An autobiographical account of an early nineteenth-century yogi as he reaches self-realization, identification with his larger self, mankind, and union with his God

Deepens and refreshes our view of early Christianity while casting a disturbing light on the evolution of the attitudes passed down to us.

The Western reader is introduced to the basic teaching, practices, and religious character of Zen Buddhism, in a beautiful new edition of the classic introduction to and overview of Zen history and discipline. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

The founder of the Catholic Worker Movement recounts her experiences as a young journalist, her conversion to Catholicism, and the circumstances that led to her political activism

This volume contains a new translation, with a historical introduction by the translators, of two works written under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. Through Climacus, Kierkegaard contrasts the paradoxes of Christianity with Greek and modern philosophical thinking. In Philosophical Fragments he begins with Greek Platonic philosophy, exploring the implications of venturing beyond the Socratic understanding of truth acquired through recollection to the Christian experience of acquiring truth through grace. Published in 1844 and not originally planned to appear under the pseudonym Climacus, the book varies in tone and substance from the other works so attributed, but it is dialectically related to them, as well as to the other pseudonymous writings. The central issue of Johannes Climacus is doubt. Probably written between November 1842 and April 1843 but unfinished and published only posthumously, this book was described by Kierkegaard as an attack on modern speculative philosophy by "means of the melancholy irony, which did not consist in any single utterance on the part of Johannes Climacus but in his whole life. . . . Johannes does what we are told to do--he actually doubts everything--he suffers through all the pain of doing that, becomes cunning, almost acquires a bad conscience. When he has gone as far in that direction as he can go and wants to come back, he cannot do so. . . . Now he despairs, his life is wasted, his youth is spent in these deliberations. Life does not acquire any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy." A note by Kierkegaard suggests how he might have finished the work: "Doubt is conquered not by the system but by faith, just as it is faith that has brought doubt into the world!."

Silouan, an unlettered young peasant from the heart of European Russia, finished his military service in the autumn of 1892 and within a week set off for the Russian Monastery of St Panteleimon on Mount Athos. This account of Silouan's life, written by his disciple Archimandrite Sophrony, reveals not only Silouan's personality and teaching, but also the spiritual struggles which truly made him a staretz (i.e., a monk whose God-given wisdom and insight enable him to serve as a spiritual guide for others).

"This is quintessential Merton."--The Catholic Review.