Showing titles in Buddhism

A leading thinker in the field of secular spirituality reveals why mindfulness is perhaps our most promising tool for creating real change in a polarized world. An audio workshop filled with insights and practices to help us evolve past our genetically inherent biases, develop greater clarity and inclusiveness, cultivate compassion, and more.

In her more than four decades of Buddhist practice and teaching, Boorstein has discovered that the secret to happiness lies not in monastic solitude but in cultivating our connections with the world. She reminds us that our hearts want to appreciate, encourage, and love, and that these qualities lead to a grounded sense of happiness.

Mindfulness and insight - clearly knowing what is happening in one's present moment experience - and concentration - the ability of the mind to remain steady and undistracted - are foundational elements of meditation, yet people are often confused about how these aspects of the practice fit together. Should they be doing insight meditation or concentration practices? How does concentration fit into insight meditation? To help, The Art and Skill of Buddhist Meditation offers specific guidance.

Lama Yeshe tells us that mahamudra is “the universal reality of emptiness, of nonduality” and its unique characteristic is its emphasis on meditation: “With mahamudra meditation there is no doctrine, no theology, no philosophy, no God, no Buddha. Mahamudra is only experience.” As always, Lama Yeshe’s words are direct, funny, and incredibly encouraging. He gets us to go beyond ego’s addiction to a limited sense of self and to taste the lightness and expansiveness of our own true nature.

Walk down the streets of Chinatown in any American or western European city and look around. She is there. Walk through the downtown streets, look in a shop window. She is there. Go to any city in China and open your eyes. She is there, too. Kuan Yin is the most ubiquitous Chinese deity - and the most loved. She is the living expression of compassion whose gentle face and elegant figure form the center of devotion in most Chinese homes and workplaces. Until relatively recently, she was barely known in the West, and few studies had been made of her.

A memoir of the author's decades-long friendship and spiritual journey with the late singer, songwriter, novelist, and poet Leonard Cohen. Funny, revealing, self-aware, and deeply moving, Matters of Vital Interest is an insightful memoir about Eric Lerner's relationship with his friend, whose idiosyncratic style and dignified life was deeply informed by his spiritual practices.

In this intimate and funny collection of essays on the sometimes confusing, sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious condition of being a woman over 60, Susan Moon keeps her sense of humor and she keeps her listener fully engaged. Among the pieces she has included here are an essay on the gratitude she feels for her weakening bones; observations on finding herself both an orphan and a matriarch following the death of her mother; musings on her tendency to regret the past.

Robert Thurman illuminates the Tibetan Book of the Dead with up-to-date insights for modern audiences. For centuries, this text has been read aloud to the dying, who Buddhist masters say are capable of hearing up to three days after clinical death, as a guide through the tumultuous and often terrifying process of dissolution. Now, in Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between, Professor Robert Thurman demystifies this esoteric teaching and reveals the Tibetan view of dying.

The Shobogenzo (The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye) is a revered 800-year-old Zen Buddhism classic written by the Japanese monk Eihei Dogen. Despite the timeless wisdom of his teachings, many consider the book difficult to understand. In Don't Be a Jerk, Zen priest and best-selling author Brad Warner, through accessible paraphrasing and incisive commentary, applies Dogen's teachings to modern times.

Power is one of the central issues in our lives. From work to personal relationships, the struggle for power plays a pivotal role and, more often than not, prevents us from attaining freedom and happiness. The bottom-line mentality in our culture seeps unnoticed into every other part of our lives. Thich Nhat Hanh illustrates how our current understanding of power leads us on a never-ending search for external markers like job title or salary.

Friends Big Panda and Tiny Dragon journey through the seasons of the year together, day and night, in rain and in sun. Travelling through nature, they find hope and inspiration in the world around them, realising that even in the darkest of days, spring will always return. Feel the calming influence of Big Panda, who reminds us of the bigger picture while appreciating the simplicity of small moments. Explore your surroundings with the inquisitive eye of Tiny Dragon, our friend who is big in heart if not in stature.

Traditional Eastern wisdom and real-life business experience come together in this brief and practical guide, which offers a step-by-step plan that will help readers adopt a more successful way of working and living. Karmic Management is a little book with a revolutionary message. It turns traditional business mentality on its head by stating simply that helping others become successful - suppliers, customers, even competitors - is the real key to success in life as well as in business.

Shunryu Suzuki, author of the beloved classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, is lovingly remembered as one of the greatest spiritual teachers of the 20th century - whose legacy is felt in every facet of American Zen. This monumental biography of Suzuki, written and read by his student David Chadwick, weaves together a rich tapestry of stories and memories of Suzuki’s students, family, and friends. In this updated and revised audiobook edition, Chadwick also offers rare excerpts from archived recordings of Suzuki’s teachings in the great Zen master's own voice.

In this thought-provoking new book, the Dalai Lama argues that religion is not a necessity for pursuing a spiritual life. Rather, focusing on tolerance and understanding between religions, as well as tolerance and understanding between believers (of any faith) and non-believers is the way forward. The way to achieve such an approach, he proposes, is through a system of secular ethics grounded in a deep appreciation of our common humanity.

William C. Martin has freshly reinterpreted the Tao Te Ching to speak directly and clearly to the most difficult of modern tasks—parenting. With its combination of free verse and judicious advice, The Parent's Tao Te Ching addresses the great themes that permeate the Tao and that support loving parent-child relationships: responding without judgment, emulating natural processes, and balancing between doing and being.

The excitement you feel after hearing good news or achieving a goal is fleeting, but true happiness - that is, the warm feeling of deep contentment and joy - is lasting, and it can be yours in every moment. The Buddha's Way of Happiness is a guide to putting aside your anxieties about the future, regrets about the past, and constant longing to change your life for the better, and awakening to the joy of living.

Buddhism has a lot to say about suffering - and there are likely few times we suffer more intensely than when we break up with a romantic partner. It feels like you may never recover sometimes. But Lodro Rinzler has wonderfully good news for those suffering heartbreak: The 2,500-year-old teachings of the Buddha are the ultimate antidote for emotional pain. And you don't need to be a Buddhist for them to apply to you.

Legions of self-help authors rightly urge personal development as the key to happiness, but they typically fail to focus on its most important objective: hardiness. Though that which doesn't kill us can make us stronger, as Nietzsche tells us, few authors today offer any insight into just how to springboard from adversity to strength. It doesn't just happen automatically, and it takes practice. New scientific research suggests that resilience isn't something with which only a fortunate few of us have been born, but rather something we can all take specific action to develop.

Buddhism for Mothers explores the potential to be with your children in the all-important present moment; to gain the most joy out of being with them. How can this be done calmly and with a minimum of anger, worry and negative thinking? How can mothers negotiate the changed conditions of their relationships with partners, family and even with friends? Using Buddhist practices, Sarah Napthali offers ways of coping with the day-to-day challenges of motherhood.

Align yourself with spirit and start living a balanced and peaceful life today with the help of Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. In this life-changing program, he shares profound and practical teachings from the ancient Tao Te Ching, 81 classic verses regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence. Wayne combines empowering wisdom with the natural laws of the universe to offer you spiritual truths and essential guidelines to apply to your life in today’s world.