The legendary Encyclopedia of Medicine is a dizzying collection of maladies: an amnesia that causes everyone you've ever met to forget you exist, while you remain perfectly, painfully aware of your history. A wound that grows with each dark thought or evil deed you commit but shrinks with every act of kindness. A disease that causes your body to imitate death, stopping your heart, cooling your blood. Will the fit pass before they bury you--or after? The Afflictions is a magical compendium of pseudo-diseases, an encyclopedia of archaic medicine written by a contemporary physician and scientist. Little by little, these bizarre and mystical afflictions frame an eternal struggle: between human desire and the limits of bodily existence. First published in English in the United States, The Afflictions has since been published in Argentina, Italy, and India. This second U.S. edition features the original illustrations created by Pia Valentinis for the Italian language edition.

Wade Whitehouse, divorced, estranged from his young daughter, spends his days as a well-driller, snow-plow operator, and policeman, his nights in a wind-swept trailer park. But when a union boss is killed in an apparent hunting accident near Wade's home, and he is convinced that it is murder, he seizes the event as a chance to right many wrongs—unaware that as he unravels the mystery he himself will become unravelled. Soon his hunger for justice and self-respect become inseparable from a desperate violence.

'Afflictions & Departures' is a collection of first-person experiential essays by writer and academic Madeline Sonik. Although Sonik explores some of the salient personal experiences of her young life, the essays in 'Afflictions & Departures' are not traditional memoir. In addition to incidents and feelings recaptured from memory, Sonik seeks out connections between the microcosm of of the daily events of her childhood and the social, historical, and scientific trends of the time. 'Afflicitons & Departures' begins by considering the turbulent and changing nature of the world in the late 1950s and early 1960s-the world in which the author was conceived and born. Like many couples of that era, Madeline Sonik's parents focused on shared social and economic ambitions at the expense of authentic personal feeling. These ambitions would erode and, by the 1970s, completely collapse. In 'Afflictions & Departures ' Sonik exercises both intellectual depth and emotional range. The essays are as incisive as they are deeply moving, and leave the reader with a sense of history as it was lived, not as it is codified in countless textbooks."Startlingly original, Madeline Sonik's moving story of her childhood defies all our expectations of memoir. She captures crystalline moments of childhood memory and links them in a daisy-chain with corresponding events of the tumultuous societal change taking place outside her home. It is North America in the 1960s and 70s and her letter-perfect, child's-eye view of the world brings back that time with such intensity that the reader can almost smell and taste it. Droll, tragic, and absolutely compelling, 'Afflictions and Departures' is a visceral portrayal of a family imploding." -Jury, Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction"Her memory is dustless, capacious, uncanny. With a storyteller's skill and a poet's depth of vision, she recreates her childhood with one eye on her family and the other on the larger world. Significant cultural markers sit side-by-side with the small, painful intensities of her childhood. This memoir is crammed with pathos, yet is written with a light touch. I adore the narrator who never falls into self-pity or narcissism. The clarity of her vision makes the prose gleam and transforms autobiography into art." -Lorna Crozier, author of 'Small Beneath the Sky'"Honesty has to be at the centre of any memoir, and 'Afflictions & Departures' pulsates with raw, straightforward truth. ... Sonikhas overcome enormous challenges and turned them into literary jewels. This book encourages readers to think about family, memory and history - and above all, resilience." - Times ColonistWinner of the City of Victoria Butler Book PrizeFinalist, Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fictionNominated for the BC National Award for Canadian non-Fiction

Edith Schaeffer comes directly to grips with the eternal question of why we face suffering and affliction in this life, showing us how to trust in God alone for comfort.

In the early eleventh century the Indian Buddhist master Atisha condensed essential points from the sutras and ordered them into the text Lamp of the Path. These were then expanded upon in the fourteenth century by the Tibetan Buddhist master Lama Tsongkhapa into the text The Great Exposition on the Gradual Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim Chenmo). Venerable Thubten Chodron taught on this text over several years at Dharma Friendship Foundation, and related these practical teachings to our daily lives. These ebooks are lightly-edited transcripts of those teachings. They have been organized and formatted by Lai Wee Chiang. This third volume contains teachings on: - True Suffering - The Origin of Suffering - How the Afflictions Keep Us in Cyclic Existence - The 12 Links of Dependent Arising - The Path to Liberation

‘The Chariot that Transports to the Kingdom of the Four Kāyas: Stages of Meditation that Accomplish the Excellent Path of the Six-Branch Yogas of the Completion Stage of Glorious Kālacakra' [commonly referred to as ‘Stages of Meditation of the Excellent Path'] by Jonang Tibetan master, Bamda Thubten Gelek Gyamtso, is a commentary and guiding instruction manual text of major importance in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Kālacakra. In this text, Bamda Gelek gives practical and clear guidance on how to practise all the stages of Kālacakra: the common preliminaries, the uncommon preliminaries and the completion stage six vajra-yogas. Here, the five common preliminaries of the Kālacakra tradition, according to the Dro lineage, contained in this text, are translated and published in written English for the first time. The instructions on the completion stage, the six yogas themselves, are only supposed to be given and disseminated in a private retreat or group situation, with students who have completed all the seven, common and uncommon, preliminaries and whom the lama thinks are ready to practise the completion stage. This text is currently used not only in the Jonang tradition, but also in the Rimey, Kagyu and Nyingma traditions. It is an indispensible and authentic instruction source for anyone who wishes to begin and practise the excellent path of Kālacakra. The foreword for this book was kindly provided by the eminent Dharma scholar-translator, Dr. Cyrus Stearns. Adele Tomlin is an independent scholar and translator from England, with an MA in Philosophy from King's College, London and an MA in Tibetan Buddhist Studies from the University of Hamburg. She has also spent several years studying Buddhist Philosophy and the Tibetan language in Nepal and India.