This work provides a guide to the Buddha's path from start to finish. Drawing from his 25 years of experience in teaching in Buddhist mediation, the author describes how to choose a spiritual path and how best to apply oneself to that path. The text explores topics in Buddhism such as how to perfect ethical conduct, how to develop mindfulness in daily life, how to meditate, how to deal with the hindrances that obstruct successful practice and how to make the mind softer and more pliable through the practice of loving-kindness and compassion. The author also examines the final goal of the Buddha's path, that state known as "nibbana" or enlightenment, which lies beyond the relative, conditioned world. He stresses that it is always available to those who are really concerned in finding the true way.
Focusing on practical strategies, this book offers realistic and measurable methods for achieving financial goals. The author emphasizes that it is not a get-rich-quick scheme but a guide for dedicated wealth builders ready to invest time and effort into their financial journey.
Indispensable for students of diplomacy and junior members of diplomatic services, this dictionary not only covers diplomacy's jargon but also includes entries on legal terms, political events, international organizations, e-Diplomacy, and major figures who have occupied the diplomatic scene or have written about it over the last half millennium.
Composed in the third century A.D., the Trojan Epic is the earliest surviving literary evidence for many of the traditions of the Trojan War passed down from ancient Greece. Also known as the Posthomerica , or "sequel to Homer," the Trojan Epic chronicles the course of the war after the burial of Troy's greatest hero, Hektor. Quintus, believed to have been an educated Greek living in Roman Asia Minor, included some of the war's most legendary events: the death of Achilles, the Trojan Horse, and the destruction of Troy. But because Quintus deliberately imitated Homer's language and style, his work has been dismissed by many scholars as pastiche. A vivid and entertaining story in its own right, the Trojan Epic is also particularly significant for what it reveals about its sources—the much older, now lost Greek epics about the Trojan War known collectively as the Epic Cycle. Written in the Homeric era, these poems recounted events not included in the Iliad or the Odyssey . As Alan James makes clear in this vibrant and faithful new translation, Quintus's work deserves attention for its literary-historical importance and its narrative power. James's line-by-line verse translation in English reveals the original as an exciting and eloquent tale of gods and heroes, bravery and cunning, hubris and brutality. James includes a substantial introduction which places the work in its literary and historical context, a detailed and annotated book-by-book summary of the epic, a commentary dealing mainly with sources, and an explanatory index of proper names. Brilliantly revitalized by James, the Trojan Epic will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in Greek mythology and the legend of Troy.
