Filled with practical guidance and advice--as well as extensive personal recollections--A Gradual Awakening explains the value of meditation as a means of attaining awareness, and provides readers with extensive advice on how establish a practice. Drawing on his own personal experiences with and insights into vipassana meditation, Levine has crafted an inspiring book for anyone interested in deep personal growth.

    It has had the most profound and wide-reaching influence of any text in Buddhism. Its full title, Prajna Paramita Hrdaya Sutra, "The Sutra of the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom," explains that this sutra contains the essence of the Buddha’s teaching, the core of perfect enlightenment. It is the source of the famous and puzzling declaration, "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." For this new translation into English, Red Pine, award-winning translator of Chinese poetry and religious texts, has utilized various Sanskrit and Chinese versions, refining the teachings of dozens of ancient teachers together with his own commentary to offer a profound word-for-word explication. The result is a wise book of deep teaching destined to become the standard edition of this timeless statement of Mahayana truth.

    The restful mind is creative and alert, relaxed and confident. The step from one to the other is all in the way we think. His Eminence Gyalwa Dokhampa has a real understanding of the pressures of modern life and how our crowded minds have left us too little space to stretch and grow. He shows us new ways to calm body and mind, become more aware, better able to deal with problems and appreciate the moment. It is with our mind that we create our world. Here's how to open it up and let the world in.

     Set amongst the backdrop of Grosso’s original music (includ­ed for download via QR codes in the text), Indie Spiritualist encourages you to accept yourself just as you are, in all your humanity and imperfect perfection.

    This most influential teacher comes vividly to life in Crooked Cucumber, the first full biography of any Zen master to be published in the West. To make up his intimate and engrossing narrative, David Chadwick draws on Suzuki's own words and the memories of his students, friends, and family. Interspersed with previously unpublished passages from Suzuki's talks, Crooked Cucumber evokes a down-to-earth life of the spirit. Along with Suzuki we can find a way to "practice with mountains, trees, and stones and to find ourselves in this big world."

    In this famous twenty-four-day teaching on the lamrim, or stages of the path, Pabongka Rinpoche weaves together lively stories and quotations with frank observations and practical advice to move readers step by step along the journey to buddhahood. When his student Trijang Rinpoche first edited and published these teachings in Tibetan, an instant classic was born. The flavor and immediacy of the original Tibetan are preserved in Michael Richards' fluid and lively translation, which is now substantially revised in this new edition.

    Using a hut in the nearby hills, he wrote the word Shugyo-an, or "practice hermitage," on a plank of wood, propped it up beside the entrance, and settled down to devote himself to his own clarification of "bright virtue."He finally turned to Zen and, after fourteen years of incredible hardship, achieved a decisive enlightenment, whereupon the Rinzai priest traveled unceasingly to the temples and monasteries of Japan, sharing what he'd learned."What I teach in these talks of mine is the Unborn Buddha-mind of illuminative wisdom, nothing else. Everyone is endowed with this Buddha-mind, only they don't know it." Casting aside the traditional aristocratic style of his contemporaries, he offered his teachings in the common language of the people. His style recalls the genius and simplicity of the great Chinese Zen masters of the T'ang dynasty.This revised and expanded edition contains many talks and dialogues not included in the original 1984 volume.

    Essays, poems, photographs, and letters explore the link between Buddhism and the Beats--with previously unpublished material from several beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Diane diPrima.

    Using real-life stories, Zen tales, and Greek myths, The Light Inside the Dark shows how our darkest experiences can be the gates to wisdom and joy. Tarrant leads us through the inevitable descents of our journey--from the everyday world of work and family into the treasure cave of the interior life--from which we return with greater love of life's vivid, common gifts. Written with empathy and a poet's skill, The Light Inside the Dark is the freshest and most challenging work on the soul to he published in years.

    Robert Thurman is one such teacher. Now, in his first experiential course on the essentials of Tibetan Buddhism, adapted and expanded from a popular retreat he led, Thurman -- the first Westerner ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself -- shares the centuries-old wisdom of a highly valued method of insight used by the great Tibetan masters. Tibetans think of their cherished tradition of Buddhism as a "wish-fulfilling jewel tree" for its power to generate bliss and enlightenment within all who absorb its teachings. Happiness, in fact, is the true goal of Tibetan spirituality, and the wish-fulfilling jewel tree will enable you to reach that goal. Using a revered, once-secret text of a seventeenth-century Tibetan master, with thorough explanations for contemporary Westerners, The Jewel Tree of Tibet immerses you fully in the mysteries of Tibetan spiritual wisdom. A retreat in book form as well as a spiritual and philosophical teaching, The Jewel Tree of Tibet offers a practical system of understanding yourself and the world, of developing your learning and thought processes, and of gaining deep, transforming insight. One of the most explicit teachings of the steps on the path of enlightenment available, explained by a skilled Western teacher, The Jewel Tree of Tibet will enable you to honor the full subtlety and hidden depths of the Tibetan Buddhist path and realize at last its deeper rewards -- for yourself and others.

    This biography of one of the few women in her generation to devote herself entirely to the pursuit of meditation also includes Dipa Ma's spiritual teachings, which have made her a major figure in contemporary Buddhism.

    An enlightening, accessible, and highly entertaining guide to the guru-disciple relationship, the....

    Because with spiritual awakening, you find that the strongly held beliefs and perceptions you've taken to be 'you' and 'your world' vanish into the unmanifest nature of all that is. The End of Your World presents a landmark six-CD course on the reality of enlightenment and the total re-wiring of your being that accompanies it what Adyashanti calls our journey into the infinite, our true nature as pure consciousness itself.

    A burgeoning number of books extol the scientifically proven benefits of meditation and mindfulness for everything ranging from business to romance. There are conferences, courses, and celebrities promoting the notion that Buddhism is spirituality for the rational, compatible with cutting‑edge science, indeed, “a science of the mind.” In this provocative book, Evan Thompson argues that this representation of Buddhism is false.   In lucid and entertaining prose, Thompson dives deep into both Western and Buddhist philosophy to explain how the goals of science and religion are fundamentally different. Efforts to seek their unification are wrongheaded and promote mistaken ideas of both. He suggests cosmopolitanism instead, a worldview with deep roots in both Eastern and Western traditions. Smart, sympathetic, and intellectually ambitious, this book is a must‑read for anyone interested in Buddhism’s place in our world today.

    Just like everyone else. But—also like everyone else—he’s suffered. A lot. Running from difficult personal losses—like the deaths of loved ones—was something he did for years, and it got the best of him. Eventually, though, he stopped running and started walking a spiritual path. That might be surprising for a dude in a relentlessly touring punk band (Teenage Bottlerocket), but Miguel quickly found that meditation, mindfulness, and yoga really helped. They allowed him to turn inward, to connect to himself and the world around him. Suddenly, he had found actual happiness. Miguel’s realistic. He knows it'll never be all sunshine and peaches. And yet, he is (for the most part) at peace with the world and with himself. It shocks even him sometimes. But he’s come to see the interconnectedness of all things, the beauty of life…even the parts that suck. Each short chapter ends with a hands-on practice that the reader can put into action right away—and each practice offers a distilled “TL;DR” takeaway point. TL;DR: Miguel Chen shares stories, meditations, and practices that can help us reconnect to each other, ourselves, and the world. They’ve worked for him—they can work for anyone.