Zen Cat | 
 enlarge | Authors: Judith Adler, Paul Coughlin
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $5.74
You Save: $9.26 (62%)
New (5) Used (8) from $4.24
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 1056259
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 112
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 6.6 x 0.7
ASIN: B000E1KPSW
Publication Date: November 15, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
How often have we seen cats watching us with intense focus, playing obsessively with a toy, comforting us as they cannily assess our moods, lying calmly in a patch of sunlight? Cats exemplify the essential tenets of Zen philosophy and the desire to find the simple and spiritual in everyday life. They embody utter grace, nonjudgmental devotion, and a sense of spontaneous whimsy. What's more, as we interact with cats, these qualities are reflected back in us.Zen Cat pairs more than 50 charming black-and-white photographs of cats with simple and inspiring quotes from a variety of sources: A fat cat lying on the floor evokes the statement "A hand-rolled dumpling of heaven and earth; I gulped it down and easily it went"; a picture of a cat up for adoption is accompanied by Buddha's question "If we fail to look after others when they need help, who will look after us?" This ingenious coupling of concepts and images reminds us that even the most finicky of our feline friends have a lot to teach us, if only we take the time to learn.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Cute. Sometimes insightful. But sometimes pretentious. August 8, 2008
The pictures are cute, and mostly seem to fit the aphorisms that they're paired with. Some of the aphorisms are deeply meaningful, highly insightful, and very thought-provoking. Others are, at best, pretentious. ("Whatver interests, is interesting." William Hazlitt) (Well, DUH.) Overall, I've just never been impressed with Zen. I'm just too middle-American white-bread, I guess. But the book's worth a look for the cute pictures, if nothing else.
 Zen Cat January 28, 2007
I bought this book for my brother in law because he had a cat that would come and sit with him every day but would not let him touch it. He fed it and seldom talked to it but they would both sit quitly and enjoy the outdoors. He got a real kick out of the small book with all the cute pictures.
 to support the effort to stay calm July 6, 2005
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
There are quotations of wise words of the Dalai Lama and Buddha, of American authors like H.L. Mencken or Henry David Thoreau, but also of European writers like Montaigne, Voltaire, Sartre (France) or Goethe, Wittgenstein (Germany), of Italo Calvino, Leonardo da Vinci, Cesare Pavese (Italy). You can see in this tiny book CATS: resting in paper-bags, or others, making stripes on their fur coat, standing behind window shades. In the introduction the publishing author Judith Adler (a New York "communicator, marketing muse, business intuitive, and soul coach, she helps individuals and companies realize their dreams by creating success from the only place that lasts: the INSIDE OUT") - Judith Adler for example describes, how her cat followed "the graceful dance of light upon the walls" of her bedroom. This was a help to the author, finding her "own inner feline", that field of emotional resources, which is able to make a correspondence to the typical feline, ZEN-alike capability being "focused, present, sitting stiller than a statue, meditating". If "we act with cats, these qualities are reflected back in us". It is not needful, to search poetical-pious metaphorical words, like a friend of the author did, saying: "Cats are bridges between heaven and earth, ... furry little ambassadors from beyond." Those people, who don't believe in such things, may prefer to formulate with a certain sense of humor, talking about "CAT-ALYSTS": A cat is a cat-alyzer making transpositions of far-east wisdom. On one of these pages you can find a prayer-like T.S. Eliot-quotation: "Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still." It has been no problem to the trustworthy-stylish black-and-white-photographer Paul Coughlin (who also published - among other books - "Timeless New York: A Literary and Photographic Tribute") - no problem to combine these aphorisms with congenial pictures: One cat, sitting near Washington Square (the publishers are making thankful acknowledgments to the Washington Square Animal Hospital doctors Ann Lucas and Dr. Kristin Kuscher and so on) - one cat is sitting on the entrance-stair of a café. Next to it Judith Adler wrote: "Cats don't belong to people. They belong to places." Well, the place of this book is immutable on my writing-desk - in order to support my daily effort to stay calm, collected and composed.
calm, collected and composed ... June 21, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
There are quotations of wise words of the Dalai Lama and Buddha, of american authors like H.L. Mencken or Henry David Thoreau, but also of european writers like Montaigne, Voltaire, Sartre (France) or Goethe, Wittgenstein (Germany), of Italo Calvino, Leonardo da Vinci, Cesare Pavese (Italy). You can see in this tiny book CATS: resting in paper-bags, or others, making stripes on their fur coat, standing behind window shades. In the introduction the publishing author Judith Adler (a New York "communicator, marketing muse, business intuitive, and soul coach, she helps individuals and companies realize their dreams by creating success from the only place that lasts: the INSIDE OUT") - Judith Adler for example describes, how her cat followed "the graceful dance of light upon the walls" of her bedroom. This was a help to the author, finding her "own inner feline", that field of emotional ressources, which is able to make a correspondance to the typical feline, ZEN-alike capability being "focused, present, sitting stiller than a statue, meditating". If "we act with cats, these qualities are reflected back in us". It is not needful, to search poetical-pious metaphorical words, like a friend of the author did, saying: "Cats are bridges between heaven and earth, ... furry little ambassadors from beyond." Those people, who don't believe in such things, may prefer to formulate with a certain sense of humour, talking about "CAT-ALYSTS": A cat is a cat-alyzer making transpositions of far-east wisdom. On one of these pages you can find a prayer-like T.S. Eliot-quotation: "Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still." It has been no problem to the trustworthy-stylish black-and-white-photographer Paul Coughlin (who also published - among other books - "Timeless New York: A Literary and Photographic Tribute") - no problem to combine these aphorisms with congenial pictures: One cat, sitting near Washington Square (the publishers are making thankful acknowledgments to the Washington Square Animal Hospital doctors Ann Lucas and Dr. Kristin Kuscher and so on) - one cat is sitting on the entrance-stair of a café. Next to it Judith Adler wrote: "Cats don't belong to people. They belong to places." Well, the place of this book is immutable on my writing-desk - in order to support my daily effort to stay calm, collected and composed
Meow in the Now February 21, 2004
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Not a cat book per se. It is Zen through example. Deceptively simple (of course).I laughed out loud several times in a Starbucks while reading it. The pairing of photos and aphorisms is wonderful, some of which I still have yet to truly appreciate, I think.
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