A Fresh Translation The Yoga of Arjuna's Crisis No Life without Struggle Dhritarāshtra asked: Sanjaya, what did my sons and the sons of Pāndu do, when they were gathered for the sake of fighting on the field of dharma, in the field of the Kurus? Forces in the Battle of Life Sanjaya said: Having seen

Bhartrihari the Poet, Bhartrihari the Linguist Nalanda Everything known for certain about India’s poet Bhartrihari could be engraved on a grain of rice. He steps into the wavering historical record like a ghost out of the mist in 671 C.E., when the Chinese pilgrim I-Tsing (Yijing in the newer way of spelling) jotted down his

Parched Stories define us, it’s true. And they matter, though they always leave so much out. I like it that way, keep telling them to desert, and desert keeps filling in whatever it is we’re missing. For months now death has felt frail and far away. Breath surprises me. The usual morning ridgeline surprises me,

The mind of which we are unaware is aware of us. —R. D. Lang The rising sun not beet. or blood, but sea-rose red. I amplified my heartbeat one thousand times, the animals at first confused then decided I was another thunder being. While talking directly to god my attention waxed and waned. I have

Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan The Universality of Hanshan’s Writing Though the poems in this collection were written more than twelve hundred years ago, poetry that expresses our common human experience with the unflinching wisdom and truth found in Hanshan’s writing has a way of collapsing time and distance, and even cultural differences, because it

Buddhist Poetry: A Reader Guide Read More Shambhala Publications publishes numerous books of Buddhist poetry, and we’ve gathered some of our favorites here. Jump to sections on this page: Recent Releases | Chan and Zen Poetry | Indian Poetry | Tibetan Poetry | Southeast Asian Poetry | Contemporary Buddhist Poetry Related Books and Articles Recent

In the world of religion, some things stay the same, while many are constantly adapting to meet our new world of the internet and cell phones, scientific discovery, increasing awareness of gender and race dynamics, multiculturalism, the numbers of people identifying their religion as “none” or “spiritual but not religious,” and so much more. We

Thomas Merton's Influence on the Beats by Robert Inchausti, author of Hard to Be a Saint in the City Thomas Merton, “Honorary Beatnik” It’s hard to say exactly when Thomas Merton became an “Honorary Beatnik.” One could chase the association all the way back to the mid-thirties when, as an undergraduate at Columbia, he first became friends

We have excerpted part of the chapter “Meditation Looks Inward, Poetry Holds Forth: Is There a Beat Way of Writing?” from Hard to Be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats here. In this book, Robert Inchausti explores the Beat canon to reveal that the movement was at its heart a spiritual one.

Also see our Reader's Guide to Buddhist Poetry. Many know haiku as a three-line poem, the first and last lines five syllables long, and the second line, seven. But there is much more to what defines haiku, elements more subtle than prescribed syllable counts or line breaks. In fact, Japanese haiku are typically written in