Inprint - New Books of interest

The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life by Geshe Michael Roach. (Doubleday, $12.95, Paperback.)

The original Diamond Cutter, or Diamond Sutra, is the oldest dated book in the world that was printed, rather than being written out by hand, and is considered a central work by Buddhists throughout the world. It is from this ancient Sanskrit text that Michael Roach borrows the title of his book. For him, the first American to complete the twenty years of rigorous training required to earn the ancient degree of geshe, the title The Diamond Cutter has a double meaning. Not only does it echo the Buddhist wisdom around which he centers his life, it reflects the two decades he spent at one of the world’s largest diamond and jewelry firms. It was there that he applied the spiritual side of his life to the business world and built the firm from nothing into a worldwide operation with sales in excess of 100 million dollars per year.

Roach was drawn to the diamond business due to a vision he had experienced during his time in the monastery. The diamond is a powerful symbol to those who have studied ancient Tibetan traditions. Diamonds are perfectly clear, almost invisible, but with the secret potential of beauty and greatness. So, according to Buddhist teachings, is the hidden potential of everything around us equally hard to see. Diamonds come very close to being something that is absolute. Every sliver of diamond that exists anywhere in the universe is exactly the same stuff as every other one, and it is true of the hidden potential of things that every instance of potential is just as pure, just as absolute a reality, as every other instance.

It shouldn’t surprise us, states Roach, that Buddhist wisdom can be used for success in business. The goal of business, of ancient Tibetan wisdom, and in fact all human endeavor, is to enrich ourselves — to achieve prosperity, both outer and inner. We can enjoy this prosperity only if we maintain a high degree of physical and mental health. Over the length of our lives we must seek ways to make this prosperity meaningful in a larger sense.

No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life by Thich Nhat Hanh. (Riverhead Books, $13.00, Paperback.)

Thich Nhat Hanh, author and Buddhist monk, respected by social activists and thoughtful readers of all faiths, writes on the daunting questions about our mortality, offering his liberating philosophy for living each moment to the fullest and greeting death with a profound sense of peace.

Grounded in the teachings of the Buddha, and enriched with insights from Jesus, Confucius and an eclectic collection of monks, saints and ordinary people, No Death, No Fear shatters conventional Western notions of birth, creation, permanence and heaven. With grace and conviction, he unfolds an uplifting vision of a never-ending cycle of manifestation. With each revelation, he guides those mourning the death of a loved one, or facing the looming reality of their own mortality, to a sense of peace and ease.

Featuring guided meditations and lessons in the practice of mindfulness he leads us to: overcoming a personal dread of death and utter oblivion, letting go of the grief and guilt surrounding the passing of loved ones, resting in impermanence and change, strengthening spiritual bonds with our ancestors and future generations, and recognizing our integral connections with others, even remote strangers.

Synthesis in Healing: Subtle Energies and Natural Therapies for Optimal Health by Judy Jacka. (Hampton Roads, $18.95, Paperback.)

Why do we get sick? Treating only outer biochemical and biological factors may miss the deeper underlying causes due to energy imbalances. But treating only the energy aspects of an illness may fail to correct the biological problem. This book shows how you can have the best of both approaches in a highly therapeutic and clinically-based synthesis in healing.

Judy Jacka, Australian natural medicine pioneer, draws on her three decades of clinical practice, the case studies of hundreds of patients, to take us through the body’s different energy and biological systems to reveal the causes and cure of illness. Using the model of chakras, she correlates these different centers with the body systems. Using a combination of nutritional assessment and energy evaluation, Jacka explains the underlying factors in dozens of health conditions, from boils to rheumatoid arthritis to insomnia to chronic bowel disorders to migraines. Then she explains how to reverse these with a combination of nutritional supplements, herbs, energy visualization exercises, and meditative techniques.

Searching for a Mustard Seed: One Young Widow’s Unconventional Story by Miriam Sagan. (Quality Words In Print, $19.00, Hardcover.)

There is a Buddhist teaching story about a woman whose only child dies. The desperately bereaved woman comes to the Buddha for a miracle, asking that her child be brought back to life. He agrees, but only if she will bring him a mustard seed from a household that has never known death. And so the woman goes out seeking.

Miriam Sagan’s search for a mustard seed begins with the death of her thirty-six year old Zen priest husband. She approaches her grief in what she calls a typical baby boomer fashion; as an extreme state to be experienced. Her unconventional approach takes her to Korea in the middle of winter, to weightlifting classes, and through her search for new romantic relationships.

Intimate, poignant, and at times comical, this memoir takes the reader along a journey during which one woman attempts to unravel the mysteries of grief and death. Sagan knocks on doors, and begs for consolation, understanding and miracles. She finds instead of a mustard seed, the appreciation that she is not alone in her loss, and that she is surrounded instead with continuity, with community, and all the beauty that is life.

Sex, Time and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution by Leonard Shlain. (Viking, $25.95, Hardcover.)

Many women assume the invention of the Pill was the most important sexual event in history. But many eons earlier, they acquired a far more potent power; they became the first female of any species to gain the mental grit necessary to override their sexual urges and demand sex on their terms. Men, who craved sex, were suddenly faced with a crisis unknown to other species — they confronted females firmly in possession of minds of their own. A woman’s veto over sex became the source of her power and the root of his frustration. For the first time among the animals, men had to negotiate sex with women.

No compelling explanation exists for how or why human evolution radically diverged from other animals 150,000 years ago. Leonard Shlain argues that profound alterations in female sexuality hold the key to this mystery. Bipedalism, narrow pelvises and enormous fetal heads precipitated a crisis for our species resulting in several changes. Women, facing the grave threat of dying during childbirth, needed to grasp the link between sex and painful labor nine months later. But first they had to learn how to maneuver in the dimension of the future. They lost estrus, acquired a menses and began to experience orgasms, all necessary evolutionary adaptations allowing them to discover time.

Women taught the secret of foresight to men, who used it to become the planet’s most fearsome predator. They learned, to their dismay, that they were mortal. Figuring out their role in impregnation, men realized they could live on through their children. These insights changed how men related to women and why they adopted the role of husbands and fathers. In Sex, Time, and Power, Shlain explores how these archaic insights dramatically altered all subsequent human culture, from the nature of courtship, to the origin of marriage, to the evolution of language, funerals, and religions.