Books

CROSSINGS ON A BRIDGE OF LIGHT is a tale of boundless compassion as it inspires the journey through the joys and sorrows of life and death. Tibet’s great warrior hero, Gesar of Ling discovers that his mother has lost her way and fallen into the torments of hell. Riding his magic horse, the primordial power of mind itself, he then travels though all the hallucinations of existence to liberate her. His journey reaches its apex in four visions of the enlightened rulers of the Kingdom of Shambhala. Thus he establishes a path of awakening for all beings. Gesar’s inner journey, his encounters with a panoply of beings embodying the spontaneous presence of the awakened state, enable him to heal the doubts and divisions that have come to threaten his kingdom. This tale of how the vision of an enlightened society can be realized on this earth has inspired people for many centuries; it is equally powerful today.

THE BRILLIANCE OF NAKED MIND tells of the Secret Visions of The Legendary Hero, GESAR, KING OF LING.

These are Visions, Songs and Prayers that emerge from thte chaos of battle and invoke the timeless lineage of enlightened society.

Here are stories of TELOPA, living embodiment of transmission and lineage;
KUKKURIPA, embodiment of compassion beyond concept;
MEHKHALA and KANKHALA who embody the union of prajna and devotion; and KING INDRABHUTI, who unites secular and spiritual paths as the exemplar of en enlightened ruler.

The follow biographies of all 32 rulers and RIGDENS of THE KINGDOM OF SHAMBHALA. Each manifests directly, spontaneously an aspect of the brilliance of naked mind.

This fascinating historical novel brings to life the Chinese court of Zhu Di, the Yong Le Emperor, who reigned from 1403-1424 and made China a world power. The story is narrated by the fictional eunuch Ma Yun, who served in the emperor’s court. Replete with military campaigns, religious ceremonies and the philosophical foundation that informs the Emperor’s decisions through times good and bad, Journey of the North Star will appeal to readers interested in Eastern religions, history, philosophy and the political outlook that still influences China today.

The Gesar epic encompasses a vast range of ancient Central Asian cultural and spiritual traditions. At its center, Gesar, King of Ling battles tirelessly in a world riven by greed, confusion, fear, and religious ambition to open pathways to an enlightened society. The Warrior Song of King Gesar follows the unbroken heritage of that warrior tradition and presents the saga of Gesar’s life, from the hardships of his youth through his great battles against the demonic enemies of the four directions.

This ever evolving epic tradition continues to inspire people in diverse societies by showing that, despite failures, an unsparing spiritual journey is integral to a secular life and that, despite defeats, such a quest is inseparable from working towards true social harmony.

The Venerable Tulku Thondup’s introduction is uniquely valuable for its profound scholarship and contains the only account in English of King Gesar’s mind teachings.

The first English translation of the novel awarded the 2000 Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie Française

A Terrace in Rome describes the tormented life of Geoffroy Meaume, a 17th-century engraver of encrypted shadows and erotic prints. After a passionate affair in his youth concludes with his face being burned by acid thrown by his lover’s jealous fiancé, Meaume undertakes a lifetime of wandering, his psyche forever engraved by the memory of the woman who spurned him. With a face of boiled leather and a mind haunted by a nightmare of desire, he devotes himself to the black-and-white world of etchings and mezzotints, forsaking the paradise of color to engage in a science of shadows. This fragmented narrative of a man attacked by images is related in 47 short chapters which themselves act as engravings; a tale told by an antiquarian, full of fragmented vision and sexual hell. First published in French in 2000, A Terrace in Rome received the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie Française that same year, and went on to be translated into 19 languages. This is its first appearance in English.

Pascal Quignard (born 1948) has written over 60 books of fiction, essays, and his own particular genre of philosophical reflection that straddles the personal journal, historical narrative and poetic theory. His books in English include Albucius, All the World’s Mornings, The Sexual Night, Sex and Terror, On Wooden Tablets: Apronenia Avitia, and The Salon in Wurttemberg, as well as the multiple volumes of his ongoing book project The Last Kingdom, which, to date, includes The Roving Shadows, The Silent Crossing and Abysses.

Two ancient scrolls, The Secret Annals, are discovered in the 1950’s in a Tokyo bombsite. They purport to be the history of an unknown 15th-Century Japanese spiritual teacher who, in a time of social chaos, sets out to establish enlightened society. He begins his teaching saying: “Abstinence is no path at all. We are gambling on true love. It is an untested path.” In documents from students and spies, the Annals then give an intimate portrait of a charismatic leader, his teachings and the transformative journey he shares with his eccentric band of followers.

The scrolls are unmasked as forgeries, but ten years later, a retired professor becomes obsessed. Who created this hoax? And why? To the professor the Annals offer new possibilities from a kind of parallel reality. On his deathbed, he makes his American assistant promise to continue searching and to translate the scrolls.

The assistant moves to New York. It is the time of the Vietnam war and the counter-culture. He has doubts about the professor, but the world of the Secret Annals begins to seep into his life. He finds within the Prince’s teaching a path through this world of trackless uncertainty. Tantalized, he senses a new world of passionate intensity just within reach.

One of the oldest books in the world, The Oceans of Cruelty is a sequence of twenty-five tales from India whose central theme is the dark power of storytelling. At the start, a young king falls into the hands of a wicked sorcerer, who orders him to find a vetala, or corpse spirit, to serve him; the young king must do as he is told, and soon enough he is also under the sway of the no less malevolent spirit. Like a bat, the spirit hangs from the branches of a tree, and the king is condemned to bear it on his back through a dark forest as it whispers a riddling story in his ear. These are tales of suicidal passion, clever deceit, patriarchal oppression, and narrow escapes from death, and as long as the king can resolve the problems they pose, his bondage continues; the vampiric creature goes on commanding his attention in the dark. Only when the king is out of answers will he at last be free, though when that comes to pass—well, that’s when the whole story takes a new turn. 

Douglas Penick’s re-creation of this ancient work brings out all its humor and horror and vitality, as well its unmistakable relevance in a world of stories gone viral.

THE PRINCE’S TOMB – A GHOST EPIC is an assemblage of texts invoking Prince Shōtoku Taishi, warrior, priest and political visionary who was the Prince Regent of Japan from 593 to 621 C.E. In that shadowy age, he instituted Confucian governmental practices, made Buddhism a state religion, wrote the first Japanese constitution, composed the first book in Japanese (commentaries on Buddhist texts), and commissioned the first history of Japan. Beyond that, he was a seminal force in the establishment of Noh theater, court dance, sculpture, architecture, archery and many other aspects of Japanese culture. He is regarded, even now, as a quasi-deity, essential to the continuing life-force of culture as a whole. As in the earliest Japanese histories and later narratives, THE PRINCE’S TOMB consists of fragmentary stories of deities and human beings, verses, reflections, folk riddles and their fugitive traces in modern consciousness. In this way, the book may convey a matrix of inwardness and yearning and evoke the core of a shared culture that binds us together beyond the limits of time, history and geographical space.

Wishes and longings to the contrary, the wanderer does not find lasting rest. Movement is continuous.
Worlds, words, experiences coalesce. A moment engulfs.
In such landings, in such intensities, all is now intimately real. Duration of such inadvertent residing is not in the wanderer’s control.
The wanderer waits, is attentive, and surrenders in chance encounters, tales and songs.

THE WANDERER is made up of 11 poems, prose and hybrid pieces, most of which have appeared in small magazines and online journals over the past four years.