Featured Books
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Rude AwakeningsA Pilgrimage on Foot to the Buddhist Holy Places - Part OneAjahn Sucitto & Nick ScottSeptember 12, 2010Half raucous adventure and half inspirational memoir, Rude Awakenings documents an unusual pilgrimage. Two very different men—life-loving naturalist Nick Scott and austere Buddhist monk Ajahn Sucitto—together spend six months retracing the Buddha’s footsteps through India. Told alternately by Sucitto and Scott in their distinctive voices, this story blends self-effacing humor, philosophical explorations, drama, travel observations, and the occasional giant fruit bat. Rude Awakenings is a heady record of survival and spirituality set against the dramatic backdrop of one of India’s most lawless regions. |
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Great Patient OneA Pilgrimage on Foot to the Buddhist Holy Places - Part TwoAjahn Sucitto & Nick ScottSeptember 12, 2010This book is a sequel. The first half, published as Rude Awakenings, began the account of a six-month epic journey by two Englishmen, a monk and layman, to the Buddhist holy places in India. On this seven-hundred-mile pilgrimage on foot across one of the most overcrowded places on the planet, we supported ourselves by going for alms—just as Buddhist monks had done in times gone by—and slept under the stars. Rude Awakenings was a great adventure story. While the second part of the journey still had its share of adventure, and some amazing encounters with wildlife, the novelty of the endeavour had worn off, and we came face to face with both our own and the other’s deeper humanity. Thus this sequel is, to us, the more valuable of the two accounts. |
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Mara and the MangalaAll 26 chapters of Mangala released on the occasion of Ajahn Amaro's departureAjahn AmaroJuly 18, 2010This story is intended to be both a partner to the novel ‘The Pilgrim Kāmanīta,’ written by Karl Gjellerup in 1906, and a tale that stands on its own. There is no need to have read the earlier book in order to make sense of this one, however, should you wish to go to the source from which many of the characters and scenes of this tale have sprung, an English version of it is to be found here. This book was originally projected to be published entirely as a serial novel, appearing one chapter at a time on the first day of every month, over a couple of years. However, some of the same type of unpredictabilities that populate this tale intervened and, before the planned twenty-six months were up, it became necessary for me to leave California and relocate to England. This move, in July of 2010, precipitated the decision to release the entire book early, as a parting nod this fair country that has been the focus of my attention for the last twenty years, as well as the seedbed of so many of the fibres of this yarn. |
