True Zen

Appalachian Zen describes a journey we all take, one that Buddhism calls "seeking our true home." Edgy, lyrical, and lovingly rendered, this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania mill-town trailer park grew up—surrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief, violence, and passionate yearning—to become something improbable: a Buddhist minister teaching Zen.

“Know thyself” (Know thy business!) Discover your own unique strategy to create an enterprise that embodies you, affords prosperity, brings the right people into your life and serves a community of people who desire your products and services. Otherwise known as The Zen Side of business ownership.

How do we stay alive in a world designed to keep us distracted, numb, and consuming? Growing up in Silicon Valley, Ravi Mishra excitedly embarked on a path of entrepreneurship before even graduating college. But when his startup failed, a series of chance encounters took him on a deeper journey – from meditation retreats in the Himalayas to protest movements in Egypt, from Burning Man to a Zen Buddhist monastery where he spends a month each year.

This is extreme examination of fiction books. We take excerpts from popular novels (one page in length) from various chapters and we read them, trying to understand the writer's voice, writing structure, and more. Over time we'll have a clearer definition of how we do our analysis. This book will have notes every now and then. Enjoy! Oh, and if you were wondering, the main purpose of this is to learn how to write better fiction.

In clear words, Zen Master Zensho W. Kopp shows us in an inspiring way how we can see through the deceptive nature of our concepts so that we rise up above our self-made limitations. Through this we transcend our identification with the unreal and reach the absolute reality of our true self. We experience a liberating transformation to a deeper and all-embracing universal consciousness and thus to freedom of the mind.