"This beautifully-told account of an individual’s journey to living in the moment with an intelligent heart (kokoro) is an illuminating joy."
After experiencing devastating losses and midlife malaise, Japanologist Beth Kempton embarked on a monumentally transformative journey that’s here shared in enlightening style. Positing answers to life’s big questions through the lens of kokoro — a word that’s “been alive in the Japanese language since before there was a system to write it down” — it’s a beautiful book, and might just change the way you think about life, death, and time.
Kokoro is pithily summed up by this statement: “When we approach life heart-mindfully, we experience the joy of arranging flowers, while understanding we are never really just arranging flowers.” In essence, kokoro “is the intelligent heart, which communicates our innate wisdom and responds to the world in the present moment”. Or, in the words of a wise nun the author encounters during her journey: “your job is to take care of now, as well as you can."
Encompassing three mountains (Hagurosan, mountain of the present and earthly desires; Gassan, mountain of death and the past; and Yudonosan, mountain of rebirth and the future), this shares the sublime power of stillness and living in the moment. As such, Kokoro comes hugely recommended for readers who are looking to lead more fulfilling lives through living with intentionality, gratitude and a mindful heart, free from societal pressure and expectations.
| Primary Genre | Health & Fitness |
| Other Genres: |
kokoro [n.] intelligent heart, feeling mind
One year. Two devastating losses. Three sacred Japanese mountains. A major life transition, a heart full of grief and a revelation that changes everything.
Join Japanologist Beth Kempton on a pilgrimage through rural Japan in search of answers to some of life's biggest questions: How do we find calm in the chaos and beauty in the darkness? How do we let go of the past and stop worrying about the future? What can an awareness of impermanence teach us about living well?
Together you will journey to the deep north of Japan, hike ancient forests, watch the moon rise over mountains of myth and encounter a host of wise teachers along the way - Noh actors, chefs, taxi drivers, coffee shop owners, poets, philosophers and the spirits that inhabit the land. You will contemplate the true nature of time at one of the world's strictest Zen temples and nothing will be quite the same again.
This book is an invitation to cultivate stillness and contentment in an ever-changing, uncertain world. It all begins with the kokoro, a profound Japanese term which represents the intelligent heart, the feeling mind and the embodied spirit of every human being.
To explore the kokoro is to explore the very essence of what it means to be human in this tough yet devastatingly beautiful world. When you learn to live guided by the light in your kokoro, everything changes, and anything is possible.
Kokoro Japanese Wisdom for a Life Well Lived features in the following genres: Health & Fitness, Mind, body, spirit, Self Help and Personal Development, Zen Buddhism, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Mind, body, spirit: thought and practice, Fiction, Fiction: narrative themes, Philosophy and Religion, Religion and beliefs, Buddhism, Buddhism: branches and groups, Mahayana Buddhism
Kokoro Japanese Wisdom for a Life Well Lived is available in Hardback
Kokoro Japanese Wisdom for a Life Well Lived was written by Beth Kempton and published by Piatkus Books an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group
Kokoro Japanese Wisdom for a Life Well Lived has 272 pages
£15.29
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