Collected by the author over many years, these stories from the Yoga and Zen traditions are the flint and steel that strike a spark that lights up the mind with insights that one should ponder daily to bring to light ever deeper meaning. They may be similar in intent to Zen Koans – but they are rather different in content. TIn many Zen Koans someone says or does something extraordinarily inappropriate, which catches your attention just because it's extraordinary –but afterwards the light from them has to be applied to daily life. In contrast, the stories here are often ordinary incidents from ordinary lives (not that there aren't some extraordinary ones too!) that nevertheless open the mind's eye to the vast potential for realization and inspiration to be found in daily life.

With their centuries-long development, the English landscape garden, the formal French garden, as well Japanese and Chinese gardens constitute an unparalleled repository of design solutions familiar throughout the world. They are frequently drawn upon as reference works, but often in a piecemeal and haphazard fashion and from botanical or art-historical vantage points. That is where the books of this new series come in. They present the various garden types from the perspective of contemporary landscape and garden design. Starting from the formidable beauty of the world’s most distinguished gardens, they point the way toward the essential compositional principles, the plants most commonly utilized and their most characteristic uses, and the possibilities for employing them in contemporary projects, thus providing readers with a rich source of inspiration for their own designs and creations. The panorama of "The Chinese Garden" stretches from the surviving historical gardens all the way to such modern examples as the garden at the Bank of China in Hong Kong (designed by I. M. Pei), Ai Weiwei’s Yiwu Riverbank Park, the Garden of Flowering Fragrance in the Los Angeles, California, region and the Garden of Awakening Orchids in Portland, Oregon.

First recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma. Asked by a great king to awaken the dulled intelligence of his three idle sons, the aging Sarma is said to have composed the great work as a series of entertaining and edifying fables narrated by a wide range of humans and animals, and together intended to provide the young princes with vital guidance for life. Since first leaving India before AD 570, the Pancatantra has been widely translated and has influenced a cast number of works in India, the Arab world and Europe, including the Arabian Nights, the Canterbury Tales and the Fables of La Fontaine. Enduring and profound, it is among the earliest and most popular of all books of fables.

Bayport, a small town on the south shore of Long Island, is the very embodiment of a village that has retained the charm and allure that once drew summer visitors at the end of the nineteenth century. Since Bayport is situated on the Great South Bay, most of its 8,000 residents revel in the view of Fire Island, that slender strand known as a barrier beach, that keeps the Atlantic Ocean honest and where it belongs. Although the history of Bayport reaches back to its origin in 1786 with William Nicoll's conveyance of inherited lands (celebrated in 1986 by a bicentennial ceremony), the pictorial history shown herein starts in 1825 with a photograph of the second wooden schoolhouse in Bayport and a line drawing of the same.

ABSTRACT The present study gives status of physic-chemical parameters of Lotus Lake, located on Toranmal Plateau at 21° 53’ 20’’ N latitude, 74° 28’ 01’’ E longitude and 3201 Ft., above MSL. Lotus Lake is a shallow perennial water body. Physico-chemical parameters were studied for two years (December 2006 to November 2008). The yearly data is divided into four seasons. The statistical analysis Mean, SEM, One way ANOVA and Pearson Correlation is carried out. Present study supports that physico-chemical properties of freshwater body are characteristics of the climatic, geochemical, geomorphological and pollution conditions prevailing in the drainage basin and the underlying aquifer. Significant seasonal variations in physico-chemical parameters were recorded at this fresh water wetland.