This book was invaluable to my husband and I when we planned our wedding in the year 2000, though you will need other sources as well. I was finishing up college and he had begun his graduate program, so we were already extremely busy. With the help of this book we were able to write our entire wedding ceremony ourselves. I didn't have much experience with weddings, and I didn't know anything about the usual structure or components of a wedding ceremony. In the back of this book are many wedding ceremony examples for different religions or for a non-religious ceremony.

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

Lots of wonderful readings for anyone planning a wedding, particularly nonsecular readings. During my own wedding planning, I have not found another source for readings so comprehensive with so many beautiful pieces. Shakespeare, the Bible, and modern poets of many different nationalities are all represented, among many others. If you're looking for passages about love, commitment, and/or marriage, this book has something for everyone's taste. It also contains sample ceremonies for different styles of weddings, some of which are more creative than you will find in any "wedding planning" book. If you are planning a wedding ceremony that is very personalized to you both, or you aren't interested in having a "traditional" ceremony and want to write your own, check out this book for inspiration. You will fall in love with some of the passages.

If I ever hear "Love is patient, love is kind" or "Let me not to a marriage of true minds admit impediments" read at a wedding again, it'll be far too soon. The sentiments are nice, but those texts are so incredibly cliche for weddings! Luckily, this book exists to save you from tired & trite wedding readings. "Into the Garden" has tons of non-religious poetry & prose on the subject of marriage & love, & even 1 or 2 unique biblical passages. This is the single best wedding-related book I've bought -- it really helped make our ceremony unique & meaningful to us (& not like those cookie-cutter ceremonies put together by bored ministers)!

Jon Slavet, the CEO of Guru.com, gave me this book. Though the book was interested and spiritual, I did not find it particularly appealing. Even though the book is quite short, I could not finish it. This book is good for people who like books that accent the work/life balance (of which I admit that I have none).

I could see some that might dismiss it as just a collection of catchy phrases, trendy euphemisms, and anecdotal and unscientific blathering. But I felt that this book described the kind of management style I will try to emulate in my life. Instead of 'creating' the environment through sheer force of will and a desire for control and domination, it focuses on letting order create itself organically. I loved the detached but focused approach the book describes. Short little passages made this book something I picked up from time to time and really thought about the different passages. While the Taoism is not something I accept completely, learning to appreciate the gentle, detached, and innate wisdom of things was something I enjoyed thinking about. The many descriptions of how NOT to do things were the so close to experiences I have had in with bad management that I found myself totally engrossed in this book. The solutions given were so logically and eloquently presented that I could not help but take the words in with a deep sense of satisfaction. This book was a source of confirmation for me. For so long I have had so many bad managers, and seen so many bad practices in organizations, that I was wondering if I was just a complainer. But this book was right with my experiences. It described things so purely for me that I felt justified and inspired to continue in my path as I head off to business school and enter the world of management more on the other side of things. In any event, as I wrote above, this book captured the kind of management style I want to cultivate more than any of all the management books and articles I've read and I recommend it highly. I will keep this book on my desk for as long as it holds together.

I should be the eighth person who wrote a review for this book. The seven reviewers before me had really extreme opinion on it. Five 5 stars and two 1 star. You seldom find that on Amazon. Anyway, I read and found all of them honest and personal/subjective account of the reviewers' perception/experience.

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.

My family and I recently had a 10 day visit to Orlando and I ran out and bought "Walt Disney World with Kids 2000", "The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2000", and Birnbaum's. I read them all from cover to cover, made lots of calls and now consider myself to be an expert on the subject of how to cram the best stuff into the best days for your florida trip. After reading "The Unnoficial Guide", Birnbaum's book was a big dissapointment. His book did not give half of the information that "The Unofficial Guide" gave. About the only good thing I can say is it does make a nice souvineer book, but If you are like me and want as much info on every subject you can think of smashed into your brain, get "The Unofficial Guide". We are going back again next February and I won't waste my time or money on anything but.

My fiance and I went to Walt Disney World last year for the first time together (it was also the first time for him). We found the Birnbaum book to be the best, we also bought The Unofficial Guide but the Birnbaum book was the book we brought with us to Florida. The phone numbers, rates and the "Great meals and good times" sections are invaluable! We are going to Walt Disney World for our honeymoon next year and I can't wait to buy the 2001 edition!

In terms of sheer facts, this book has them all. What is missing is any sense of what attractions are best for what age kid or any tips on how to manage your times in the park. Since the guide is official, the idea is that everything is perfect. I love Disney World - and agree it's a great family vacation place - but I could have used more guidance and fewer factoids.

After reading this book it was clear that koans are not a useful practice for pursuing the truth. The author lists numerous koans, and then gives some ludricrous explanations in the form of pretend wisdom based on his view of the doctrine of Buddhism. Daily life will give a Zen student all the koans needed to pursue ultimate truth. Studying koans only helps fill a student's head with more fake "knowledge".
Zen is the ultimate psychology of self knowledge, and it's misleading to think that koan study helps achieve anything.

It's clear that the last reviewer has never actually practiced with koans, which is all this book asks of you -- to practice. Perhaps "the author [seems to give] ludicrous explanations" because, as the author writes, One action is better than 10,000 sutras. In other words, this isn't a book to read in the same way that you'd read the newspaper, & you either agree or disagree with the author (like maybe reading about a jockey and deciding you hate riding horses -- when you've never even seen a horse). Plus here, essentially, there is no author. To put it another way: YOU'RE the author.

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.)

There are three classic collections of kong-ans (the Korean word; Japanese is koans, Chinese is kung-ans) from ancient China: the Mumonkan, the Blue Cliff record, and (less known) the Book of Serenity. They follow the same basic form: the kong-an (the word means public case, and it's generally a very short story, e.g.: "A monk asked Joju, does a dog have Buddha nature? Joju answered Mu.") is presented, followed by commentary. In the Mumonkan and the Blue Cliff record the commentary is by the book's compiler; in the Book of Serenity you get a grab bag of comments by various teachers. This book is a contemporary representation of that tradition, presenting a large number of classic kong-ans from the Korean tradition, as well as kong-ans based on poems or fragments of poems (e.g., there's a series of kong-ans from the Tao Te Ching) and derived from other traditions (including the Christian tradition). Each kong-an is followed by a question or series of questions, and then by a short commentary. (Historical note: Today we tend to identify the kong-an with the question, but traditionally it's the basic situation that's the kong-an.)

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.

I teach your good book in Tanriz university. But I haven't the disk which includes the files of book. So I appreciate it if you could send me the programming file which are inside the book. Regards Sajjad Fekri

One of great book to learned C. I highly recommended

Mitchel Gant, the harried but heroic aviator of Craig Thomas' cold war techno-thrillers "Firefox" "Firefox Down!" and "Winterhawk" is back. While Gant, like the technothriller genre, seem out-of-place in the 1990's, author Craig Thomas knows well enough not to try stretching outdated ideas. Where once he faced sinister Russians and high-tech fighter planes, Gant is now on the run from Aero UK, a consortium of evil MBA's who succeed by literally crashing the competition. No longer with the CIA, Gant now investigates crashes for the FAA, poring over the ruins of airliners nowhere near as exotic as the Firefox. While investigating the crash of an Aero UK competitor, Gant is pulled into a web of corporate deceit not unlike the power-plays of the cold war, and easily as deadly. With billions at stake, Aero UK will stop at nothing to prevent Gant from revealing its role in the saboutage. Though corporations replace the KGB and the Vance 494 airliner seems a far cry from the MiG-31, Thomas pulls it off, producing a gripping novel, with his trademark prose, terse and fast paced lines written as if the author was in the middle of Tae Bo. Thomas' detailing of Gant's first flight in the Vance jet conveys the gravity and fluidity of flight in ways no author-pilot has been willing or able to approach. Still, "War" is not quite up to the earlier Thomas epics. Its fast pace only highlights how slim a book it is and Thomas doesn't give "War" the wide scope of say "Winterhawk". There is no superweapon slowly bearing down on millions, no seemingly unreachable border, nothing to really convey tension. And there isn't enough of Gant. The nominal hero, Gant is only one of several players, one whom Thomas seems almost reluctant to bring out. "A Different War" is only one of Thomas' latest attempts to say goodbye to the kinds of books he wrote in the 1980's. I just wish he wasn't so eager to do so.

This is quite a beautiful journal. Reproductions of ancient Chinese art, quotes from the Tao Te Ching, hardcover stitched binding, open unlined pages, with a brief introduction to the Tao Te Ching from Stephen Mitchell that starts the book.

Way too superficial for such a fat book. I don't understand the authors' refusal to use UML. They only use it to illustrate the few design patterns they cover. But my favorite chapter is 14 where they discuss databases. After a micro-blurb on what JDBC is, the authors tell us that a description of using that interface is out of scope of the book. They then proceed to teach us all about relational DB concepts, the building of E-R diagrams, and all about normalization. Somehow, they think that these things are within the scope of OO Design in Java.

This is a witty, well-organized, thorougly researched and informative work. Not only do the authors do an excellent job of presenting the concepts of software design using solid OO techniques, their introduction to Java (in a chapter only somewhat facetiously titled "Teach Yourself Java in 21 Minutes") is almost certainly the most concise and understandable introduction to the language that I've seen.

Every chapter is focused and the flow of material is really excellent. I found myself, as someone who has had years of OO design and development experience, nodding my head repeatedly. And the end of each chapter contains a quiz, some suggested exercises, and a section on where to go for more depth on the subjects covered. As a result, this book would be outstanding for a college-level course or an informal workshop of Java developers who want to learn serious OO design and analysis.

I've been involved with OO Design for over 10 years, and thought I knew it all. This book is more than an excellent introduction to methodology for novice programmers - it's also an excellent reference for how to apply patterns in the real world using Java. This book packs an amazing amount of clear and concise material into a surprisingly cheap package. I'm sorry to say, I paid full price for it - and it was still a bargain. Everything from UML to Beans to RMI to Web development. Great book.

This book has a few good quotes, but alot of junk too. The Christian stuff is mostly mushy pulp, and the selections from Buddha are pretty superficial compared to the rest of what he supposedly said. There are a few good talks from Zen Masters, but only a few. I wouldn't recommend it. The wisdom in this book doesn't compare to other books of a similar nature, and you can probably pick this one up at a used book store dirt cheap. If you do find it there, though, save it for someone who is a near hopeless materialist. It might help them out abit. Other than that, save your money and buy a copy of the Tao Teh Ching, or Kahl Gibran or a book of pithy quotes.

A book that had potential--but missed the mark. There are a few jems inside but over all there are much better compilations out there...so just skip this one.

Now here is a book that will keep you pondering about the ultimate meaning of life itself - it is a compilation that extols the spiritual life. In its pages you will find the writings of the greatest spiritual luminaries, who have graced this world with words of immortal bliss. It brings together the essence of the minds of the mystic visionaries, and it makes one feel that we are all brothers and sisters in truth. No matter what your spiritual practice, preference, or inclination, this book has much to offer its readers.

One of the things that irritated me about his particular "translation" was the fact that Mitchell admits in the book that he has a knowledge of only "rudimentary Sanskrit". If this is true, then I cannot have much faith in his "tranlsation". Still, to anyone who has read any of the other recent translations, there will be little of surprise here. Although Mitchell may not know Sanskrit, he apparently has relied on someone who does in order to get this "translation of a translation". One of the things that he mentions in this book that I agree with is that the first 12 chapers of the Gita and the last 6 chapters were written by different authors. In the first two thirds of the book, we see a kind, loving Krishna accepting all who try to reach him in any way they are able . . . even the sinful are seen as having a divine spark at their heart. This seems more in keeping with the earlier, Upanishadic tradition of advaita. The latter part of the book seems to have been written by some Samkhya philosopher bent upon classifyng everything according to the doctrine of the three Gunas. The latter part of the book is boring, repetitive, and seems to be on a considerably lower level than the rest of the book. Instead of the universal Krishna, we now have the angry god casting down the "evil" men again and again into infamy and who regards certain people as inherently demonic -- a stark contrast form the beginning chapters. Also of not is Gandhi's essay of Ahimsa and his view of how the Gita does not actually condone violence, but makes use of a war in order to present its message more clearly. Gandhi is not totally convincing in this, but it does provide a good counterpoint to those who use it as an excuse for violence and oppression in the name of god. Mitchell aslo quotes Thoreau in mentioning that Krishna's exhortations of Arjuna to fight are usually illogical and inconvincing. Although not a scholarly work, the introductory and concluding commentary do bring up some important points.

I really like Stephen Mitchell's work, but it's important to know what you're getting.

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.

First of all this is a beautiful book. The design by Barbara Sturman in which the text is presented in a handsome wine/purple font set in wide margins with the chapter titles in a contemporary font of soft vermillion suggests reverence for the Gita while hinting of a twenty-first century Western appreciation. There is a ribbon sown into the binder for keeping your place.

Second, the emphasis is on the text of the Gita itself garlanded by Mitchell's brief introduction and his "About the Translation" and a most appropriate and valuable appendix, "The Message of the Gita" by Mohandas K. Gandhi from his Collected Works.

Third, there is the translation itself, which is poetic and easily accessible to the contemporary reader without diluting the sacred essence of this great work of spirituality. Mitchell, who has had extensive experience rendering poetic and spiritual works into English, including a much-admired translation of the Tao Te Ching, worked hard at fusing "the dignity of formal verse" into a "sound like natural speech" (p. 32). Rather than go through torturous artificialities in trying to fit all of the text into metric lines, Mitchell has chosen to present some of the Gita in prose. Thus the opening chapter, which he calls "Arjuna's Despair," in which the scene is set and the participants identified, is gracefully told in prose, as is the introduction of the second chapter until Krishna speaks. The effect is beautiful, since it highlights the importance of what Krishna is about to say in a speech that really begins the poem and the teaching. (Shakespeare used this technique.)

Mitchell has solved the problem of the word "yoga," a long time bugaboo for English translators of the Gita, by sometimes using "yoga" and sometimes using "discipline." I certainty appreciate his discretion, having been annoyed for years by those translators who use only "discipline," a word that in many instances misleads the reader and muddies the text with exactly the wrong meaning and connotation. Restricting himself to the word "discipline" alone, as Mitchell explains, "would be an impoverishment." He adds, "how could one expect the reader to keep a straight face at the image of Krishna as the ?" (p. 33). Krishna is indeed the Lord of Yoga.

Mitchell does not attempt to translate some other terms, like "guna," because, "Attempts to find English equivalents...have been uniformly unsuccessful and confuse more than they clarify" (p. 33). Anyone versed in yoga knows that the gunas--sattva, rajas, and tamas--represent something close to an entire philosophy and cannot be understood without some study. The usual rendering as "qualities" or "strands" is tolerable, but, as Mitchell indicates, impoverished, and sometimes leads to a misrepresentation of the text. (See especially 13.21 and compare it with other translations and to the gloss of Sankara, which can be found in the translation by Swami Nikhilanada (1979) published by the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, and elsewhere.) However not all scholars agree with this. Kees Bolle in his translation (1979), published by the University of California Press, insists that "words like , , and must be translated" (p. 226). His concluding essay, "On Translating the Bhagavadgita" is a sharp, candid, and entertaining discussion of some of the problems that translators face.

Where Mitchell runs afoul of some readers is in his worldly attitude toward the Gita as revealed in the introduction, where he uses a story by Borges and a reminiscence by Robert J. Oppenheimer to make a couple of points. He also assumes a somewhat Taoist position. To those not conversant with the Tao Te Ching, Mitchell's statement on page 30, "The healthiest way to begin reading and absorbing a text like the Bhagavad Gita is to understand that ultimately it has nothing to teach," is definitely off-putting. To me Mitchell's position is not a detriment and indeed the only proper stance for a translator is secular. The Gita is a sacred work to Hindus and yogis and others, but to people who practice other religions and who have been raised in other traditions, the Gita, while a great poetic and spiritual work, has to take its place alongside the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, the Koran and other religious works. To others, the Gita is, as it was to T.S. Eliot, simply a great philosophical poem. (Eliot considered it second to Dante's the Divine Comedy.)

Mitchell may also startle some uncritical readers of the Gita with his argument in a footnote on pages 200-202 that the last six chapters are not of the same quality as chapters 1-12. He sees a difference in attitude and finds the last six chapters "much inferior...both poetically and spiritually." I tend to agree, but all venerable religious works are uneven and contain different voices. It is also true that the Gita is repetitious to some extent (although that is not necessarily to its disadvantage as a didactic scripture), and even seemingly contradictory. I believe this is an unavoidable consequence of being complex and of having been passed down through many generations both before and after it was written down.

To those who might find Mitchell not completely qualified to bring yet another translation of the Gita into the English-speaking world because, as he admits on page 30, his "knowledge of Sanskrit is rudimentary," I can only say, his is a fine tradition. I am thinking of the poet W. B. Yeats, who also without much Sanskrit, but with the help of Shree Purohit Swami, wrote a beautiful translation of The Ten Principal Upanishads (1937), and of Christopher Isherwood, also without much Sanskrit, but with the help of Swami Prabhavananda, published a graceful rendition of the Gita (1944).

Bottom line: this is a beautiful and valuable book that would enhance anyone's library, and I recommend it highly.