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  • Norman Fischer reading: The World Could Be Otherwise

Norman Fischer reading: The World Could Be Otherwise

  • Saturday, June 22, 2019
  • 4:00 PM (PDT)
  • Village Books, 1200 11th St, Bellingham, WA 98225

Join us for a a reading with Norman Fischer from his latest Dharma book at Village Books after the Samish Island 8-day sesshin.

(this is part of VB's Literature Live series, no need to register ahead of time)

The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path

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.

A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, Norman Fischer is a poet and essayist. He has been practicing as a Zen Buddhist priest for thirty five years, and is one of the senior Zen teachers in America.

Norman has written more than twenty-five books of poetry and prose. Norman Fischer lives on a cliff near Muir Beach California with his wife Kathie, also a Zen priest. Their two sons live in Brooklyn.

The latest of his more than twenty-five poetry and prose titles are Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language and Religion (prose, Poetics Series, University of Alabama Press), Conflict (poetry, Chax Press), The Strugglers (poetry, Singing Horse Press), and Magnolias All At Once (poetry, Singing Horse). In 2000 he retired as co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, one of the largest Buddhist organizations in the West, and founded  The Everyday Zen Foundation is an international network of Buddhist groups and social projects. His latest Buddhist title is Training in Compassion (Shambhala). 


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