Spirituality Buddhism

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 we suffer? Is there a purpose to our pain? Reflecting on his own journey from Esquire magazine editor-in-chief to Buddhist meditation teacher, Phillip Moffitt provides a fresh perspective on the Buddha's ancient wisdom, showing how to move from suffering to new awareness and unanticipated joy. With a strong message of self-empowerment, Dancing with Life offers a prescriptive path for finding joy and peace that will appeal to anyone searching for a more authentic life.

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.

What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive - experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing. The "great spring" of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again - the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example.

It is widely accepted that the Sutta Nipata contains the earliest recorded version of the Buddha's teaching. It is an anthology of poetry and prose - 70 titled suttas of varied instruction and temperament arranged in five chapters.

The search for wisdom has been the pole-star of humanity for 6,000 years. Religions have come and gone, philosophies have failed, but those surviving wells of wisdom go deep and yield sweet refreshment for the soul. Now, the greatest books of Eastern wisdom are brought together for the sake of those seeking the path of enlightenment and liberation.

This compelling and innovative view of Zen practice gives people in their 20s and 30s a contemporary approach to spiritual development that is meaningful and actionable within the complexities of modern life. Grounded deeply in the tradition of Soto Zen, professional mediators and Zen practitioners, Diane Hamilton and Gabriel Wilson extol the virtues of sitting meditation, dharma study, and the student-teacher relationship. At the same time, they offer insight into the importance of emotional development and the maturation of relationship skills.

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.

Through stories from the ancient Pali canon of Buddhism and personal reflections on modern life, Dharma teacher Kevin Griffin reveals the richness and multifaceted nature of loving-kindness or metta on the Buddhist path. Along with the other brahmaviharas or “divine abodes” of compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, the practice of loving-kindness is not only a meditation technique—it’s a radical way of life based in wisdom, ethics, and compassion for all beings.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama provides intimate details on an advanced meditation practice called Dzogchen using a visionary poem by the 19th-century saint Patrul Rinpoche, author of the Buddhist classic Words of My Perfect Teacher. The Dalai Lama deftly connects how training the mind in compassion for other beings is directly related to - and in fact a prerequisite for - the very pinnacle of Buddhist meditation.

The rewards of mindfulness practice are well proven: reduced stress, improved concentration, and an overall sense of well-being. But those benefits are just the beginning. Mindfulness in action - mindfulness applied throughout life - can help us work more effectively with life's challenges, expanding our appreciation and potential for creative engagement.

It was the early 1960s. The place, a far-off corner of the Himalayas long fabled in Tibetan tradition to be hiding a valley of immortality among its peaks and glaciers - a real-life Shangri-La. They waited generations for the prophesied lama to come, the one with the secret knowledge of how to "open" the Hidden Land. Then, one day, he came. His name was Tulshuk Lingpa.

For more than half a century, in such books as The Art of Happiness and The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Inner Peace, the Dalai Lama has guided us along the path to compassion and taught us how to improve our inner lives. In A Force for Good, with the help of his longtime friend Daniel Goleman, the New York Times best-selling author of Emotional Intelligence, the Dalai Lama explains how to turn our compassionate energy outward. This revelatory and inspiring work provides a singular vision for transforming the world in practical and positive ways.

We can restore our inherent connection to nature, each other, our ancestors, and ourselves, and remember our fundamental gift of belonging. With our world experiencing the deep effects of loneliness, environmental detachment, and digital overload, this pocket-sized How To book reminds us of our crucial need to connect to ourselves, our ancestors, and our planet. Written with characteristic simplicity and kindness, these wise meditations teach us how to remember, at any time, our fundamental gift of belonging.

From self-realization and self-promotion to self-help and the selfie, the modern world encourages us to be self-obsessed. We are even told that finding ourselves is the key to happiness. Better to lose yourself! More than 2,500 years ago, the Buddha argued that the self is an illusion—and that our belief in it is the cause of most, if not all, of our suffering. How to Lose Yourself presents lively, accessible, and expert new translations of ancient Buddhist writings about the central, unique, and powerful Buddhist teaching of "no-self."

As the category of women's spirituality continues to grow, The Buddha's Wife offers to a broad audience for the first time the intimate and profound story of Princess Yasodhara, the wife Buddha left behind, and her alternative journey to spiritual enlightenment.

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.

In The Shamanic Bones of Zen, celebrated author and Buddhist teacher Zenju Earthlyn Manuel undertakes a rich exploration of the connections between contemporary Zen practice and shamanic, or indigenous, spirituality. Drawing on her personal journey with the Black church, with African, Caribbean, and Native American ceremonial practices, and with Nichiren and Zen Buddhism, she builds a compelling case for cultivating the shamanic, or magical, elements in Buddhism - many of which have been marginalized by colonialist and modernist forces in the religion.

In the national best seller Living with the Devil, Batchelor traces the trajectory from the words of the Buddha and Christ, through the writings of Shantideva, Milton, and Pascal, to the poetry of Baudelaire, the fiction of Kafka, and the findings of modern physics and evolutionary biology to examine who we really are and to rest in the uncertainty that we may never know. Like his previous best seller, Living with the Devil is an introduction to Buddhism that encourages listeners to nourish their "buddha nature" and make peace with the devils that haunt human life.

“To be a buddha is not a difficult job. It is not some achievement for which you need a Nobel Prize”. Commenting on anecdotes and haikus by the Zen masters, Osho explains that being a buddha is the easiest thing in the world - it has already happened without you knowing. The empty heart, a place beyond thoughts and feelings, is within everyone. Meditation, and becoming truly thoughtless, is the key. Osho presents Zen as potent, alive, and relevant to the modern world.