Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down


Eknath Easwaran - 1994
    Training a frazzled mind to embrace calm isn’t easy. For over forty years, Easwaran dedicated himself to teaching meditation and the wisdom of slowing down. When the mind is unhurried, it is calm, kind, ready for anything, aware of what really matters amidst the clamor of a busy day. The secret is to learn to live in the present, to train our minds to work steadily and with one-pointed attention, however many tasks confront us. Through stories and parables, backed up by practical advice, Easwaran gives us gentle illustrations of a wiser way to live. As we read, we find ourselves in situations where we may get impatient or upset - standing in line, dealing with difficult colleagues, shopping with children with agendas of their own - but as Easwaran relates each event, we see it from the perspective of an unhurried mind. And we see small ways to change how we respond, opening the door to rich, loving relationships, creative and productive work, and a quiet sense of joy that can permeate our lives.

Mantra Meditation: Change Your Karma with the Power of Sacred Sound


Thomas Ashley-Farrand - 2004
    Mantras are sacred sound syllables that can effect changes to your inner psyche and the external world. Today, Thomas Ashley-Farrand—one of the foremost authorities on Vedic and Buddhist Sanskrit mantras in the West—makes these sacred sounds widely available.According to traditional practice, "When you begin to chant these ancient formulas," teaches Ashley-Farrand, "the petals on the chakras begin to resonate, and they begin to pull in minute amounts of spiritual energy." Over days, weeks, and months, larger and larger amounts of energy accumulate bringing health, radiance, and eliminating karma, which allows desires to be fulfilled. Mantra Meditation teaches: How to use mantras for feng shui to create healing energy flow in your home and workplace Ways to integrate the powers of Kubera—guardian of wealth and keeper of mantras—into your own life

Be Your Own Shaman


Deborah King - 2011
    You might not realize it, but just about everyone is a natural-born healer! In fact, you probably already have some of the paranormal abilities related to this gift. For example, you may know who’s calling before you answer the phone, or be able to sense what others are thinking or feeling. But you can further develop your inner talents and become your own shaman, capable of healing whatever ails you and effecting change in someone else’s energy field and body. In Master Healer Deborah King’s uniquely informative work, you will learn both Eastern and Western concepts and techniques from the earliest recorded healing practices some 5,000 years ago all the way up to modern times with John of God in Brazil and King’s own powerful cutting-edge approach. You’ll find out how to protect yourself from psychic attack, and how to get beyond any limiting beliefs you may hold. Self-knowledge leading to self-mastery is the ultimate quest, the pivotal adventure of a lifetime. Become the person you always knew you could be by taking this magical tour into the heart of healing!

Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within


Chade-Meng Tan - 2016
    Explaining joy and meditation as complementary things that naturally reinforce each other, Meng explains how these two skills form a virtuous cycle, and once put into motion, become a solid practice that can be sustained in daily life. For many years, meditation has been taught and practiced in cultures where almost all meditators practice full-time for years, resulting in training programs optimized for practitioners with lots of free time and not much else to do but develop profound mastery over the mind. Seeing a disconnect between the traditional practice and the modern world, bestselling author and Google’s “Jolly Good Fellow” Chade-Meng Tan has developed a program, through “wise laziness,” to help readers meditate more efficiently and effectively. Meng shares the three pillars of joy (inner peace, insight, and happiness), why joy is the secret is to success, and demonstrates the practical tools anyone can use to cultivate it on demand.

The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy


Cyndi Dale - 2009
    

Yeah Dave's Guide to Livin' the Moment: Getting to Ecstasy Through Wine, Chocolate and Your iPod Playlist


David Romanelli - 2009
    What's not to love?David “Yeah Dave” Romanelli is kinda hip, kinda goofy, and occasionally really outrageous, an unlikely guru who is reinventing the quest for enlightenment. For Yeah Dave, the path to ecstasy doesn't require any previous experience with yoga, meditation, or wellness. He shows us how to find transcendence through everyday pleasures, like admiring the sunset or rocking out to your favorite band. “There is a place where the chocolate tastes sweeter, the music sounds better, the inspiration feels richer, and the visions look clearer,” writes Dave. “That place is the Moment.”Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ the Moment offers an alternative to the crazy, over-stimulating, distracted world we live in today, a world in which we watch the news while eating, eye our email while conversing, and forget to notice the full moon while texting. On our mission for speed, movement, and stimulation, we risk missing our life. Yeah Dave’s book gives us our life back, one beautiful, delicious, and funny moment at a time.Yeah Dave’s Guide will make you laugh out loud while taking you someplace totally unexpected. Through hilarious vignettes about his dorky moves on the dance floor, his Crackberry addiction, and his tryst with Hot Horny Married Woman, he shares fresh and unforgettable wisdom. Without dogma or anything too “out there,” Dave makes you want to slow down the blur of modern life and find the full flavor, power, and passion that can only be found in the Moment.

On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious


Douglas E. Harding - 1961
    Douglas Harding, the highly respected mystic-philosopher, describes his first experience of headlessness in "On Having No Head," the classic work first published in 1961. In this book, he conveys the immediacy, simplicity, and practicality of the "headless way," placing it within a Zen context, while also drawing parallels to practices in other spiritual traditions.If you wish to experience the freedom and clarity that results from firsthand experience of true Being, then this book will serve as a practical guide to the rediscovery of what has always been present.

The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature


Starhawk - 2004
    Earth, air, fire and water are the four elements worshiped in many indigenous cultures and celebrated in earth–based spiritualities such as Wicca. In The Earth Path, America's best–known witch offers readers a primer on how to open our eyes to the world around us, respect nature's delicate balance, and draw upon its tremendous powers.Filled with inspiring meditations, chants, and blessings, it offers healing for the spirit in a stressed world and helps readers find their own sources of strength and renewal.Will appeal to Starhawk's traditional Pagan, New Age, and feminist readership.Young women newly interested in magic and witchcraft.A new and growing generation of those involved in ecology

The Religions Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained


Shulamit Ambalu - 2013
    The Religions Book is also perfect for religion and philosophy students.

In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching


P.D. Ouspensky - 1947
    I. Gurdjieff's thoughts and universal view. This historic and influential work is considered by many to be a primer of mystical thought as expressed through the Work, a combination of Eastern philosophies that had for centuries been passed on orally from teacher to student. Gurdjieff's goal, to introduce the Work to the West, attracted many students, among them Ouspensky, an established mathematician, journalist, and, with the publication of In Search of the Miraculous, an eloquent and persuasive proselyte.Ouspensky describes Gurdjieff's teachings in fascinating and accessible detail, providing what has proven to be a stellar introduction to the universal view of both student and teacher. It goes without saying that In Search of the Miraculous has inspired great thinkers and writers of ensuing spiritual movements, including Marianne Williamson, the highly acclaimed author of A Return to Love and Illuminata. In a new and never-before-published foreword, Williamson shares the influence of Ouspensky's book and Gurdjieff's teachings on the New Thought movement and her own life, providing a contemporary look at an already timeless classic.

Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening


Joseph Goldstein - 2013
    With Mindfulness, Joseph Goldstein shares the wisdom of his four decades of teaching and practice in a book that will serve as a lifelong companion for anyone committed to mindful living and the realization of inner freedom.Goldstein's source teaching is the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha's legendary discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness that became the basis for the many types of Vipassana (or insight meditation) found today. Exquisite in detail yet wholly accessible and relevant for the modern student, Mindfulness takes us through a profound study of: Ardency, clear knowing, mindfulness, and concentration--how to develop these four qualities of mind essential for walking the path wiselyThe Satipatthana refrain--how deeply contemplating the four foundations of mindfulness opens us to bare knowing and continuity of mindfulnessMindfulness of the body, including the breath, postures, activities, and physical characteristicsMindfulness of feelings--how the experience of our sense perceptions influences our inner and outer worldsMindfulness of mind--learning to recognize skillful and unskillful states of mind and thoughtMindfulness of dhammas (or categories of experience), including the Five Hindrances, the Six Sense Spheres, the Seven Factors of Awakening, and much more"There is a wealth of meaning and nuance in the experience of mindfulness that can enrich our lives in unimagined ways," writes Goldstein. In Mindfulness you have the tools to mine these riches for yourself.

The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still, American Style


Dinty W. Moore - 1997
    Moore demystifies and explains the contradictions and concepts of this most mystic-seeming of religious traditions. This plain-spoken, insightful look at the dharma in America will fascinate anyone curious about the wisdom of other cultures and other religions. Cutting through religious jargon and abstract concepts, Moore explains in clear terms why Buddhism is becoming part of popular culture. He has the rare ability to be at once sincere about religion and good-humored about the human condition. The Accidental Buddhist never takes itself too seriously--which, as Moore discovers, Buddhists aren't supposed to do, even when they are mindful, enlightened, and sitting perfectly still. -Moore's hilarious and sometimes irreverent look at Buddhism is a perfect primer for the budding Buddhist.---Publishers Weekly -[Moore's] witty and candid 'regular guy' approach to these experiences is entertaining and comforting, and his conclusions are right on target.---Booklist

Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness


Mark Epstein - 1998
    We are taught that the ideal is a strong, individuated self, constructed and reinforced over a lifetime. But Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein has found a different way. Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart shows us that happiness doesn't come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. Weaving together the accumulated wisdom of his two worlds--Buddhism and Western psychotherapy--Epstein shows how "the happiness that we seek depends on our ability to balance the ego's need to do with our inherent capacity to be." He encourages us to relax the ever-vigilant mind in order to experience the freedom that comes only from relinquishing control. Drawing on events in his own life and stories from his patients, Going to Pieces  Without Falling Apart teaches us that only by letting go can we start on the path to a more peaceful and spiritually satisfying life.About The Author: Mark Epstein, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice and the author of Thoughts Without a Thinker . He is a contributing editor to Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and clinical assistant professor of psychology at New York University. He lives in New York City.

Miracles Happen: The Transformational Healing Power of Past-Life Memories


Brian L. Weiss - 2011
    Trained as a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Weiss began to explore how reincarnation and past life regression can lead us to our higher selves after a startling encounter with a patient. Now a leading proponent of past-life therapy, Dr. Weiss shows us that, indeed, Miracles Happen, with seemingly incredible but true stories that demonstrate how, by getting in touch with and understanding our past lives, we can dramatically improve the present.

The I Ching or Book of Changes


Richard Wilhelm
    It has exerted a living influence in China for 3000 years and interest in it has spread in the West. Set down in the dawn of history as a book of oracles, the Book of Changes deepened in meaning when ethical values were attached to the oracular pronouncements; it became a book of wisdom, eventually one of the Five Classics of Confucianism, and provided the common source for both Confucianist and Taoist philosophy. Wilhelm's rendering of the I Ching into German, published in 1924, presented it for the 1st time in a form intelligible to the general reader. Wilhelm, who translated many other ancient Chinese works and who wrote several books on Chinese philosophy and civilization, long resided in China. His close association with its cultural leaders gave him a unique understanding of the text of the I Ching. In the English translation, every effort has been made to preserve Wilhelm's pioneering insight into the spirit of the original.This 3rd edition, completely reset, contains a new forward by Hellmut Wilhelm, one of the most eminent American scholars of Chinese culture. He discusses his father's textual methods and summarizes recent studies of the I Ching both in the West and in present-day China. The new edition contains minor textual corrections, bibliographical revisions and an index.