Thomas went to Vietnam at the age of eighteen, where he served as a crew chief on assault helicopters. By the end of his tour, he had been awarded numerous medals, including the Purple Heart. He had also killed many people, witnessed horrifying cruelty, and narrowly escaped death on a number of occasions. When Thomas returned home he found that he continued to live in a state of war. He was overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, fear, anger, and despair, all of which were intensified by the rejection he experienced as a Vietnam veteran. For years, Thomas struggled with post-traumatic stress, drug and alcohol addiction, isolation, and even homelessness. A turning point came when he attended a meditation retreat for Vietnam veterans led by the renowned Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Here he encountered the Buddhist teachings on meditation and mindfulness, which helped him to stop running from his past and instead confront the pain of his war experiences directly and compassionately. Thomas was eventually ordained as a Zen monk and teacher, and he began making pilgrimages to promote peace and nonviolence in war-scarred places around the world including Bosnia, Auschwitz, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the Middle East. At Hell's Gate is Thomas's dramatic coming-of-age story and a spiritual travelogue from the horrors of combat to discovering a spiritual approach to healing violence and ending war from the inside out. In simple and direct language, Thomas shares timeless teachings on healing emotional suffering and offers us practical guidance in using mindfulness and compassion to transform our lives.

    The mind is designed to often delude us, he argued, about ourselves and about the world. And it is designed to make happiness hard to sustain. But if we know our minds are rigged for anxiety, depression, anger, and greed, what do we do? Wright locates the answer in Buddhism, which figured out thousands of years ago what scientists are only discovering now. Buddhism holds that human suffering is a result of not seeing the world clearly—and proposes that seeing the world more clearly, through meditation, will make us better, happier people. In Why Buddhism is True, Wright leads readers on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age. At once excitingly ambitious and wittily accessible, this is the first book to combine evolutionary psychology with cutting-edge neuroscience to defend the radical claims at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. With bracing honesty and fierce wisdom, it will persuade you not just that Buddhism is true—which is to say, a way out of our delusion—but that it can ultimately save us from ourselves, as individuals and as a species.

    Read. Respond. Watch. Listen. God is always there. Always, and all ways...

    Now this gifted teacher's most popular audio sessions are available in one convenient resource, with The Eckhart Tolle Audio Collection. This special slip-cased edition includes three audio bestsellers with Eckhart Tolle:The Realization of Being—How meditation opens the entry point to stillness, our greatest spiritual teacher, allowing us to merge with this moment in time• Living the Liberated Life and Dealing with the Pain-Body—Points a way out of the conditioned mind that keeps us trapped and unhappy, to a deeper level of consciousness beyond thought• Even the Sun Will Die—Historic interview recorded on September 11, 2001, which shows that even in the face of disaster, a miracle happens when we say "yes" to living in this moment and no other.

    Whether you are a beginner or an advanced student of meditation, Qigong or Yoga, this book is for you! The dozens of easy to follow warm up exercises and ancient meditation techniques alone is worth the cost of this course. However, Oceanic Mind introduces not only the finest techniques, but a complete meditation strategy training for consistently profound meditation. The strategy training transforms meditation into a much much easier and a more customized process. Regardless of your background, you will love this book.

    Meditation Now: A Beginner’s Guide provides friendly advice, step-by-step guidance, and a range of ten-minute meditations that fit easily into tight schedules. Filled with time-honored practices and insightful discussions, Meditation Now: A Beginner’s Guide makes it easy to learn meditation, with: • Step-by-step instructions for 18 meditation techniques that can be practiced anytime, anywhere • 14 “Take Ten” meditations to promote mindfulness in everyday situations like traffic jams and work presentations • Essential advice and guidelines for overcoming common obstacles like boredom and relating skillfully to thoughts and emotions • 3 focused 28-day meditation plans for those months when you need extra emotional support, happiness, or relaxation • Inspirational quotations and practical tips that motivate you to deepen your practice With Meditation Now: A Beginner’s Guide, peace, clarity, and wisdom can be yours with just ten minutes of restful breathing a day.

    John Bradshaw says: "with deep insight and sparkling clarity, this book demonstrates that the roots of all abuse are to be found in our own self-betrayal. Paul Ferrini leads us skilfully and courageously beyond shame, blame, and attachment to our wounds into the depths of self-forgiveness...a must read for all people who are ready to take responsibility for their own healing".

    Through an extensive, intimate examination of God’s encounter with Moses in the burning bush, Finding God's Will invites readers to shift their understanding of God’s will from an event to be experienced to a process to live; God’s will is what happens when we seek Him.   Readers will find out how to be on the lookout for their own burning bushes; how to focus on pleasing God and how to expect God’s power as they seek His will. They may also be surprised to find that, as they seek a deeper relationship with God, His direction and guidance become clear. A life centered in God’s will is a promise offered to every believer and now everyone can learn how to receive that gift.

    The author discusses why he chose this experiment, what the experiment entailed, what he attracted, and what he learned during these 30 days. The results are honest and inspiring. This work will be appreciated by those with little to no knowledge of the law of attraction and those well acquainted with this universal law.***Newly edited version uploaded on 10/26/13***

    The Wisdom of Insecurity underlines the importance of our search for stability in an age where human life seems particularly vulnerable and uncertain. Watts argues our insecurity is the consequence of trying to be secure and that, ironically, salvation and sanity lie in the recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves.

    In Part One, we join him on an engaging, often hilarious, and compelling personal journey.... through decades of tasting from a banquet of spiritual approaches. Through his direct experience, fierce exploration, and scintillating discernment, Brown exposes the fragmented, ungrounded and dissociative notions of spirituality that have imprisoned our consciousness and obstructed our awakening since time immemorial. In his cuttingly straight style, he reveals that much of what we have been calling "spirituality" is actually a patriarchal, emotionally bereft construct that perpetuates our self-avoidance. He then proves to us--point by brilliant point--that true spirituality is a whole-being awakening, one that wonderfully embraces our entire human experience. In many spiritual practices, emotional healing processes (blockage clearing, issue resolution, the working through of the shadow) have been bypassed and trivialized, as though the 'real' spiritual realm exists independent of our feelings. Brown makes no distinction between these realms, revealing that emotional maturity and spiritual maturity are synonymous, and that any spirituality that desacralizes our selfhood is not enlightenment at all. It is a bypass of that which is fundamentally human: our feelings, our stories, our bodies, our relationships with each other and the earth that houses us. In his words, "Detachment is a tool- not a life. If you can't find your transformation in the village, you haven't found a thing." In Part Two, Brown engages in a riveting dialogue with an ungrounded seeker named "Michael." Their dialogues unfurl in warmth, humor, playfulness, personal story, threaded with challenging confrontation and cutting truth. Hands-on exercises are dispersed throughout--providing readers with a direct experience of a new, inclusive model. Here the author lays down the tracks for a more balanced, heartfelt and relational spirituality- one that leaves us "enrealed," integrated, and purposeful. Not awakened, but awakening. Not escaping our humanness, but finding our meaning and spirituality deep within it. Out of the ashes of old ways of being, a bright new paradigm comes into view. An inclusive, self-honoring, and healing spiritual perspective that will be a welcomed relief for any seeker.In the author's words, "It's one thing to briefly detach from story in the hopes of gaining a different perspective--it's quite another to deny our storied roots altogether. What will we stand in, then? At a time when our personal stories have been shamed and shunned in the spiritual community, it is all the more imperative to revive them and makes luminous their sacred, transformative properties. The past is not an illusion, as many would suggest. It is the ground of our being, the karmic field for our soul's transformation- the mystery that threads right through our history. Story is where we come from. Story is what roots us in the present. Story is how we arrive at the next place intact. A spirituality without story is like a body without breath. Dead to the world." What we need now are models that lead us back into our hearts, into relatedness, into a deep and reverential regard for the self's journey through time. In this magnificent book, Brown endeavors to hearticulate one such path, reminding us that heaven on earth begins and ends deep within the recesses of our enlivened humanness. At long last, we can lay down our weary heads, burdened by the impossibility of transcending our human experience. Back to our roots, back into our bodies, back into all that makes us marvelously human. Home at last.

    This book contains the teachings and meditations Lama gave at a five-day retreat he led near Melbourne, Australia, which he introduced by saying: "Whether or not this five-day meditation course becomes beneficial is up to you; it depends on your own mind. It's not a lama thing; I'm not going to bring you to enlightenment in this short time... If over the next five days you can begin to recognize the reality of your own nature, this meditation course will have been worthwhile. Therefore, dedicate your actions during this time to discovering inner freedom through recognizing the negative characteristics of your own uncontrolled mind."

    This authoritative guide to Buddhist meditation will introduce readers to the practice, explain how it is approached in the main schools of Buddhism, and offer advice and inspiration from Buddhism's most renowned and effective meditation teachers, including Pema Chödrön, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Matthieu Ricard.     Topics include how to build excitement and energy to start a meditation routine and keep it going, setting up a meditation space, working with and through boredom, what to look for when seeking others to meditate with, how to know when it's time to try doing a formal meditation retreat, how to bring the practice "off the cushion" with walking meditation and other practices, and much more.

    And they have a natural affinity for Buddhism. This is a book for them-by one of them. Lodro Rinzler speaks the language of Generation O, as his compatriots are known, and he's a respected Buddhist teacher in his own right. His book is a complete introduction to Buddhism, without the cultural trappings, in language that anyone can understand but that will be especially appreciated by young people today under thirty. It's entertaining, chatty, and often funny, but also very serious. It's for anyone who wants to use the Buddha's teachings to awaken like he did.

    Now, Adrienne Howley -- personally ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and one of the highest ranking Buddhist nuns in the world -- writes in a warm, simple, and engagingly humorous style that illustrates the life, ideas, and teachings of the Buddha and the religion and philosophy that he inspired. This charming guide demystifies Buddhism and shows how we can apply its teachings to our lives in useful and meaningful ways. Howley covers who Buddha was and how he came to formulate his philosophy, the three main Buddhist traditions, what ordinary Buddhists believe and practice today, and meditation: how and why. There are also answers to questions most commonly asked by non-Buddhists, including: How can Buddhism make me happy? How can I always practice generosity? and How can I move away from greed and hatred? The Naked Buddha is an accessible, down-to-earth introduction to this ancient Asian religion and a valuable addition to the literature on Buddhism.