Café Nirvana

Zen Fixtures: Cast Your Home in a Spiritual Light
Solomon Luce
HarperLittleRock: Little Rock Arkansas, 1996.

“Be a light unto yourself,” said the Buddha. Make it happen with this delightful book on selecting and installing your own track lighting.

Zen Zulu: African Influences on 18th-Century Japanese Buddhist Thought
Georgia Yamamoto

Central Texas University Press: Houston, 1996.

Highly original. Yamamoto stands academia on its ear with her fresh insights into Hakuin’s koan curriculum.

Nobody Home: Confessions of a Buddhist Psychiatrist

Otto Neidermeier
Bottom Books: New York, 1996.

Inspiring accounts of healing by a psychoanalyst who changed his way of treating patients after he found that their greatest insights seemed to come during moments when he left his chair to use the bathroom.

Because I Said So: Authority in American Zen

Cleaver Longman
Full Court Press Books: Chicago, 1996.

A careful articulation of what Longman has called “the male power imperative” implicit to Zen awakening.

He’s Got the Time, Have You Got the Money? Finding a Zen Teacher You Can Afford

Wanda Lane
Pennypincher Press: Seattle, 1996.

Ways to save money for long retreats. Negotiating a payment plan you can afford. Making payments contingent upon results. It’s all here. You’ll wonder how you managed before Lane.

Off the Wall: Bodhidharma’s Treatise on Mind

Translated by Stefan Twichell
Jambalaya Publications: New Orleans, 1996.

Unhampered by familiarity with the language in which it was written, Twichell gives Bodhidharma’s famous treatise a lighthearted humor it probably lacked in the original.