Book picks similar to
The Basic Method of Meditation by Ajahn Brahmavamso
buddhism
buddhism-meditation
free-online
meditation
Sleeping Solo: One Woman's Journey Into Life After Marriage
Audrey Faye - 2014
It left little bits of brain and heart matter all over the walls, and the certain, irrevocable knowledge that my life had just radically changed shape forever. I’d been unceremoniously dumped out onto the road of a new journey. I expected it to be dusty and hard and short on food and water, a gut-wrenching endurance test that would take a long time to wind its way to ease and peace and a modicum of happiness. That’s not what happened at all. There have been hard days and dusty ones, and I do my best, in this missive from the road, to speak the truth of those moments. But the words clamoring at my door weren’t the dusty ones - they were the ones full of surprised pride in the journey that has actually happened instead. The ones full of abundance and purpose and happiness and the wild, bubbling need to dance. Yeah. Not what I expected from my post-marriage apocalypse either. Welcome to Sleeping Solo, my anthem song from the road. It's 17,000 words, or about 60 pages, and every one of them comes straight from my heart.
The Ancient Science of Mantras: Wisdom of the Sages
Om Swami - 2017
All you need to know is how to invoke a mantra. And, this is exactly what this book is about.In a never-before work, veering from the ancient tradition of guru-disciple secrecy, Himalayan ascetic and bestselling author Om Swami bares all the essentials and fundamentals of invoking the sonic energy of mantras for material and spiritual fulfillment.Drawing on his decades of first-hand experiences and intense practice on the path of mantra sadhana, with his characteristic simplicity and humor, Om Swami explains:•The origin of mantras and their application today•Why and how mantras work•How to choose a mantra and invoke it•How to succeed in mantra sadhana without a human guru•Everything else you need to know about mantra yogaThe Ancient Science of Mantras, magnificent and easy-to-read, is your ultimate guide to self-transformation. Brimming with wisdom, anecdotes and his experiences, the sadhanas given here have been practiced and verified by Swami. An indispensable companion on your spiritual journey.
Escape from Saigon
Michael Morris - 2017
The North Vietnamese Army routed South Vietnam’s forces, resulting in thousands of refugees pouring into Saigon once known as The Paris of the Orient. The world watched and waited for what many expected would be a bloodbath. Escape from Saigon a Novel follows the fears, romance, danger and heroism of ordinary people trapped in the besieged city. Among them are Matt Moran a former GI attempting to rescue his Vietnamese relatives; Lisette Vo, NBS-TV's first Vietnamese-American correspondent who chronicles the final days with Sam Esposito the hard-hitting Washington Legend journalist; an American businessman risking his life to smuggle out his employees; and the last remaining US diplomatic personnel in Saigon, including the disillusioned Ambassador Graham Martin, military liaisons, and CIA operatives, double agents and spies. The NVA onslaught is spearheaded by two officers—one intent on maintaining military restraint, the other bent on revenge and will sweep up families, friends, and comrades in this final chapter of a war that has already taken millions of lives.Escape from Saigon is a story of a city and its inhabitants struggling to survive in its most desperate hours—a tale that stays true to the historic record while recounting moments of human hardship, courage, and triumph.
Self-Unfoldment (The Self-Discovery Series)
Chinmayananda Saraswati - 1993
Through the lens of Vedanta, Swami Chinmayananda shows us how to tap the immence potential power of our inner resources and thereby transform our lives.
Buddhism: Beginner's Guide: Bring Peace and Happiness to Your Everyday Life
Ian Tuhovsky - 2014
In this book I will show you what happened and how it was. No matter if you are totally green when it comes to Buddha's teachings or maybe you have already heard something about them - this book will help you systematize your knowledge and will inspire you to learn more and to take steps to make your life positively better! I invite you to take this beatiful journey into the graceful and meaningful world of Buddhism with me today! In This Book I Will Tell You About: -Why Would You Want To Incorporate Buddha's Teachings Into Your Life? -What Buddhism Is And What it Definitely Is Not? -What is the Essence of Buddhism? -Three Main Branches of Buddhism -Buddha's Life and Teachings -Basics of Buddhism (Five Basic Buddha's Principles) -How to Cease Your Suffering -Karma, Rebirth and Reincarnation; Difference between Rebirth and Reincarnation -What Happens After Death According to Buddhism? -Where and How to Start? -The Art of Meditation -Benefits of practicing Buddhism in Everyday Life+ My Personal Experiences! -Further Resources to Continue Your Journey!
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book
Dan Harris - 2017
After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to become one of meditation’s most vocal public proponents.Here’s what he’s fixated on now: Science suggests that meditation can lower blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain, among numerous other benefits. And yet there are millions of people who want to meditate but aren’t actually practicing. What’s holding them back?In this guide to mindfulness and meditation for beginners and experienced meditators alike, Harris and his friend Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and “Meditation MacGyver,” embark on a cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that stop people from meditating. They rent a rock-star tour bus (whose previous occupants were Parliament Funkadelic) and travel across eighteen states, talking to scores of would-be meditators—including parents, military cadets, police officers, and even a few celebrities. They create a taxonomy of the most common issues (“I suck at this,” “I don’t have the time,” etc.) and offer up science-based life hacks to help people overcome them.The book is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions. Amid it all unspools the strange and hilarious story of what happens when a congenitally sarcastic, type-A journalist and a groovy Canadian mystic embark on an epic road trip into America’s neurotic underbelly, as well as their own.
Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom
Dzogchen Ponlop - 2010
It’s the part of you that already knows how to break free of fear and unhappiness. This rebel is the voice of your own awakened mind. It’s your rebel buddha—the sharp, clear intelligence that resists the status quo. It wakes you up from the sleepy acceptance of your day-to-day reality and shows you the power of your enlightened nature. It’s the vibrant, insightful energy that compels you to seek the truth. Dzogchen Ponlop guides you through the inner revolution that comes from unleashing your rebel buddha. He explains how, by training your mind and understanding your true nature, you can free yourself from needless suffering. He presents a thorough introduction to the essence of the Buddha’s teachings and argues that, if we are to bring these teachings fully into our personal experience, we must go beyond the cultural trappings of traditional Asian Buddhism. “We all want to find some meaningful truth about who we are,” he says, “but we can only find it guided by our own wisdom—by our own rebel buddha within.”
Sex, Drugs & Meditation
Mary-Lou Stephens - 2013
Darkly funny and beautifully told, Sex, Drugs and Meditation is a tale for those of us who confuse being busy with being happy; the story of a woman who dared herself to stop talking and start living - and loving.Mary-Lou Stephens was lucky to make it into her forties. Therapy and 12 Step programs helped her recover from her upbringing in an evangelical household; her habit of shoplifting through drama school; her addictions to food, drugs and alcohol; a string of failed love affairs and the break up of the band she thought was really going to make it. Things are looking up when she finally lands her dream job in radio. Life is good. Until her dream job becomes a nightmare. Determined to avoid MORE therapy and desperate to cope with an increasingly toxic work environment, Mary-Lou signs up for a ten-day meditation retreat that requires total silence, endless hours of sitting cross-legged, and no dinner. For a woman who talks for a living, is rarely still and eats for comfort, this was never going to be an easy task. Sex, Drugs and Meditation is a tale of learning to sit still, shut up and gain wisdom. Mary-Lou must take the hardest path of all: to confront and overcome, once and for all, the darkness within.
The Mindful Geek: Mindfulness Meditation for Secular Skeptics
Michael Taft - 2015
In the book, Michael Taft gives you step-by-step instructions in the powerful and reliable techniques of mindfulness meditation, and outlines the psychological and neuroscientific research underpinning these practices. An excellent book for beginners who are atheists, agnostics, and skeptics of all stripes who want help with anxiety, depression, and to enjoy life more.
Meditation within Eternity: The Modern Mystics Guide to Gaining Unlimited Spiritual Energy, Accessing Higher Consciousness and Meditation Techniques for Spiritual Growth
Eric Pepin - 2012
Easiest Way to MeditateThis meditation was specially designed to give you maximum results with minimum effort. It's really an "all in one" technique where one single action allows you to maximize your results.2. Rake-in Spiritual EnergyThe technique is direct and unmediated. It is a new meditation method that you will not find anywhere else that allows you to absorb massive amounts of spiritual energy.3. Feel inner peace and serenityImprove the flow of your energy, release your emotional blocks and re-balance your energy body.4. Unfold deep inner experiencesDevelop your sixth sense and inner powers to have direct, real spiritual experiences.5. Learn To Sense, Feel And Affect Spiritual/Psychic/Metaphysical EnergyThis energy controls, manipulates and directs you every day of your life and 99.9% of people have no idea they are being affected by it. Remove negative energy, replace it with positive.6. Develop your "bubble of personal energy"Multiply the synchronicities in your life (chance meetings, opportunities, luck), connect and communicate with your Higher Self, and Find the source of that feeling that is calling you all by creating a perfect, 'magnetic' bubble of higher energy. Meditation within Eternity is a journey into the heart of being spiritual in the modern world. Practical yet provocative, it pushes the limits of what spirituality is conceived to be, more than just relaxation and bits of Zen wisdom, it is the extraordinary yet invisible aspect of the universe we have forgotten how to touch, hear and see.This guide offers simple methods to gain unlimited spiritual energy, a forgotten resource and why many fail to truly grow spiritually. It also solves the missing link to accessing higher consciousness. It is the natural magnetic sense, or sixth sense, each of us possesses. The universe, reality, is molded by magnetism. We have an organic body, and an electric one. This electric, energy body, is capable of tapping the electromagnetic nature of reality. Following simple techniques and practical advice you will learn how it is possible to tap into the source code of reality.Meditation within Eternity provides practical, short meditation techniques for real spiritual growth. It serves a humble purpose – to give you the ability to experience spiritual awakening for yourself.
Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time
Rick Hanson - 2007
Research has shown that integrating little daily practices into your life can actually change the way your brain works.This guide offers simple things you can do routinely, mainly inside your mind, that will support and increase your sense of security and worth, resilience, effectiveness, well-being, insight, and inner peace. For example, they include: taking in the good, protecting your brain, feeling safer, relaxing anxiety about imperfection, not knowing, enjoying your hands, taking refuge, and filling the hole in your heart. At first glance, you may be tempted to underestimate the power of these seemingly simple practices. But they will gradually change your brain through what’s called experience-dependent neuroplasticity.Moment to moment, whatever you're aware of—sounds, sensations, thoughts, or your most heartfelt longings—is based on underlying neural activities. This book offers simple brain training practices you can do every day to protect against stress, lift your mood, and find greater emotional resilience.Just one practice each day can help you to:Be good to yourself Enjoy life as it is Build on your strengths Be more effective at home and work Make peace with your emotions With over fifty daily practices you can use anytime, anywhere, Just One Thing is a groundbreaking combination of mindfulness meditation and neuroscience that can help you deepen your sense of well-being and unconditional happiness.
How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life: Opening Your Heart to Confidence, Intimacy, and Joy
Susan Piver - 2007
How Not to be Afraid of Your Own Life features the "7-Day Freedom from Fear Meditation Program" a guided journey into discovering what may be holding you back from experiencing life to the fullest. Using meditation, journaling, and other reflective practices you will find a respite from everyday pressures and learn techniques to help you re-enter your busy life refreshed, renewed, and ready to live the life you were born to. Advance Praise for How Not to be Afraid of Your Own Life "I have long recommended meditation as central to a healthy lifestyle. Susan Piver teaches this important practice in a trustworthy and practical way - and shows us how to use its lessons to create a fearless life." -Andrew Weil, M.D., author of Healthy Aging "Susan Piver has worked her magic again. She gives us an everyday approach to Buddhism, so that all of us can benefit from the wisdom of this magnificent philosophy. In this wacky world we all need practices and perspectives that ground us in the here and now. Navigate and swim the river more gracefully with Susan's advice."-Rodney Yee, author of Yoga: The Poetry of the Body "In direct and playful language, Susan Piver's new book translates Buddhist wisdom to show its relevance to daily life." -Stephen Cope, author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self "Susan Piver has written a beautiful book about how to overcome fear and be empowered in your life based on her years of Buddhist practice."-Judith Orloff, MD, author of Positive Energy: 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear into Vibrance, Strength, and Love "How we can live a life more awake, present and connected without the impediments of beliefs, ideas, and fears created from past experience? In simple but startlingly clear language, Piver takes the mystery out of Buddhism, and makes it relevant to our struggles to be happy in the 21st century." -Mark Hyman, M.D., author of Ultrametabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss Susan Piver is the author of the bestselling The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say "I Do". She has been a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, CBS The Early Show, The Today Show and featured in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Modern Bride, O Magazine, and Redbook. She has trained in Buddhist practice for ten years, is a graduate of Buddhist seminary, and is an authorized meditation teacher. She is the meditation expert on www.drweil.com and www.healthyageing.com. She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. Visit her website at www.susanpiver.com
The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language
Natalie Goldberg - 2013
Walk. Write. These are the barest bones of Natalie Goldberg’s revolutionary writing and life practice, which she presents here in book form for the first time. A whole new slant on writing that she developed since the publication of her classic Writing Down the Bones, True Secret workshops have been limited until now to small, intensive groups at a remote center in the rural Southwest. In The True Secret of Writing, Goldberg makes this popular seminar available to any reader. The True Secret is for everyone, like eating and sleeping. It allows you to discover something real about your life, to mine the rich awareness in your mind, and to ground and empower yourself. Goldberg guides you through your own personal or group retreat, illuminating the steps of sitting in silent open mind, walking anchored to the earth, and writing without criticism. Just as Goldberg cuts through her students’ resistance with her no-nonsense instruction—“Shut up and write”—the True Secret cuts to the core of realizing yourself and your world. The capstone to forty years of teaching, The True Secret of Writing is Goldberg’s Zen boot camp, her legacy teaching. Stories of Natalie’s own search for truth and clarity and her students’ breakthroughs and insights give moving testament to how brilliantly her unique, tough-love method works. Beautiful homages to the work of other great teachers and observers of mind, life, and love provide further secrets and inspiration to which readers will return again and again. In her inimitable way, Goldberg will inspire you to pick up the pen, get writing, and keep going. The True Secret of Writing will help you with your writing—and your life.
A Mindful Nation: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit
Tim Ryan - 2012
Across America, people are feeling squeezed, exhausted, and running faster and faster while falling farther behind. The economy continues to struggle, wars rage on, and every week brings news of another environmental disaster. Everything seems broken and people feel helpless to make a difference. Despite this bleak outlook, there are strands of quiet hope and confidence. People are beginning to take action in a new way: they are slowing down, paying attention, and gaining an awareness of the inner resources at their disposal.This new way is based on the timeless and universal practice of mindfulness, the natural capabilities of our brains and minds, and the core American values of self-reliance, stick-to-it-iveness, and getting the job done. And it’s manifesting in every sector of our society—it’s helping sick people work with their pain, school children improve their learning, veterans heal from trauma, and CEOs become more inclusive and effective leaders. All these benefits—and more—are supported by scientific research on mindfulness that is regularly reported by the mainstream media, such as ABC World News with Diane Sawyer.In A Mindful Nation, Congressman Tim Ryan—an all-American guy from the heartland who is also a thoughtful, committed leader—takes this story about the benefits of mindfulness to the next level. He connects the dots between what’s happening with mindfulness in the classrooms, hospitals, boardrooms, research labs, and army bases across the country by sharing his interactions with experts in education, defense, health care, criminal justice, and the environment. A Mindful Nation paints a picture of emerging solutions that both benefit the reader and address the societal difficulties we are facing. Ryan’s folksy, warm, and encouraging voice uplifts us and shows that there is something we can do right here and right now to help ourselves and our country.Both inspiring and pragmatic, A Mindful Nation shows how the benefits of mindfulness apply to the current challenges that affect each of us in our own lives and in our communities, and thus have implications for our society as a whole. With a hard-nosed understanding of politics, government budgets, and what it takes to get something done, Ryan connects a practical approach—lead with the science, show the savings and show how this can help us educate our children to be competitive in the world arena—with a hopeful vision for how mindfulness can reinvigorate our core American values and transform and revitalize our communities.