Social Consciousness

Buddhism offers a profound yet practical path to enlightenment. In this loving and generous book, the American-born and Tibetan-trained Lama Surya Das offers at once a definitive and nonsectarian guide to the wisdom found in ancient Tibetan teachings and a tried and true path of spiritual transformation. The radical and compelling message of Buddhism tells us that each of us has the wisdom, awareness, love, and power of the Buddha within; yet most of us are too often like sleeping Buddhas.

Under the guidance of such celebrated masters as Ed Parker and the immortal Bruce Lee, Joe Hyams vividly recounts his more than twenty-five years of experience in the martial arts. In his illuminating story, Hyams reveals to listeners how the daily application of Zen principles not only developed his physical expertise but gave him the mental discipline to control his personal problems - self-image, work pressure, competition.

En esta obra Jacobo Grinberg retoma una idea compartida por los estudios fisiológicos del cerebro y la filosofía: el mundo exterior es una descripción basada enprocesos y operaciones que ocurren en nuestro interior, es decir, en nuestro cerebro y conciencia. De este modo, lo que llamamos “realidad” sería un constructo basado en la activación de ciertos patrones neuronales mediante la percepción, según explica el propio autor.

Many of us often feel challenged by the question of what gives our lives true meaning. What are we searching for? How do we know we are on the right path? In Playing Dead, Robert Sheehan shares intimate reflections on his own search for purpose, looking back at this journey so far and sharing the lessons he has learnt along the way. Meditation is at the heart of Robert's route to awakening and here he reveals how we can welcome practice into our daily lives to nurture a quiet mind and content heart.

Mindfulness has attracted ever‑growing interest and tens of thousands of practitioners, who have come to the discipline from both within and outside the Buddhist tradition. In Fully Present, leading mindfulness researchers and educators Dr. Sue Smalley and Diana Winston provide an all‑in‑one guide for anyone interested in bringing mindfulness to daily life as a means of enhancing well‑being. This new edition, how with a new afterword, provides both a scientific explanation for how mindfulness positively and powerfully affects the brain and the body.

In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In Feeling & Knowing, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large.

We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain - an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is "a virtual self in a virtual reality." But if the self is not "real," why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it?

Merging Taoist philosophy, Hindu principles, and Confucianism along with scientific findings, Jason Gregory outlines the practice of wu-wei as a vehicle to realize our innate freedom, revealing that when we release our ego and allow life to unfold as it will, we align ourselves more closely with our goals and cultivate skill and mastery along the way. Equating "being in the zone" with a stillness of the mind, Gregory shares meditation practices coupled with yoga exercises from Patanjali that allow you to approach life with a mastery of acceptance.

When trying to deal with our current troubles and anxieties, it can be deeply irritating to be asked to consider our childhoods. They happened so long ago; we can probably barely remember, let alone relate to, the little person we once were. But one of the most powerful explanations for why we may, as adults, be struggling, is that we were denied the opportunity to fully be ourselves in our earliest years. This book is a guide to better understanding our younger selves in order to shape who we wish to be in the future.

Conventional science has long held the position that 'the mind' is merely an illusion, a side effect of electrochemical activity in the physical brain. Now in paperback, Dr Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley's groundbreaking work, The Mind and the Brain, argues exactly the opposite: that the mind has a life of its own. Dr Schwartz, a leading researcher in brain dysfunctions, and Wall Street Journal science columnist Sharon Begley demonstrate that the human mind is an independent entity that can shape and control the functioning of the physical brain.

The Fullness of the Ground distills Dr. Judith Blackstone’s decades of teaching into the essentials of the nondual spiritual path. Embodied nondual realization can have a profound effect on your senses, your experience of your own authentic existence, and your relationships and ability to love.

Stupidity is all around us, from the coworker who won't stop hitting "reply all" to the former high-school classmate posting conspiracy theories on Facebook. But in order to vanquish it, we must first understand it. In The Psychology of Stupidity, some of the world's leading psychologists and thinkers - including a Nobel Prize winner and best-selling authors - will show you: why smart people sometimes believe in utter nonsense; how our lazy brains cause us to make the wrong decisions; why trying to debate fools is a trap; and more!

As physicists work toward completing a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The "theory of everything" that appears to be emerging includes everything but us: the feelings, meanings, consciousness, and purposes that make us (and many of our animal cousins) what we are.

Have you ever done nondual inquiry and said to yourself, "I understand it intellectually, but I don't feel it. It's not my experience!" If so, The Direct Path, inspired by Sri Atmananda (Krishna Menon), could be for you. This book is the "missing manual" to the direct path. Direct-path inquiry is presented from beginning to end and beyond in a user-friendly way. The core of this book is a set of 40 experiments designed to help dissolve the most common nondual sticking points, from simple to subtle.

"Lorsque j'ai reçu votre première lettre, chère amie, je vous ai répondu immédiatement. Avoir de vos nouvelles plus de trente ans après m'a procuré une telle émotion que ma réaction ne pouvait être qu'un cri instantané. Votre deuxième lettre, que j'ai sous les yeux, je l'ai gardée longtemps avec moi, c'est seulement aujourd'hui que je tente de vous donner une réponse. La raison de ce retard, vous l'avez sans doute devinée, puisque votre missive contient une singulière requête : 'Parlez-moi de l'âme'..."

Written in clear, accessible language, this book seeks to free listeners from their suffering by drawing attention to the direct experience of self as abiding, loving, boundless awareness. Using practical exercises and meditations, the author guides listeners through a process of spiritual awakening, deconstructing self-delusions and integrating a new concept of existence that is free from the suffering of individual selfhood, but which acknowledges the attachments, traumatic experiences, and emotional pain of being human.

As a neuroscientist, Marjorie Woollacott had no doubts that the brain was a purely physical entity controlled by chemicals and electrical pulses. When she experimented with meditation for the first time, however, her entire world changed. Woollacott's journey through years of meditation has made her question the reality she built her career upon and has forced her to ask what human consciousness really is.

Drawing together many histories - of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores - Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers.

With a unique combination of ancient and contemporary wisdom from Tibetan Buddhism, The Diamond Cutter presents readers with empowering strategies for success in their personal and professional lives.

In this original and penetrating audiobook, Lewis R. Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black existentialism and anti-Blackness, takes the listener on a journey through the historical development of racialized Blackness, the problems this kind of consciousness produces, and the many creative responses from Black and non-Black communities in contemporary struggles for dignity and freedom. Skillfully navigating a difficult and traumatic terrain, Gordon cuts through the mist of White narcissism and the versions of consciousness it perpetuates.