Norman Fischer

An thorough introduction to Zen Buddhist practice—in a reader-friendly question-and-answer format—by two highly regarded teacher-writersThis unique introduction to Zen teaching and practice is structured as a Q&A, making it a most useful reference for new and seasoned practitioners to look things up. The questioner (Susan Moon) and the answerer (Norman Fischer) are Buddhist teachers and old friends, each with a unique gift for articulation. Their friendly conversation covers not only the basics of Zen Buddhism but a range of issues unique to Zen in America in the twenty-first century, • What is zazen and how do you do it?• Where did Zen start and where did it come from?• Will I have an enlightenment experience?• What is the law of karma in a nutshell?• What do Zen Buddhists say about rebirth?• How do you recognize a good, solid Zen teacher? Moon and Fischer’s conversations are both humorous and informative, providing a good basic education in Zen—not only the history, theory, and practice but also contemporary issues such as gender inequality, sexual ethics, and the tension between Asian traditions and the modern American reality.

What are the nuts and bolts of a successful meditation practice? How can it be adopted by someone who is in constant pain? What is needed to make meditating a successful and rewarding practice? Nancy Welch, MS, answers these questions in her 2011 book, Medicine Meditation. Twelve renown professionals from a variety of backgrounds and professions explain how meditation can be successfully adapted and practiced by individuals who currently experience chronic pain and illness.

A prominent Zen teacher offers a “direct, penetrating, and powerful” perspective on a popular mind training practice of Tibetan Buddhism (Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain )Lojong is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of working with short phrases (called "slogans") to generate bodhichitta , the heart and mind of enlightened compassion. With roots tracing back to the 900 A.D., the practice has gained more Western adherents over the past two decades, partly due to the influence of American Buddhist teachers like Pema Chödrön. Its effectiveness and accessibility have moved the practice out of its Buddhist context and into the lives of non-Buddhists across the world.It's in this spirit that Norman Fischer offers his unique, Zen-based commentary on the Lojong. Though traditionally a practice of Tibetan Buddhism, the power of the Lojong extends to other Buddhist traditions—and even to other spiritual traditions as well. As Fischer explores the 59 slogans through a Zen lens, he shows how people from a range of faiths and backgrounds can use Lojong to generate the insight, resilience, and compassion they seek.

An imaginative approach to spiritual practice in difficult times, through the Buddhist teaching of the six paramitas or "perfections" — qualities that lead to kindness, wisdom, and an awakened life.In frightening times, we wish the world could be otherwise. With a touch of imagination, it can be. Imagination helps us see what’s hidden, and it shape-shifts reality’s roiling twisting waves. In this inspiring reframe of a classic Buddhist teaching, Zen teacher Norman Fischer writes that the paramitas, or “six perfections” — generosity, ethical conduct, patience, joyful effort, meditation, and understanding — can help us reconfigure the world we live in. Ranging from our everyday concerns about relationships, ethics, and consumption to our artistic inspirations and broadest human yearnings, Fischer depicts imaginative spiritual practice as a necessary resource for our troubled times.

This engaging contemplation of maturity addresses the long neglected topic of what it means to grow up, and provides a hands–on guide for skilfully navigating the demands of our adult lives. Growing up happens whether we like it or not, but maturity must be cultivated. Challenged to consider his own sense of maturity while mentoring a group of teenage boys, Fischer began to investigate our preconceptions about what it means to be "an adult" and shows how crucial true maturity is to leading an engaged, fulfilled life. Taking Our Places details the marks of a mature person and shows how these attributes can help alleviate our suffering and enrich our relationships. Discussing such qualities as awareness, responsibility, humour, acceptance, and humility, Fischer brings a fresh and at times surprising new perspective that can turn old ideas on their heads and reinvigorate our understanding of what it means to be mature.

Homer's "Odyssey" has a timeless allure. It is an ancient story that is significant for every generation: the struggle of a homesick, battle-weary man longing to return to love and family. Odysseus's strivings to overcome divine and earthly obstacles and to control his own impulsive nature hold valuable lessons for people facing their own metaphorical battles and everyday conflicts -- people who are, like Odysseus, "heartsick on the open sea," whether from dealing with daily skirmishes at the office or from fighting in an international war. "Sailing Home" breathes fresh air into a classic we thought we knew, revealing its profound guidance for navigating life's pitfalls, perils, and spiritual challenges. Norman Fischer deftly incorporates Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, and popular thought, as well as his own unique and sympathetic understanding of life, in his reinterpretation of Odysseus's familiar wanderings as lessons that everyone can use. We see how to resist the seduction of the Sirens' song to stop sailing and give up; how to bide our time in a situation and wait for the right opportunity -- as Odysseus does when faced with the murderous, one-eyed Cyclops; and how to reassess our story and rediscover our purpose and identity if, like the Lotus-Eaters, we have forgotten the past.With meditations that yield personal revelations, illuminating anecdotes from Fischer's and his students' lives, and stories from many wisdom traditions, "Sailing Home" shows the way to greater purpose in your own life.You will learn a new way to view your path, when to wait and when to act, when to speak your mind and when to exercise discretion, how to draw on your innate strength and distinguish between truth and deception, and how to deal with aging and changing relationships. "Sailing Home" provides the courage you need for your journey, to renew bonds with your loved ones, and to make the latter portion of life a heartfelt time of spirit and love, so that -- just as Odysseus does -- you can defeat the forces of entropy and death.

From beloved Zen teacher Norman Fischer, a collection of essays spanning a life of inquiry into Zen practice, relationship, cultural encounter, and spiritual creativity.

Applying his own Jewish roots and his knowledge of Eastern and Western spirituality, a Zen priest and poet presents a collection of stunning and personal translations of the Psalms for every spiritual path or religious background. 15,000 first printing.

“In Norman Fischer’s translation, the words of the Psalms are clothed in renewed beauty – clear, uncompromising, shining with devotion.”–Jack Kornfield, author of After the Ecstasy, the Laundry A week with the Trappist monks of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky left Norman Fischer feeling inspired by the uplifting, soaring verses chanted each day, but also astonished by the violence, passion, and bitterness expressed. This experience started him on a journey through Eastern and Western spirituality and his own Jewish roots toward these moving and intimate translations of the Psalms. In ninety-three poems of praise, celebration, suffering, and lamentation, Opening to You brings the Psalms alive, conveying their beauty and power in accessible English for today’s readers of every spiritual path or religious background and transforming the sacred songs into the timeless music of enlightenment.

Suffering and Possibility is part of the Parallax Press Moments series of short ebooks. It is a stand alone chapter from Solid Buddhist Wisdom for Difficult Times.

Poetry. THE STRUGGLERS is Norman Fischer's fourth book of poetry with Singing Horse Press. Divided into six poetic sequences, "Norman Fischer's new poems--including a rhetorically stunning series after Mandelstam--make you stop and think--about everyday life and its sampled commodifications--about global turbulence and local pleasure. These poems create a path for reflection as a means for intensified sensation and transformation. 'No end to ending, no beginning to beginning, no beginning to ending, no ending to beginning.' Start here now."--Charles Bernstein

Poetry. "Norman Fischer is aware that even if "words are free of their intentions," it is difficult to free ourselves of our intentions for them and allow the poem to find its way. This is one of the many paradoxes regarding poetic speech (and poetic silence) that reverberate at the core of his work. The two distinctive sequences that form I WAS BLOWN BACK explore the elusive, even ungraspable, nature of memory, perception and personhood with moving immediacy, and with a modesty of tone that cloaks a striking acuteness"--Michael Palmer.

Good used condition. wear from reading.

Poetry. Translation. "Norman Fisher has created, for the time being, the perfect introduction to Leslie Scalapino's poetics. MAGNOLIAS ALL AT ONCE offers a set of commentaries on Dogen, the astounding medieval Japanese Zen writer, by the mind-bending contemporary American poet Leslie Scalapino. Or, to put it the other way around: in this set of uncannily paired texts, Scalapino provides a step-by-step guide to reading Dogen. Fischer has written new and provocative translations of Dogen that, against all logic, put the Zen master at the center of modernist and contemporary radical poetics. Magnolias concludes with Fischer's illuminating, essential essay/interview on Scalapino's work. In this work of collaboration and elegy, Fischer adeptly generates conceptual bumps and gaps, crackling flashes that make momentarily perceptible the disappearing vistas of time's viscous inebriations."—Charles Bernstein

O caminho do bodisatva (os bodisatvas adiam seu próprio despertar até que todos os outros seres sencientes sejam salvos) é definido pelas seis práticas chamadas seis perfeições. Elas são expansivas, práticas infindavelmente imaginativas, ainda que sejam, ao mesmo tempo, pé no chão. Elas são caminhos para o desenvolvimento do caráter, são meios de melhorarmos nosso funcionamento como seres humanos no mundo tal como ele é. No seu conjunto, elas definem um espírito e um modo de vida. As seis perfeições são generosidade, conduta moral, paciência, alegre empenho, meditação e compreensão. Essas seis práticas definem o caminho do bodisatva, o herói imaginativo do caminho budista Mahayana. Contemplá-las e praticá-las é um projeto de uma vida inteira – um que nunca iremos concluir. Quanto mais as praticamos neste mundo louco, mais veremos como nossas vidas humanas comuns, com todas as suas pressões e dificuldades, podem também ser uma jornada espiritual heroica e apaixonada. Compreensão e amor são possíveis. -A perfeição da abrir nossos corações para nós mesmos, para os outros e para a abundância da vida. -A perfeição da conduta prestar atenção nos nossos pensamentos, palavras e ações, afastando-os do autocentrismo e indo em direção ao amor e ao benefício dos outros. -A perfeição da paciê encarar completamente as dificuldades e as transformar no caminho. -A perfeição do alegre despertar para a esperança e alegria, para que possamos manter nosso compromisso de prática com um espírito brilhante. -A perfeição da meditaçã prática focada, de sentar-se regularmente e caminhar para renovar e desacelerar nossos corações e mentes, para que nossos dias e noites possam ser firmes e calmos. -A perfeição da compreensã reconhecer que nada é como pensamos ser; que não há separação, nenhuma tragédia; que nada é fixo ou sólido; que há apenas amor e esperança sem fim além e dentro do que acontece e não acontece. A perfeição da compreensão permeia as outras cinco perfeições. É o grande dom do pensamento budista Mahayana, a fonte e o fruto da imaginação.

Poetry. "The conflict Norman Fischer speaks of in this poem is an inherent component of the universe. He writes of the human dilemma, the struggles of daily life, and the desire to 'hold the world in place,' showing us how not to be mired in any one spot. Freedom is won by tirelessly moving forward. The lines the poet's breath, and the complexity of his thought, visualized on the page."—Anne Tardos

Poetry. In July, 2010, Zen priest Norman Fischer travelled to Kyoto to visit temples and meet with fellow practitioners. A CRAZY LIFE OF TEARS is a poetic journal of that trip. Fischer's poetry examines what it means to sit at the nexus of the past, present and future and links questions of being with vivid details of daily life. (It's also sometimes very funny.) Fischer seeks to find a balance between past traditions (from the east) and new understandings (in the west). ESCAPE THIS CRAZY LIFE OF TEARS stages a beautiful dialogue between inner thoughts and outward experiences that carefully observes the self, and opens an imaginative space in which to examine it.

By what narrow path is the ineffable silence of Zen cleft by the scratch of a pen? The distilled insights of forty years, Norman Fischer’s Thinking, Writing, Language, and Religion is a collection of essays by Zen master Fischer about experimental writing as a spiritual practice. Raised in a Conservative Jewish family, Fischer embraced the twin practices of Zen Buddhism and innovative poetics in San Francisco in the early 1970s. His work includes original poetry, descriptions of Buddhist practice, translations of the Hebrew psalms, and eclectic writings on a range of topics from Homer to Heidegger to Kabbalah. Both Buddhist priest and participant in avant-garde poetry’s Language movement, Fischer has limned the fertile affinities and creative contradictions between Zen and writing, accumulating four decades of rich insights he shares in Experience . Fischer’s work has been deeply enriched through his collaborations with leading rabbis, poets, artists, esteemed Zen Buddhist practitioners, Trappist monks, and renowned Buddhist leaders, among them the Dalai Lama. Alone and with others, he has carried on a deep and sustained investigation into the intersection of writing and consciousness as informed by meditation. The essays in this artfully curated collection range across divers, fascinating topics such as time, the Heart Sutra, God in the Hebrew psalms, the supreme “uselessness” of art making, “late work” as a category of poetic appreciation, and the subtle and dubious notion of “religious experience.” From the theoretical to the revealingly personal, Fischer’s essays, interviews, and notes point toward a dramatic expansion of the sense of religious feeling in writing. Readers who join Fischer on this path in Experience can discover how language is not a description of experience, but rather an experience shifting, indefinite, and essential.

Poetry. New work by this well-known Bay Area writer and Zen teacher. "It's freezing at degree zero, wind bites -/ The crystal arguments fall into taller shapes/ And the tension around the eyes lengthens/ At the end of every turn around the park/ 'Kick Me' is a sign everyone wears" (from "The Enigma of Memory"). Among the many books by Norman Fischer available from SPD are SUCCESS and PRECISELY THE POINT BEING MADE.

This engaging contemplation of maturity addresses the long neglected topic of what it means to grow up, and provides a hands-on guide for skilfully navigating the demands of our adult lives. Growing up happens whether we like it or not, but maturity must be cultivated. Challenged to consider his own sense of maturity while mentoring a group of teenage boys, Fischer began to investigate our preconceptions about what it means to be ࠮ adultߡnd shows how crucial true maturity is to leading an engaged, fulfilled life. Taking Our Places details the marks of a mature person and shows how these attributes can help alleviate our suffering and enrich our relationships. Discussing such qualities as awareness, responsibility, humour, acceptance, and humility, Fischer brings a fresh, and at times surprising, new perspective that can turn old ideas on their heads and reinvigorate our understanding of what it means to be mature.

Poetry. "Those of us who think about the reality of things do not do so because we have plenty of time. Reality is not a fixed and immutable attribute of things but a process, a fast or slow unfolding. And we don't know with certainty that reality has been given limitless time. Norman Fischer's urgent sensitivity to the metamorphoses at hand makes his writing real"--Lyn Hejinian.

Fine Paperback Clear Glass Pubns, 1995. Book. Fine. Soft cover. An American Zen teacher walks the path of his ancestors. Bright, tight & clean. Benefits the Friends of the Albany, Ca Library. .

Poetry. "I have often experienced the fact that no matter how difficult or how wonderful things get there is always some expression that is made. The world goes on carelessly unfolding. For me this expression takes the temporary form I call writing, and it seems to possess a redemptive quality, a purifying property, which brings me back, cheers me up, time after time. One way or another, there is nothing quite like it. Nor is there anything else but it."

Poetry. QUESTIONS/PLACES/VOICES/SEASONS continues and expands the innovative meditational poetry Norman Fischer has explored in earlier books, such as SLOWLY BUT DEARLY, SUCCESS, and I WAS BLOWN BACK. The two long serial poems that anchor QUESTIONS/PLACES/VOICES/SEASONS, "Charlotte's Way" and "Seasons," will feel quite familiar to Fischer's many readers. But he also inaugurates a new form of writing in this new book in which he inhabits the voices of others, such as Alberto Caeiro, Reb Yosl of Kemenetz, Elena Rivera, and Saigyo Hoshi. The combination of these distinct forms of writing create a compelling new addition to Fischer's already impressive body of work.

Poetry. Norman Fischer's long poem takes as its place CHARLOTTE'S WAY, a house on the California coast, but mostly the poem takes things in. Fischer, a Zen priest, meditates on talk, the passing of time, the brain, catness, bills to be paid, poems, search parties, birds and myriad other subjects as they flicker in and out of thought. Terri Wada's design emphasizes the fluidity of Fischer's thinking; rather than turning from one page to the next, the chapbook opens out, filling both space and time.

Poetry. In writing SUCCESS, Norman Fischer set for himself the task of composing 28 lines, every day, for a year. What results is a moving portrait of a heart and mind in the world. This selection from the full text includes Fischer's important essay Do You Want to Make Something Out of It? Zen Meditation and the artistic impulse.

Poetry. California Interest. "This is a high-speed life performance. The reader seems to fly over a choppy sea of uneasy language/thought - a troubled consciousness - that can't be still, and in which interchangeable pronouns and restless anxieties sink from sight only to resurface -- a consciousness, we come to see, much like our own." --Rae Armantrout

"If capitalism is the infection that normalizes and perpetuates all the greed and violence endemic to human creatures (and, of course, it is), in his new book Norman Fischer provides us with a gorgeous inoculation. In a capacious voice that is part every person, part guide and caregiver, part trickster, Fischer leads us through an exhibit of the American psyche at its most beautifully/terribly/complicatedly human. Blake asks us to see a world in a grain of sand; Fischer, in language as precise and relentless as his courage, asks us to expand each nanosecond into an infinity. With tenderness and care, irony and sincerity, Fischer leads us from surprise to surprise through a vastness of recursion, digression, re-vision, doubt, and wisdom. This is an exquisite book from one of the great and lasting gifts of contemporary poetry."--Donna de la Perriere Poetry.

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