This Book presents a systematic and pragmatic approach to the awakening of kudalini, which arouses greater intelligence from it's sleep and you can give birth to a new range of creativity.

    Along the way, however, we tend to encounter the same perplexing questions again and again. Some are cosmic enigmas that have always tested the human mind: What is my purpose in life? What happens after I die? Others are puzzles presented by daily life in modern society: What, if anything, justifies assisted suicide? What is my personal responsibility to the homeless? According to Lama Surya Das, one of the foremost Western Buddhist scholars and teachers, the more we seek to resolve these mysteries, the more fully we live.Along with his own personal beliefs, the author presents a variety of thoughtful points of view representing different schools of Buddhism, other religions, spirituality in general, and pragmatism. The Big Questions challenges readers in the most stimulating and thoughtful way to formulate individual, authentic responses to life’s big questions.

    The best collection of Zen wisdom and wit since "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones": koans, sayings, poems, and stories by Eastern and American Zen teachers and students capture the delightful, challenging, mystifying, mind-stopping, outrageous, and scandalous heart of Zen.

    Although the tradition that traces its ancestry back to him did not flourish until nearly two hundred years after his death, today millions of Zen Buddhists and students of kung fu claim him as their spiritual father.While others viewed Zen practice as a purification of the mind or a stage on the way to perfect enlightenment, Bodhidharma equated Zen with buddhahood and believed that it had a place in everyday life. Instead of telling his disciples to purify their minds, he pointed them to rock walls, to the movements of tigers and cranes, to a hollow reed floating across the Yangtze.This bilingual edition, the only volume of the great teacher's work currently available in English, presents four teachings in their entirety. "Outline of Practice" describes the four all-inclusive habits that lead to enlightenment, the "Bloodstream Sermon" exhorts students to seek the Buddha by seeing their own nature, the "Wake-up Sermon" defends his premise that the most essential method for reaching enlightenment is beholding the mind. The original Chinese text, presented on facing pages, is taken from a Ch'ing dynasty woodblock edition.

    The eight steps on the path are: right understanding, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. Smith explains exactly what the Buddha had in mind, using translations of his own words and then elucidating them for us. Throughout the book are wonderful quotes from a broad range of Buddhist teachers, giving a taste of the very best each of them has to offer. The Beginner’s Guide to Walking the Buddha’s Eightfold Path is a prescription for happiness, not just for overcoming suffering, which is how many people think of Buddhism. Here is a book for Buddhists of every tradition.

    The book has two main sections with the first having the quotes divided by their topic such as Love, Happiness, Anger, etc. The second part of the book has specific quotes from Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Lao Tzu and Zen Quotations.

    With expanded information on the practice of Buddhism in the United States and the West, a greater focus on the relationship between Buddhism and Islam, and the effects of Buddhism on Christianity and Judaism, this book explores the easy ways readers can make Buddhism a part of their daily lives. • Includes expanded appendixes featuring a timeline showing the evolution of Buddhism through history • Covers all four schools of Buddhism—Zen, Tibetan, Pure Land, and Insight Meditation • Expanded section on “rites of passage” shows how a new generation has taken to Buddhism

    Written in the mystical tradition of the Sufi poets, this book recounts the odyssey of the human soul as it travels from the world of creation to the sphere of the absolute, its ultimate goal being reunion with God.

    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.

    I would highly recommend this book as a place to start." "I have more than 50 books on Gurdjieff's and Ouspensky's Work on my shelves, but this is no doubt the most practical one for beginners." "Couldn't Put it Down!" "Gil Friedman has done the near-impossible: rendered Gurdjieff's esoteric philosophy eminently readable, even entertaining. . . No serious student of philosophy or metaphysics should miss this great book!" "The clearest and most useful book on the basics." "I want to express my appreciation for for your Beginner's Guide to Gurdjieff's philosophy. Before reading your book, I have read several books on Gurdjieff ( Ouspensky, Needleman, Waker, Gurdjieff) and, at times, got lost in the complexity of what I was reading, and left wondering. It is not until I read your book, that Gurdjieff's philosophy emerged to the light, and resonated deeply within me. Trying to describe your book to a friend, I mentioned that the gift I saw in you was your ability to unearth the precious nuggets of Gurdjieff's philosophy and process, and to bring them to the light in a way that is accessible to the "house-keeper".

    This anthology draws on traditional Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan sources as well as teachings by contemporary Buddhist masters. Among the contributors, both classical and modern, are: Ajahn Chah, Pema Chödrön, The Second Dalai Lama, Dogen, S.N. Goenka, Dainin Katagiri, Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, Milerepa, Padmasambhava, Reginald Ray, Shunryu Suzuki, Nyanaponika Thera, Thich Nhat Hanh, Chögyam Trungpa, and Burton Watson.

    The book confronts the reader with unaccustomed perspectives and ideas, in an attempt to set the mind free, to see how things really are. As the book's foreword states, 'Do you imagine that fables exist only to amuse or to instruct, and are based upon fiction? The best ones are delineations of what happens in real life, in the community and in the individual's mental processes'.

    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.

    It is an excellent, indepth description of mindfulness practice and its benefits. It includes a concise explanation of clear comprehension, which is the kind of mindfulness you use in the course of your daily life. It also presents an easily understandable explanation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.This new edition includes an introduction from noted author and teacher Sylvia Boorstein. Although the Buddha lived over 2500 years ago, his teachings on meditation are among the most effective methods for healing the pain of grief, finding inner peace, and overcoming the sense of dislocation caused by living in the 21st century. Mindfulness is a method not only for committed Buddhists. It is for everyone interested in mastering the mind.From the introduction by Sylvia BoorsteinThe Heart of Buddhist Meditation was the first serious, didactic Dharma book I read. It was the early nineteeneighties. My teacher, Jack Kornfield, suggested it as the beginning formal training of my becoming a Mindfulness teacher. I have that original copy and I am touched by how many underlined passages, how many exclamation points in margins, how many addendums of my own written in tiny scrawl appear in its fading pages.

    Perfect for beginning Zen students and for those interested in Buddhism in general or eastern religion, it features deep spiritual insights and playful illustrations that add warmth and approachability to the topic.