That Wondrous Pattern

That Wondrous Pattern

“There is no exaggeration in pointing out that these essays are addressed to the soul of the reader. They are not academic exercises in erudition as a contribution to ‘Eng. Lit.’” —from the introduction by Brian Keeble Kathleen Raine was one of the greatest British poets of the last century. Born to a deeply literary and spiritual household, she went on to study at Cambridge, where she met Jacob Bronowski, William Empson, and Malcolm Lowry. A dedicated neoPlatonist, she studied and presented the works of Thomas Taylor and wrote seminal books on William Blake. With Keith Critchlow, Brian Keeble, and Philip Sherrard, she founded, in 1981, the Temenos Academy of Integral Studies, its journal Temenos, and, later, the Temenos Academy Review. HRH The Prince of Wales became the patron of the academy in 1997. For our new selection, That Wondrous Pattern, Raine offers sixteen essays that range from “The Inner Journey of the Poet” and “What Is Man?” to essays on Blake, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, and several others. The centerpiece, “What Is the Use of Poetry?”, is a rigorous defense of the great art. Editor Brian Keeble himself contributes a fascinating introduction to Raine’s work, and Wendell Berry, a colleague and friend of hers, offers a preface. All who spend time in the presence of this wonderful writer will leave newly entranced with the art and use of the beautiful, convinced that “it is only in moments when we transcend ourselves that we can know anything of value.

The Works of that Famous English Poet, Mr. Edmond Spenser

The Way of Ch'an

This sweeping collection of new translations paints a brilliant picture of the development of Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, China’s most radical philosophical and meditative tradition. In this landmark anthology of some two dozen translations, celebrated translator David Hinton shows how Ch'an (Japanese: Zen)—too long considered a perplexing school of Chinese Buddhism—was in truth a Buddhist-inflected form of Taoism, China's native system of spiritual philosophy. The texts in The Way of Ch’an build from seminal Taoism through the “Dark-Enigma Learning” literature and on to the most important pieces from all stages of the classical Ch’an tradition. Guided by Hinton’s accessible introductions, readers will encounter texts and authors including: I Ching (c. 12th century BCE) Lao Tzu (c. 6th century BCE Bodhidharma (active c. 500-550 CE) Sixth Patriarch Prajna-Able (Hui Neng, 638-713) Cold Mountain (Han Shan: c. 8th-9th centuries) Yellow-Bitterroot Mountain (Huang Po, d. 850) Blue-Cliff Record (c. 1040) Through this steadily deepening and transformative reading experience, readers will see the profound and intricate connections between native Chinese philosophy, Taoism, and Ch’an. Contemporary Zen students and practitioners will never see their tradition in the same way again.