ALBERT LOW

Éste es un libro enormemente claro, didáctico y orientado hacia la práctica. Con todo, su autor no hace concesiones cómodas ni promesas etéreas. El camino del Zen requiere una paradójica fuerza de voluntad, precisamente para ir más allá de la voluntad. El libro ofrece instrucciones concisas, fáciles de entender, y un programa paso a paso para incorporar el Zen a la vida cotidiana.

Este es el relato de un monje. Cuenta por qué se convirtió en monje, los sufrimientos que padeció y su gran iluminación. Aunque este monje vivió hace dos mil quinientos años, este relato no es una simple historia. De serlo, careceria de relevancia para todo el que se ve preso de la mas vital de las preguntas.Pero contemosla y veamos por que es mucho mas que la simple historia de un hombre que murio hace mucho tiempo.Asi comienza Conocete a ti mismo, una hermosa coleccion de relatos y enseñanzas intimamente relacionados con el zen. Aunque la tematica de los textos es de los mas variada, todos ellos apuntan a intereses muy concretos en nuestras vidas y revelan la profunda vision del autor.

Because words can no more hold the truth than a net can hold water, we use koans. Koans are sayings, or doings, of Zen masters, the patriarchs and Buddha. Take for example the koan: The Sound of One Hand clapping. In its entirety it reads: "You know the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand clapping?" The obvious, intellectual answer is, No sound at all! But then what is this No sound? In other words, is it just silence?If one is to work on this koan, indeed on any koan, one must demonstrate its meaning. Explanatory words - such as "the two hands represent duality, the one hand is unity" or "the sound of one hand is the sound of the true self" - are useless. A teacher of Zen would reject them out of hand, all the while demanding a real response. Words talk about true nature and, as it were, hold it at arms length. One must become the sound of one hand to be able to give a real response, and in this way see for oneself that the sound of one hand is the full expression of the masters and ones own awakened state.

Have you reached a point in your life where the old patterns and habits just dont work anymore?Perhaps it is just a discomfort that you feel, an itch you cannot scratch. Life just doesnt have that same zest it once did. You cannot find satisfaction no matter what you try.Or perhaps life has life presented you with a situation where you are cornered? No matter how you struggle, you cannot go forward and you cannot go backward. Your wife or your husband has just walk out the door leaving you with your life shattered in pieces on the floor. Or the company you have invested the best years of your life has just pulled the plug leaving you to watch your life go down the drain. For years and years, brick by brick, you had painstakingly built your life with all its supports and structures only to watch it collapse like a house of cards.For those of you who are simply bored you could go on another amazing holiday or buy that new car that makes your heart quicken.And for those of you with you life shattered in small bits around you, you could start that painful business of rebuilding your life ... only making sure this time it is fortified!But the holiday comes to an end, the car loses its lovely new smell and no matter how fortified you build your new life you will always be aware that if one single thing is taken away it could all simply collapse around you again.....What if there is a way through life that is always fresh and new? A way through life that is not not dependent on anyone or anything out there?Living with Yourself takes you on a voyage of discovery. A discovery of your own self.Albert Low is not content simply with explaining Zen, he invites you to put into practice its benefits. He uses the words of Descartes, "I think, therefore I am," as a springboard to a deeper pool of wisdom to be found in Zen Buddhism. He not only reveals the roots of Zen spirituality, but also explores the origin of suffering, its consequences and the way beyond suffering. Written with clarity, he uses Christian, Sufi and Hindu sources as well as Zen Buddhist. By so doing, he explains Zen in Western terms, making it accessible both in theory and in practice.

The most familiar of all the sutras, the Heart Sutra, is chanted regularly in Zen monasteries. Albert Low uses his vast experience, coming from years of practice and teaching, to guide the reader through the difficult terrain of the Sutra using non-technical language, many stories and references to Zen koans. He encourages the reader to use the mind in a new creative to see the Sutras message.

Science has consistently rejected subjective data in science. Undoubtedly the main reason for this is that most scientists consider it to be unreliable and difficult to verify. Our immediate experience is, indeed, often incomplete, distorted, or simply false. Another important reason for rejecting subjective data is the scientists unconditional commitment to materialism and this automatically precludes the possibility of a consciousness distinct from matter. Most scientists, therefore, believe that third person, objective data, available to all is the only reliable source of data. Inner observation of our own experience is unacceptable because it cannot be subjected to similar public scrutiny and manipulation.Yet, what is most important, but invariably overlooked, is not what I am conscious of, but that I am conscious. The only way this can be verified or even considered is by "first person" enquiry. A way by which first person enquiry can be established is by koan practice developed by Chan Buddhists in China during the Tang dynasty (600-900 CE.)In what follows, I explore ways to allay scientific suspicion towards subjective accounts, and show how koan study is used as first person scientific inquiry.

"What More Could You Want?" Traduction et préface de Monique Dumont

The world faces a crisis. Band-aids and patchwork technical solutions are not enough to get us through. Overpopulation, global warming, the clash of cultures and an unsteady financial climate are just some of the causes. We do not face technical, economic or social problems: We face dilemmas, and dilemmas demand creative solutions. Let us think boldly and creatively about the dilemmas that we face, and a new society can be created: a society in which human beings, and not profit, are the central concern.Let us rid ourselves of the myth that a corporations responsibility is simply to the stockholder. Let us see a corporation in an entirely new way: as a multidimensional whole, with making a profit but one of those dimensions. As a multidimensional whole, it is naturally creative and serves society, not just the stockholder.Creativity, and the dilemmas arising in a work situation that call for creative solutions, are themes that run through this book.With a new perception, a fundamental change of reasoning and behaviour is possible. A corporation is the product of society, one of the ways society operates. As such, it should not be owned by a few members of that society.

Albert Low, teacher and director at the Montreal Zen Center and dharma heir of Roshi Philip Kapleau, provides an engaging collection of talks, stories and commentaries on Zen. Though the entries range from dharma talks on koans to discussions on Buddhism and Christianity, they all address concrete concerns of our lives and reveal the authors profound insights.

A koan is a saying by a Zen master, the most famous being "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Seemingly incomprehensible, a koan is actually an invitation to think in a new way, a tool to startle the consciousness into enlightenment. Drawing on the views of diverse thinkers from Buddha, to T.S. Eliot to explain the essential concepts of Zen Buddhism, this book is thought provoking reading.

Charles Darwin has now taken his place as one of the great scientific innovators of all time and has changed for ever the way we see ourselves, and our place in the universe. Even those who hold to the biblical account of creation and see Darwins theory as a profound error can no longer take for granted that their beliefs are beyond question. Yet, the debate between the Creationists and the neo-Darwinians continues in full fury. One outcome of this has been to see Darwins theory become entrenched as a dogma, defended by evangelical apologists, and no longer a reasonable account of how human beings have evolved from earlier life forms.

"Creating Consciousness: A Study of Consciousness, Creativity, Evolution, and Violence" is a spiritual & intellectual treasure from Zen Master Albert Low. Creating Consciousness is Lows profound discussion of the philosophical, religious, and scientific problem of consciousness in relation to evolution, creativity, spirituality, and violence. Low weaves together fresh discoveries from contemporary thinkers with perennial wisdom from premodern religious sources while providing a highly original discussion of human nature. Lows main thesis is that each individual is a divided reality. We are simultaneously at the center (unified self) and the periphery (many dimensions of self). The fact that we are one and yet divided leads to Lows discussion of ambiguity, creative tension, and violence as integral to human existence.

"Restoring Meaning: Evolution Revisited" offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins: random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we cant otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities our capacity for love, our appreciation of beauty, our altruistic capability, our creativity and intelligence have come into being and evolved.How we think about our origin matters: if we think we are machines living among other machines, we will act accordingly. By showing evolution as a creative and intelligent process with its own inherent logic, "Restoring Meaning: Evolution Revisited" resolves the dilemma of how to have, at the same time, both truth and ethics. Instead of starting in an imagined remote and uncertain past and moving to the present, this book starts at the certain and immediate present and works back. That consciousness, creativity, and intelligence exist is certain. The question is: how can these have evolved?

The basic message of all the Mahayana Buddhist sutras is awakening - what the Zen teacher Bassui called "seeing the wordless sutra." Zen and the Sutras is an accessible study of the major Mahayana sutras as manuals for the practice of Zen. Lows insights and conclusions about spirituality and humanity will both illuminate and inspire, in the way of Zen, in the search for spiritual awakening.

Albert Lows book shows how the religious impulse is expressed by two entirely different kinds of religions: religion as a set of beliefs centered on a unique, dynamic center such as Christ, Mohammed or Buddha, and religion as a quest. Dr Albert Low is the teacher at the Montreal Zen Center and an internationally acclaimed author.

Hakuin Zenji is one of Japans most celebrated Zen masters. Tradition tells us that he single-handedly revived Rinzai Zen in Japan. He was an artist, calligrapher and writer, as well as being a Zen master. He said that writing is verbal prajna and his writings are vigorous, courageous, and always to the point. The Chant in Praise of Zazen, Zazen Wasan, is justifiably one of his best-known works.

Kensho is the Zen experience of waking up to ones own true natureof understanding oneself to be not different from the Buddha-nature that pervades all existence. The Japanese Zen Master Hakuin (16891769) considered the experience to be essential. In his autobiography he says: "Anyone who would call himself a member of the Zen family must first achieve kensho-realization of the Buddhas way. If a person who has not achieved kensho says he is a follower of Zen, he is an outrageous fraud. A swindler pure and simple."Hakuins short text on kensho, "Four Ways of Knowing of an Awakened Person," is a little-known Zen classic. The "four ways" he describes include the way of knowing of the Great Perfect Mirror, the way of knowing equality, the way of knowing by differentiation, and the way of the perfection of action. Rather than simply being methods for "checking" for enlightenment in oneself, these ways ultimately exemplify Zen practice. Albert Low has provided careful, line-by-line commentary for the text that illuminates its profound wisdom and makes it an inspiration for deeper spiritual practice.