Spirituality Buddhism

The Sound of One Monkey invites you into a surprising journey—a path of paradox, presence, and playful insight. At the heart of these 33 Zen stories are two travelers: a young monk and a mischievous monkey who talks too much. One seeks clarity. The other insists it already knows. Together, they wander through temples, riddles, forests, and absurd questions that slowly begin to unravel the illusion of control.

A thoughtful guide to navigating change and transience rooted in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of bardo. In a world where nothing lasts forever, how do we live? Life is perpetually, endlessly filled with change: new jobs and new loves, unfamiliar places and faces. And entwined in that change...

When her granddaughter was accepted to Naropa University, the celebrated author Pema Chödrön promised that she'd speak at the commencement ceremony. Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better contains the wisdom shared on that day. "What do we do when life doesn't go the way we hoped?" begins Pema. "We say 'I'm a failure.'" But what if failing wasn't just "okay"... but the most direct way to becoming a more complete, loving, and fulfilled human being?

Buddhism is a house full of treasures – practices for gaining the happiness of future lives, the bliss of liberation and the supreme happiness of enlightenment – but knowing the difference between Dharma and non-Dharma practices is the key that opens the door to all those treasures. No matter how much we know about emptiness, the chakras or controlling our vital energy through kundalini yoga, it's all pointless without this crucial understanding of how to practice Dharma, how to correct our actions.

The Dhammapada, a collection of 423 verses in 26 chapters, is perhaps the most famous of all Buddhist texts. It presents the Buddha’s teachings in a clear and highly accessible form and has been used for personal instruction and teaching for centuries throughout the Buddhist world. It comes from the Khuddaka Nikaya section of the Pali Canon and is here collected with two other key texts from the same source.

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.

For thirteen hundred years, Tibetans have been practicing shamtha/vipashyana (peaceful dwelling/insight): a profound form of meditation that illuminates and purifies the obstacles to spiritual realization. Tibetan Buddhists today regard shamatha/vipashyana as both the fundamental and the most advanced spiritual practice of all.

The Noble Eightfold Path is one of the most important teachings in Buddhism. In this series of eight lectures, given originally in 1965, Urgyen Sangharakshita introduces each stage, from right understanding to right meditation, explaining the deeper implications involved. Sangharakshita, the London-born Buddhist teacher, is one of the most influential figures in the development of Buddhism in the West.

Raised in a rationalist household in Oxford during the spiritual heyday of the '60s and '70s, an unexpected spiritual awakening would prompt a lifelong quest to integrate the experience into his life, leading him eventually to Zen Buddhism. As Shukman gets to grips with meditative practice and struggles with anxiety, depression and the chronic eczema he had had since childhood, he discovers in surprising ways the emotional, spiritual and even physical healing that he has been searching for all along.

Right now countless humans are reciting the Heart Sutra—no matter when “right now” happens to be. This ancient, essential Buddhist text carries with it a mystery of origin and a myriad of versions for consideration. The longest is 100,000 lines. The one contemplated in Inexplicable Joy is 43 lines. The ultimate is no lines at all. Just one syllable: AH.

Discover why people like Russell Simmons Jr., Jennifer Aniston, Phil Jackson, and Brad Pitt all incorporate the life-changing practice of Buddhism into their lives. Mindfulness meditation is everywhere these days, from the therapy couch to the Google campus, from prisons to athletic events.

Transcending brings together more than 30 contributors from both the Mahayana and Theravada traditions to present a vision for a truly inclusive trans Buddhist sangha in the 21st century. Shining a light on a new generation of Buddhist role models, this book gives voice to those who have long been marginalized within the Buddhist world and society at large.

Being-Time thoroughly explores Dogen's teaching on how we practice as Buddhas by understanding the relationship between being and time as it is—and as we perceive it to be. Using Dogen's Shobogenzo Uji (The True Dharma Eye, Being-Time), Shinshu Roberts offers a twofold analysis of this teaching: the meaning of the text and practice with the text, giving examples how we apply Dogen's complex teaching to our daily lives.

Perpetually bored, anxious, fatigued, and overweight, modern society has failed to deliver the happiness it promised. The remedy, Jevan Pradas argues, is in a unique synthesis of a Paleolithic lifestyle and Buddhist meditation. A sprawling journey, featuring Jevan's adventures with naked Amazonian tribes and retreats with enlightened monks to learn the secrets of optimal well-being, The Awakened Ape will teach you how to achieve deep states of bliss. All while shaping your body into the fit and healthy animal millions of years of evolution programmed you to be.

The Ashtavakra Gita is one of Ramana Maharshi’s most recommended scriptures. In this scripture, the path of self-realization is clearly laid forth in the clearest and most eloquent dialogue. Peace to all.

Drawing on decades of experience, a psychotherapist and Zen practitioner makes the Abhidharma—the framework of Buddhist psychology—accessible to a general audience for the first time. The Abhidharma, one of the 3 major text collections of the original Buddhist canon, explores the critical...

The question-and-answer format makes this introduction to Zen especially easy to understand - and also to use as a reference, as you can easily look up just the question you had in mind. The esteemed Zen teacher Norman Fischer and his old friend and teaching colleague Susan Moon (both of them in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind) give this collaborative effort a playful tone: Susan asks a question on our behalf, Norman answers it, and then Sue challenges him.

Après sa Divine Comédie, voyage sonore dans la Mythologie européenne, la romancière Amélie Nothomb nous accompagne, dans une deuxième saison très personnelle, à la rencontre du Japon de son enfance, avec ses mythes, ses rites et ses cultures. Dans ce documentaire audio de 10 épisodes, enrichi en son binaural, nous explorons les mythes et spiritualités japonais aux côtés d’Amélie Nothomb. Nous découvrons, dans ses yeux, un pays vecteur de réalisations personnelles.

This rich, timely, and highly original portrait of the Buddha explores both the archetypal religious icon and Buddha the man. In lucid and compelling prose, Armstrong brings to life the Buddha’s quest, from his renunciation of his privileged life to the discovery of a truth that he believed...

A new, four-stage approach to the popular Buddhist practice known as loving-kindness meditation, with the aim of finding unconditional love in our own hearts, in our relationships, and in our perception of the world around us. The unconditional love that we all long for - in our own lives and in the world around us - can be awakened effectively with this unique approach to the Tibetan Buddhist practice of loving-kindness meditation.