According to many of his students who are deeply touched by this practice, it can help to renew our faith and develop our compassion as it presents an opportunity to heal our relationships through forgiveness and embrace our ancestors, parents, teachers and ourselves.

    Taking a radical departure from traditional views of God, Western or Eastern, author Kevin Griffin neither accepts Christian beliefs in a Supreme Being nor Buddhist non-theism, but rather forges a refreshing, sensible, and accessible Middle Way. Griffin shows how the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, can be understood as a Higher Power. Karma, mindfulness, impermanence, and the Eightfold Path itself are revealed as powerful forces that can be accessed through meditation and inquiry.Drawing from his own experiences with substance abuse, rehabilitation, and recovery, Griffin looks at the various ways that meditation and spiritual practices helped deepen his experience of sobriety. His personal story of addiction is not only raw, honest and engrossing, but guides readers to an inquiry of their own spirituality. In doing so, he poses profound questions, including:·         How can I understand God from a Buddhist perspective?·         How can I “turn my will and my life over” as a Buddhist?·         How can this idea of God “remove my shortcomings”?·         How do I learn this God’s “will”?

    To this end, they must renounce all self-centered goals and consider only the well-being of others. The bodhisattvas' enemies are the ego, passion, and hatred; their weapons are generosity, patience, perseverance, and wisdom. In Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama is considered to be a living embodiment of this spiritual ideal. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama presents here a detailed manual of practical philosophy, based on The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara), a well-known text of Mahayana Buddhism written by Shantideva. The Dalai Lama explains and amplifies the text, alluding throughout to the experience of daily life and showing how anyone can develop bodhichitta, the wish for perfect enlightenment for the sake of others. This book will surely become a standard manual for all those who wish to make the bodhisattva ideal a living experience.

    The text describes the Four Foundation Practices that all practitioners of Vajrayana Buddhism must complete. The nature of impermanence, the effects of karma, the development of an enlightened attitude, and devotion to the guru are among the subjects treated in this book. Three eminent contemporary Tibetan Buddhist masters—Kalu Rinpoche, Deshung Rinpoche, and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche—explain the significance of The Torch of Certainty for modern-day students and practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism.

    Commentary on the Seven Point Mind Training, brought to Tibet by the Indian master Atisha.

    A memoir in the form of tales told by Rinpoche toward the end of his life, the book spans his lifetime — a lifetime rich in adventures of both spirit and body. His reminiscences weave a rich tapestry of family history and also describe the lives of some of the most realized and genuine practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism.

    How do I prepare my mind for meditation?There is nothing special. I just keep it where it always is.They ask, 'Then are you an arahant?'Do I know?I am like a tree in a forest, full of leaves, blossoms and fruit.Birds come to eat and nest, and animals seek rest in its shade.Yet the tree does not know itself.It follows its own nature.It is as it is.""All the teachings" Ajahn Chah taught, "are merely similes and comparisons, means to help the mind see the truth. If we establish the Buddha within our mind, then we see everything, we contemplate everything, as no different from ourselves.Many of the similes that Ajahn Chah himself used to teach came out of his vast experience of living in the forest. His practice was simply to watch, all the while being totally open and aware of everything that was happening both inside and outside himself. He would say that his practice was nothing special. He was, in his own words, like a tree in a forest, "A tree is as it is," he's say. And Ajahn Chah was as he was. But out of such "nothing specialness" came a profound understanding of himself and the world.Ajahn Chah used to say, "The Dhamma is revealing itself in every moment, but only when the mind is quiet can we understand what it is saying, for the Dhamma teaches without words." Ajahn Chah had this uncanny ability to take that wordless Dhamma and convey its truth to his listeners in the form of a simile that was fresh, easy to follow, sometimes humorous, sometimes poetic, but always striking a place in the heart where it would jar or inspire the most: "We are like maggots; life is like a falling leaf; our mind is like rain water."The teachings of Ajahn Chah teem with similes and comparisons like these. We thought it would be a good idea to collect them all in the form of a book as a source of inspiration for those who may want some respite from the "heat" of the world and seek some rest in the cool and abundant shade of "a tree in the forest".

    This concise handful of words is in fact the foundation from which all subsequent Buddhist teachings grow, and upon which all of them rely. Their wisdom is as pertinent to the scholar of Buddhist philosophy as it is to the ordinary practitioner, as it is indeed to anyone, anywhere, who aspires to liberation. Chögyam Trungpa's in-depth exploration of the Four Noble Truths reveals the subtlety and sophistication that lie beneath these deceptively simple teachings. He emphasizes their profound relevance not just as an inspiration when we set out on the path but at every other moment of our lives as well, showing how we can join view (intellectual understanding) of the teaching with practical application in order to interrupt suffering before it arises. His teaching is, as always, refreshingly direct and profoundly inspiring. The Truth of Suffering is an ideal introduction to the Four Noble Truths for the beginner as well as for the experienced practitioner in search of deeper understanding.

    With clarity and humour he guides us to understand how we ourselves generate the clouds of anxiety, desire and anger that obscure our happiness. We learn to recognise these obscurations, how they came about and how to release and dissolve them. The innate wisdom and brilliance of the mind then naturally manifest. The title contains guidelines and practices for meditators.

    Do the right thing, of course-- but better yet, find your inner light and doing the right thing becomes as natural as breathing. THE ZEN COMMANDMENTS offers ten powerful nudges toward that light.Drawing on sources from Zen stories and the Bible to jazz and rock 'n' roll, from American movies to Tibetan meditative techniques, Dean Sluyter steers clear of dogma and emphasizes what works-- a sort of spiritual street smarts. He shows that the state of boundless freedom and happiness isn't something distant or exotic, but is right here, while you're stuck in traffic or taking out the trash. And revisiting the Ten Commandments, he shows how on a deeper level they offer some surprising enlightenment wisdom of their own.“The book is extremely well written and joyously entertaining.”—Publishers Weekly “With sparkling clarity and wit, Sluyter's ten suggestions lay out the practical essentials of the path. My suggestion is: listen to this guy.”—Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within “Dean Sluyter clearly presents simple but profound ways to live one's life consciously and skillfully. He teaches that the source of universal truth not only rests in the heart of every one of us, but is the essence of what ultimately brings us true happiness and freedom. This is a wonderful book with rich wisdom and deep insight.”—Rabbi David Cooper, author of God Is a Verb “No matter what your religion (or lack of it), this book shows how to live the kind of life people ache for. It turns out to be pretty simple.”—Jane Cavolina, co-author of Growing Up Catholic

    For many years Powers's nearly 600-page Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism has served as the field's most authoritative and comprehensive overview of Tibet's distinctive Buddhist tradition. A Concise Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism explains the core Buddhist doctrines and the practices of meditation and tantra and provides a survey of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

    Lama Angarika Govinda spent over 20 years of his life as a member of the Kargyutpa Order. Studying at the feet of masters in Tibetan hermitages and monasteries, his direct experience has given him a clear insight into much that has remained totally obscure to the world. This work, regarded as a classic of Tibetan mysticism, explains the esoteric principles of Mantra and clarifies the differences between Hindu and Tibetan yoga, and is our direct link to the spiritual achievements of the past and their relationship to a future higher civilization of humanity.

    This book is a rich suite of practices that open the heart, counter the distortions in our relationships to ourselves, and deepen our relationship to others.

    In the early part of the 20th century, it was the pioneering effortsof keen scholars like W. Y. Evans-Wentz, the late editor of this volume, that triggered our ongoing occidental fascination with such phenomena as yoga, Zen, and meditation. Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines--a companion to the popular Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is also published by Oxford in anauthoritative Evans-Wentz edition--is a collection of seven authentic Tibetan yoga texts that first appeared in English in 1935.In these pages, amid useful photographs and reproductions of yoga paintings and manuscripts, readers will encounter some of the principal meditations used by Hindu and Tibetan gurus and philosophers throughout the ages in the attainment of Right Knowledge and Enlightenment. Special commentariesprecede each translated text, and a comprehensive introduction contrasts the tenets of Buddhism with European notions of religion, philosophy, and science. Evans-Wentz has also included a body of orally transmitted traditions and teachings that he received firsthand during his fifteen-plus years ofstudy in the Orient, findings that will interest any student of anthropology, psychology, comparative religion, or applied Mahāyāna Yoga. These seven distinct but intimately related texts will grant any reader a full and complete view of the spiritual teachings that still inform the life and cultureof the East. As with Evans-Wentz's other three Oxford titles on Tibetan religion, which are also appearing in new editions, this third edition of Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines features a new foreword by Donald S. Lopez, author of the recent Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West.

    Dear Reader, We humans have come to a crossroads in our history: we can either destroy the world or create a good future. The Shambhala Principle offers the principle of basic goodness as a way of addressing the personal and social challenges that we face. Do we, as humans, have confidence in the basic goodness of humanity, as well as of society itself? As a Tibetan lama and spiritual leader, this strikes me as our most compelling global issue.The book revolves around a dialogue with my father, the legendary Ch�gyam Trungpa. Whether his responses were direct or mystical, he continuously returned to the topics of basic goodness and enlightened society. Not only did he show me how I could become confident in their existence through awareness and meditation, he also taught me how basic goodness is a socially viable standard that could stabilize and transform our world.However, this book is not a memoir, or even a message. It is an invitation to readers to reflect on their own basic goodness and the basic goodness of society, and then contemplate the question, Can we rouse our energy and confidence to create a good world that is founded on this principle?I encourage you to join me in this contemplation. --Sakyong Mipham