Spirituality Buddhism

The dumpster fire of life rages on, but you got this. Practice six rules to keep you grounded, weather the storm, and actually be a decent person. It may seem like the world is going to hell in a hand basket right now. Whether it's big stuff like politics and climate change, or just the daily spin of paying your bills, getting to work on time, and fending off social media trolls, we can all admit, modern life ain't easy.

The Venerable Ayya Khema was beloved for her crystal-clear presentation, the extremely practical guidance she always gave, and the open-hearted quality of her teachings. In The Path to Peace, she presents a complete course in the active and intentional process to cultivate peace through metta, unconditional love. Peace is the sum of many parts, namely the fifteen wholesome qualities the Buddha himself noted in the Metta Sutta, including usefulness, mildness, humility, contentment, receptivity, and others.

Insight meditation teacher Shaila Catherine offers an accessible approach to training the mind that is guided by the Buddha’s pragmatic instructions on removing distracting thoughts. Drawing on two scriptures in the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Shaila shows you how to overcome habitual modes of thinking, develop deeper concentration, and discover the insights into emptiness that are vital for a liberating spiritual path.

In this gripping account, John Avedon draws on his work and travels with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama to bring us the riveting story of Tibet and its temporal and spiritual leader. Included is an extensive interview with the Dalai Lama, who speaks about the conditions in Tibet, the mind of a Buddha, and the events of his life. Rigorously researched, passionately written, the original edition of In Exile From the Land of Snows was instrumental in launching the modern Tibet movement when it was published in 1984.

Lifelong meditation teacher Eric Harrison intimately understands the benefits of mindfulness, from improved focus and better judgment to relaxation and inner peace. He’s helped 10s of thousands of students to achieve these goals by rooting his practice in the Buddha’s original text on how to meditate and live mindfully: The Satipatthana Sutta. Brain Training with the Buddha offers a secular perspective on this ancient wisdom that requires no familiarity with Buddhism itself - only openness to the Buddha’s original teachings.

Lori Deschene, creator of TinyBuddha.com and the self-help journals Tiny Buddha’s Worry Journal and Tiny Buddha’s Gratitude Journal, shares 40 unique perspectives and insights to help you stop judging yourself so harshly. Featuring stories selected from hundreds of TinyBuddha.com contributors, Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself provides an honest look at what it means to overcome critical, self-judging thoughts to create a peaceful, empowered life.

Using the traditional Tibetan Buddhist framework of the Four Reminders—the preciousness of human birth, the truth of impermanence, the reality of suffering, and the inescapability of karma—Khandro Rinpoche explains why and how we could all better use this short life to pursue a spiritual path and make the world a better place. The book includes contemplative exercises that encourage us to appreciate the tremendous potential of the human body and mind.

Why do things happen the way they do in our lives? How do we create the causes for a happy life? The Buddhist practice of mind training gives us the answer to these questions: it involves overcoming our self-centered attitude and replacing it with an attitude that cherishes others. This, in turn, leads us to act in ways that naturally lead away from suffering and toward happiness—in short, to create good karma.

At their first meeting, a remarkable bond was sparked between His Holiness the Dalai Lama, one of the world's most revered spiritual leaders, and the psychologist Paul Ekman, whose groundbreaking work helped to define the science of emotions. Now these two luminaries share their thinking about science and spirituality, the bonds between East and West, and the nature and quality of our emotional lives. In this unparalleled series of conversations, the Dalai Lama and Ekman prod and push toward answers to the central questions of emotional experience.

Hope for all those who want to meditate but feel they can't because they think too much: a remedy. Making friends with the infamous "monkey mind" to make it a means for healing and awakening.

How 12 Tibetan Buddhist teachers succeed in merging East and West - including Pema Chodron, Joan Halifax, and Thubten Chodron, among others. Personal reflections and life stories from 12 contemporary female Tibetan Buddhist teachers, both Westerners and Tibetans, who share insights into how they discovered their true calling, overcame barriers, and developed the courage, determination, and wisdom to progress on the spiritual path. What drives a young London librarian to board a ship to India, meditate in a remote cave by herself for twelve years, and then build a flourishing nunnery in the Himalayas?

Featuring accounts by practitioners living everyday lives, this introduction to Vipassana meditation provides a way for listeners to learn more about its benefits. Explained is what takes place before, during, and after a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Each participant follows the same discipline: silence, a basic moral code known as the five precepts, a prescribed timetable, a vegetarian diet, and a commitment to practicing only what is taught at the retreat.

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.

Do you feel at home right now? Or do you sense a hovering anxiety or uncertainty, an underlying unease that makes you feel just a bit uncomfortable, a bit distracted and disconnected from those around you? In The Road Home, Ethan Nichtern, a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, investigates the journey each of us takes to find where we belong.

Aging isn’t easy. But it can still be filled with joy—maybe even more joy than we expect. Alive Until You’re Dead offers a Zen approach to aging. Zen teacher and writer Susan Moon’s stories explore being present with what is, not turning away from what’s difficult, wishing for and working for the wellbeing of others, and being willing not to know what’s next. Moon writes of her most personal vulnerabilities in the service of connecting with everyone. These field notes from an old human being invite us to feel more alive in the final stretch, whatever it holds.

Exploring Buddha’s core teachings, the author shares his own secular and accessible interpretations of the Four Noble Truths, the Three Treasures, and the Eightfold Path within the context of his lineage and the teachings of his teacher and the teachers before him. He looks at Buddha’s teachings on our singular reality that appears as a multiplicity of things and on the “self” that perceives reality, translating powerful spiritual experience into the vernacular of modern life.

The Khuddaka Nikāya is different in character from the other four Nikāyas of the Sutta Pitaka in the Theravada Pāli Canon in that rather than being a single work it is, as its customary translation ‘Minor Anthologies’ suggests, a collection of independent works.

This classic memoir by the remarkable French explorer and Buddhist Alexandra David-Néel is the one of the greatest Buddhist travelogues of the 20th century. She was the first European woman to meet the Dalai Lama (in the 1920s) and in 1924 became the first to enter the forbidden Tibetan capital, Lhasa. She had already spent a decade travelling through China and Sikkim, India; lived and meditated in a cave on the Tibetan border; and everywhere learned about Buddhism from hermits, mystics and bandits.

Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks.

A set of three talks given by Dr. Hawkins. Dr. Hawkins explains the difference between sex and making love. He presents sex as an expression of the energy of aliveness and the joy of being. He discusses sex and spiritual conflict, along with guilt, religion, programming, and social belief systems. He describes low-energy and high-energy sex, how to overcome impotence and lack of response, and how to transcend desire so that one is not at the effect of it.