far from it. I tend to agree with many of Mitchell's insights, I really really really enjoy his poetic renderings, and on the whole I even admire his chutzpah (although in other books I've seen reason to criticize some of his scholarship). And in the present work he does, for example, raise (and to some extent answer) deep questions about the limits of nonviolence.
But, y'know, caveat emptor and all that. If you buy this book, buy it as Stephen Mitchell's work, not as an introduction to Hinduism through one of its central sacred texts. It's not really fair to describe this as a "boutique" Gita, but on the other hand it _is_ primarily a vehicle for Mitchell himself. I think that, like all of Mitchell's stuff, it's well worth reading and owning, but it depends on what you're looking for.
I highly recommend taking the time to write your own ceremony. It is such a wonderful time before marriage that you can spend together exploring deeply what marriage means to you and what kind of ceremony you want to celebrate your union with. It helps to have lots of poetry anthologies and books of poetry by your favorite poets. This book is great because it has so many poems about love and marriage. We used many poems from this book in our ceremony. We also used a lot of Rumi poems. We even combined a few Rumi poems to create a beautiful reading that felt personal to us. We began the ceremony singing a Sanskrit prayer that meant "May all beings be peaceful and happy". It was blissful. It was nice to have a ceremony that was personally very spiritual and combined many different religions. We also had two friends compose music to two of "The Dances of Universal Peace" using Indian instruments. During the ceremony we also planted a rose tree.
We always say our vows to each other because they are so beautiful, and on our anniversaries we read through our entire ceremony, and sing the songs.
"The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind I was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along."
-Rumi
(translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne)
Have Fun,
Nissa Vaidehi Howard