Yet for many, "getting lucid" for the first time can be elusive. And for those who have, there are few resources that show us how to use this extraordinary state for the greater goal of awakening to all of reality, day or night. With Dream Yoga, Andrew Holecek brings us a practical guide for meditators, seasoned dream travelers wanting to go deeper, and total beginners eager to experience lucidity for the first time. Here, you’ll join this expert teacher of dream work and meditation to learn: How to awaken in your dreams naturally by using modern scientific principles with the insights and practices of Tibetan dream and sleep yoga• Proven guidance to overcome common obstacles, enhance dream recall, focus and amplify awareness while dreaming, work with nightmares safely, resolve emotional blockages, and glean wisdom from your dreams• A wealth of practices and tips that have helped thousands enjoy successful dream-time exploration• Essential Buddhist teachings and tools for navigating the many realms of sleep (dreaming is just one of them)• Direct insights into the continuation of consciousness beyond the physical body and death• How to bring your skills together to engage with the hundreds of thousands of dream opportunities that most of us forget or dismiss Have you ever wondered what happens when you sleep and dream? Desired to wake up in your dreams and have the time of your life? Or wanted to use your sleep hours to fully explore these dimensions, heal, and evolve? Dream Yoga answers these questions—not academically but directly—by showing you how to access this profound universe for yourself.

    These tough realities are not given much attention by many people until midlife, when they become harder to avoid. Using a Buddhist text known as the Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection, Larry Rosenberg shows how intimacy with the realities of aging can actually be used as a means to liberation. When we become intimate with these inevitable aspects of life, he writes, we also become intimate with ourselves, with others, with the world—indeed with all things.

    Since its original publication, Chagdud Tulku has continued to teach widely and has met thousands of sincere, enthusiastic, and sometimes skeptical students. The frank questions inspired by these teachings form the basis of the material added to this revised edition.

    Burned out, laid up with back problems, disillusioned by relationships and religion itself, he was still hoping for that big journalistic break—and the answers to life’s biggest riddles as well. So he set out on a geographic, historical and personal expedition that would lead him around the world in search of those answers, and then some.First, to better understand the man who was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama, he followed the time-honored pilgrimage “in the footsteps of the Buddha” in India. From there, he tracked the historical course of Buddhism: to Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, Tibet, Japan and on to San Francisco and Europe. He found that the Buddha’s teachings have spawned a worldwide movement of “engaged Buddhism,” the application of Buddhist principles to resolve social, environmental, health, political and other contemporary problems. From East to West and back to the East again, this movement has caused a Buddhism Boom. Along the way he met a diverse array of Buddhist practitioners—Thai artists, Indian nuns, Sri Lankan school children, Zen archers in Japan, kung fu monks in China and the world’s first Buddhist comic (only in America). Among dozens of Buddhist scholars and leaders, Garfinkel interviewed His Holiness the Dalai Lama, an experience that left him speechless—almost. As just reward for his efforts, toward the end of his journey Garfinkel fell in love in the south of France at the retreat center of a leader of the engaged movement, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh—a romance that taught him as much about Buddhism as all the masters combined. In this original, entertaining book, Garfinkel separates Buddhist fact from fiction, sharing his humorous insights and keen perceptions about everything from spiritual tourism to Asian traffic jams to the endless road to enlightenment.From the Hardcover edition.

    This book is a powerful and enriching synthesis of the 12-Step recovery programs and the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism. It is sure to appeal to anyone touched by addiction, including those looking for new ways to understand and work with the tried-and-true 12-Step system. Tens of millions of Americans suffer from alcoholism and other forms of dependence, and 12 Steps on Buddha's Path offers hope and help for any one of them.Though writing anonymously out of deep respect for 12-Step policies, the author is in fact a well-known professional author, deeply involved in the recovery and meditation communities.

    What you say. What you think/ignore/buy/don't buy... Welcome to One City-Population: Everyone-where EVERYTHING you do matters. You've lived here your whole life, whether you know it or not.Ethan Nichtern, the charismatic and creative force behind New York's upstart Interdependence Project is your guide to the beauty that is everywhere in the urban jungle-in the rattling of subway trains, the screechings of traffic, the hum and drone of millions scurrying for work, food, sustenance, art, culture, and meaning. There may be no greater setting for exploring the great truth that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expounded: "Whatever effects one directly, effects all indirectly."One City melds Dr. King's message with modern Buddhist wisdom to offer a new way of understanding what binds us all together-no matter where we are, no matter who. With its pop-culture savvy, humor, and literary liveliness, One City will speak to--and even, it's fair to say, help define--the spiritually-inclined, conscious Next Generation.

    In this elegant, authoritative, and entirely accessible book, he sets out to answer these questions. Although meditation is a lifelong process even for the wisest, Why Meditate? demonstrates that by practicing it on a daily basis we can change our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. In this brilliant short book and the accompanying audio download, Ricard talks us through the theory, spirituality, and practical aspects of meditation. He illustrates each stage of his teaching with examples, leading readers deeper into their own practice. Through his experience as a monk, his close reading of sacred texts, and his deep knowledge of the Buddhist masters, Ricard shows the significant benefits that meditation, based on selfless love and compassion, can bring to each of us.

    We long for peace, for the ability to love and be loved openly and freely, and for the confidence and clarity to meet the various challenges we face in our daily lives. Within each of us resides a spark of unparalleled brilliance, an unlimited capacity for warmth, openness, and courage, which Rinpoche identifies as "essence love." Timeless and imperishable, essence love is often layered over by patterns of behavior and belief that urge us to seek happiness in conditions or situations that never quite live up to their promise. Drawing on rarely discussed teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, Rinpoche describes how such patterns evolve and offers a series of meditation exercises to help us unravel them and, in the process, reawaken an energy and exuberance that can not only bring lasting fulfillment to our lives but ultimately serve to enliven and inspire the entire world, as well. With great humor, intelligence, and candor, Tsoknyi Rinpoche also details his own struggles to reconnect with essence love. Identified at an early age as the incarnation of a renowned Tibetan master and subjected to a rigorous monastic training, he ultimately renounced his vows, married, and is now the father of two daughters.As he recounts his own efforts to strike a balance between the promptings of his heart and an obligation to preserve and protect the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, Rinpoche provides a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern life, and encourages each of us to rediscover the openness, fearlessness, and love that is the essence of our own life.

    Stephen Batchelor grew up outside London and came of age in the 1960s. Like other seekers of his time, instead of going to college he set off to explore the world. Settling in India, he eventually became a Buddhist monk in Dharamsala, the Tibetan capital-in-exile, and entered the inner circle of monks around the Dalai Lama. He later moved to a monastery in South Korea to pursue intensive training in Zen Buddhism. Yet the more Batchelor read about the Buddha, the more he came to believe that the way Buddhism was being taught and practiced was at odds with the actual teachings of the Buddha himself.  Charting his journey from hippie to monk to lay practitioner, teacher, and interpreter of Buddhist thought, Batchelor reconstructs the historical Buddha’s life, locating him within the social and political context of his world. In examining the ancient texts of the Pali Canon, the earliest record of the Buddha’s life and teachings, Batchelor argues that the Buddha was a man who looked at human life in a radically new way for his time, more interested in the question of how human beings should live in this world than in notions of karma and the afterlife.  According to Batchelor, the outlook of the Buddha was far removed from the piety and religiosity that has come to define much of Buddhism as we know it today.  Both controversial and deeply personal, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist is a fascinating exploration of a religion that continues to engage the West. Batchelor’s insightful, deeply knowledgeable, and persuasive account will be an essential book for anyone interested in Buddhism.

    The authors describe the techniques and their results, based on their own experience.

    Loy addresses head-on the most pressing issues of Buddhist philosophy in our time. What is the meaning of enlightenment--is it an escape from the world, or is it a form of psychological healing? How can one reconcile modern scientific theory with ancient religious teachings? What is our role in the universe? Loy shows us that neither Buddhism nor secular society by itself is sufficient to answer these questions. Instead, he investigates the unexpected intersections of the two. Through this exchange, he uncovers a new Buddhist way, one that is faithful to the important traditions of Buddhism but compatible with modernity. This way, we can see the world as it is truly is, realize our indivisibility from it, and learn that the world's problems are our problems. This is a new path for a new world.

    The sage's sole concern was with human suffering and the ending of suffering. It was his mission to guide the individual to an understanding of his true nature and the timelessness of being. He taught that mind must recognize and penetrate its own state of being, "being this or that, here or that, then or now," but just timeless being.

    That's the premise of this book: how to cook what Zen Buddhists call "the supreme meal"—life. It has to be nourishing, and it has to be shared. And we can use only the ingredients at hand. Inspired by the thirteenth-century manual of the same name by Dogen, the founder of the Japanese Soto Zen tradition, this book teaches us how we can "enlarge the family we're feeding" if we just use some imagination. Bernie Glassman founded Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, in 1982 to employ those whom other companies deem unemployable—the homeless, ex-cons, recovering addicts, low-skill individuals—with the belief that investing in people, and not just products, does pay. He was right. Greyston has evolved into an $8 million-a-year business with clients all over New York City. It is the sole supplier of brownies to Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, and has even sold cakes to the White House. But financial profit is only one of two bottom lines that Greyston is committed to. The other one is social impact, and this goal is certainly being met. The bakery enterprise has led to the creation of the Greyston Foundation, an integrated network of organizations that provide affordable housing, child care, counseling services, and health care to families in the community. Using entrepreneurship to solve the problems of the inner city, Greyston has become a national model for comprehensive community development. Its giving back is more than just sloughing off a percentage of its profits and donating it to charity; it's about working with the community's needs right from the beginning—bringing them from the margins to the core. As its company motto goes, "We don't hire people to bake brownies. We bake brownies to hire people." This book is as much a self-manual as a business manual, addressing such concepts as    • Beginner's mind    • The Middle Way of Sustainability    • The "hungry ghosts" of Buddhism as a picture of all humanity    • Working with our faults    • Indra's Net and the interconnectedness of life    • Leaving no trace

    In The Tibetan Book of Meditation, Lama Christie McNally demonstrates that meditation also provides a much greater gift. It awakens our innate potential to shape our reality, to make moments of joy last forever, and to bring us the peace and contentment that we all ultimately seek. Written in an instructional yet intimate style, the author guides readers through a progression of meditations, from the simple concept of compassion to the transformative concept of emptiness. Teaching technique and content at the same time, this book is unique in its comprehensive approach and will find a special place in the hearts of novice and experienced meditators alike. Christie McNally, a renowned master teacher and lecturer who has studied with some of the greatest Indian, Tibetan, and western Buddhist masters, explains the central tenets of Buddhism and reveals how they apply to everyday life. Combining ancient wisdom and contemporary teachings, she leads readers along the path to a richer, fuller life through resonant examples and eye-opening insights.Her engaging tone and fresh approach to the art of meditation will appeal to followers of Pema Chödrön and to readers of Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. This down-to-earth guide to meditation brings the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism to a new generation.