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.

    An inspiring and very accessible compilation of essays and edited talks on the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. As Gil Fronsdal states, "the search for the issue at hand is the search for what is closest at hand, for what is directly seen, heard, smelt, tasted, felt, and cognized in the present." Gil brings the practice of mindfulness not only to formal meditation but to all the varying aspects of every day life.http://www.insightmeditationcenter.or....

    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.

    Our ancestors travelled long distances on foot, gaining new experiences and learning from them. But as universal as walking is, each of us will experience it differently. For Erling Kagge, walking is the gateway to the questions that fascinate him--Why do we walk? Where do we walk from? What is our destination?--and in this book he invites us to investigate them along with him. Language reflects the idea that life is one single walk; the word "journey" comes from the distance we travel in the course of a day. Walking for Kagge is a natural accompaniment to science: the occasion for the unspoken dialogue of thinking. Walking is also the antidote to the speed at which we conduct our lives, to our insistence on rushing, on doing everything in a precipitous manner--walking is among the most radical things we can do.

    . . . We do what we can. Yet so much comes up to complicate this natural response: "Will I have what it takes?" "How much is enough?" "How can I deal with suffering?" "And what really helps, anyway?"In this practical helper's companion, the authors explore a path through these confusions, and provide support and inspiration fo us in our efforts as members of the helping professions, as volunteers, as community activists, or simply as friends and family trying to meet each other's needs. Here too are deeply moving personal accounts: A housewife brings zoo animals to lift the spirits of nursing home residents; a nun tends the wounded on the first night of the Nicaraguan revolution; a police officer talks a desperate father out of leaping from a roof with his child; a nurse allows an infant to spend its last moments of life in her arms rather than on a hospital machine. From many such stories and the authors' reflections, we can find strength, clarity, and wisdom for those times when we are called on to care for one another. How Can I Help? reminds us just how much we have to give and how doing so can lead to some of the most joyous moments of our lives.

    But much of his success was due to collaboration with designers, engineers and thinkers. The Zen of Steve Jobs tells the story of Jobs' relationship with one such person: Kobun Chino Otogawa.Kobun was a Zen Buddhist priest who emigrated to the U.S. from Japan in the early 1970s. He was an innovator, lacked appreciation for rules and was passionate about art and design. Kobun was to Buddhism as Jobs was to the computer business: a renegade and maverick. It wasn't long before the two became friends--a relationship that was not built to last.This graphic book is a reimagining of that friendship. The story moves back and forward in time, from the 1970s to 2011, but centers on the period after Jobs' exile from Apple in 1985 when he took up intensive study with Kobun. Their time together was integral to the big leaps that Apple took later on with its product design and business strategy.Told using stripped down dialogue and bold calligraphic panels, The Zen of Steve Jobs explores how Jobs might have honed his design aesthetic via Eastern religion before choosing to identify only what he needs and leave the rest behind.

    The most common way this manifests is in a persistent sense of discontentment. Something just doesn’t feel quite right. That something is usually hard to put a finger on. It’s often just a feeling that haunts us in the background, one that leads to endless soul searching and goal striving. Although it can disappear when a desire is achieved, or a piece of our life that was believed to be missing falls into place, ultimately the relief is only temporary. Before long, the background feeling that something is not okay returns and the search begins anew. You may be surprised to learn that life doesn’t have to be this way. Since 2006, our global scientific research project has been on the trail of the tiny fraction of the population that seems to have escaped this fate. We found thousands of them, and what we learned has been nothing short of astonishing. It will revolutionize your life for the better, if you’ll let it. Praise For The Finders "If a Nobel Prize existed for Psychology, the work done by Jeffery Martin and his team and described in this book would be a strong contender. The book is about people who have managed to fulfil one of the most sought after but rarely achieved human needs – true happiness, a deep and fundamental sense of wellbeing." ~ Dr. Peter Fenwick, internationally renowned neuropsychiatrist and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists "Dr. Jeffery Martin's work on non-symbolic states of awareness has helped create the most lucid map for understanding higher states of consciousness. I have personally gained a deeper understanding of the universality of human sacred experience from his research and have been able to replicate and publish it. For anyone who is interested in getting scientific knowledge of the range and evolution of human experience in the direction of expanded awareness and ultimately that which wisdom traditions call 'enlightenment' Jeffery's book and research are must reads." ~ Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, author of over 85 books including dozens of best sellers "In this book Dr. Martin takes his place beside William James and Abraham Maslow to give us one of the most important and ground-breaking works on consciousness and human potential in recent memory." ~ Allan Leslie Combs, Ph.D., CIIS Professor of Consciousness Studies, author of The Radiance of Being and Consciousness Explained Better "Dr. Jeffery Martin and his colleagues have produced a landmark study, one not only relevant to transpersonal psychology but to psychology in general. Maslow wrote of 'self-actualized' persons. Dr. Martin goes a step further, describing the phenomenology of Maslow's highest level, namely the self-transcendent or enlightened. This book contains a schema by which its readers can more deeply appreciate the development of these men and women. It is not often that rigorous research can be inspirational, but Dr. Martin has come through. Indeed, readers on a spiritual path are now able to chart their own development on a continuum of experiences, one that many writers once pathologized." ~ Stanley Krippner, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Saybrook University; past-President of two and Fellow in five divisions of the American Psychological Association, and winner of its lifetime achievement award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology; 50+ year veteran researcher and pioneer in the scientific study of consciousness

    The "great spring" of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again--the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example. It also refers to enlightenment: obstructions shatter, pain cracks open, previously resisted truth releases, an acceptance of transiency flows through. Natalie Goldberg shares the moments that have sprung from her own life of writing, teaching, and Zen practice moments of searching, wandering, zigzagging, losing, and leaping where she has found herself and her voice. In these pages, we watch as Natalie "makes positive effort for the good" one of the guiding rules of her writing life and we see that if we can stay attentive in our lives, even in the middle of the ruins, "we can hear the sound of a songbird in a Paris chestnut tree." Whether we know if the song comes from inside us or out doesn't matter. Thirteen of the twenty-two essays in the book have been previously published (often in a different form). Those publications include "Yoga Journal, Shambhala Sun, Five Points, "and "Creative Nonfiction. ""

    According to Adyashanti, this idea may actually be the most powerful impediment to our awakening. On Spontaneous Awakening, he invites you to inquire into the “ordinary nature” of enlightenment—and the profound truth of who you really are. “Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special—it’s not. If you feel special in any way, then enlightenment has not occurred,” teaches Adyashanti. So where do we start? With the desire to look fearlessly at and inquire passionately into truth, explains Adyashanti. “When you stop resisting experience, what remains is the bliss of sheer nothingness. And everything that is possible lives in that nothingness.” With more than seven hours of teachings, two guided meditations, and an exclusive Sounds True interview, Spontaneous Awakening is an eye-opening program that explores topics including: The self-authenticating nature of spiritual discovery• The link between personal awareness and awareness itself• How attachment can lead to complete freedom and unattachment• Why genuine spiritual knowing requires mental subtraction—not addition.

    Over this period many things changed decisively—globally, locally, and in their personal lives—and these changing conditions provide the back story for a long conversation. It begins in the early 1980s as an intellectual exchange between an earnest graduate student and a generous distinguished writer, and becomes a long-distance friendship and an exploration of spiritual practice.At the project’s heart is Snyder’s understanding of Buddhism. Again and again, the conversations return to an explication of the teachings. Snyder’s characteristic approach is to articulate a direct experience of Buddhist practice rather than any kind of abstract philosophy. In the version he describes here, this practice finds expression not primarily as an Asian import or a monastic ideal, but in the specificities of a householder’s life as lived creatively in a particular location at a particular moment in history. This means that whatever “topic” a dialogue explores, there is a sense that all of it is about practice—the spiritual-social practice of a contemporary poet.

    Richard Holloway retells the entire history of religion—from the dawn of religious belief to the twenty-first century—with deepest respect and a keen commitment to accuracy. Writing for those with faith and those without, and especially for young readers, he encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery, and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith. Ranging far beyond the major world religions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, Holloway also examines where religious belief comes from, the search for meaning throughout history, today’s fascinations with Scientology and creationism, religiously motivated violence, hostilities between religious people and secularists, and more. Holloway proves an empathic yet discerning guide to the enduring significance of faith and its power from ancient times to our own.

    His explanation derives from a profound understanding of Sufism, and extends to many aspects which are usually neglected. His illuminating answer to 'What is Sufism?' gives a taste of the very subject matter itself. What do Sufis believe? What do they aim at? What do they do? Unlike other writers on the subject, Martin Lings treats all the three questions with equal justice. He is thus able to give a wealth of answers to the main question 'What is Sufism?', each answer being from a different angle but all going to the root of the matter. A reviewer wrote 'Should the book appear in paperback, I would use it for undergraduate and graduate courses on Islamic civilization', and in fact What is Sufism? has become a set book in colleges and universities on both sides of the Atlantic. It is now accepted as the authoritative statement on the subject of Sufism and it has been translated into French, German, Italian and Spanish. It has also been published in Sarajevo in Bosnian, and is available in Braille.

    How many of us understand the way seizures affect the brain, how the heart is connected to wellbeing, or the why the foot carries the key to our humanity? In Adventures in Human Being, award-winning author Gavin Francis leads readers on a journey into the hidden pathways of the human body, offering a guide to its inner workings and a celebration of its marvels.Drawing on his experiences as a surgeon, ER specialist, and family physician, Francis blends stories from the clinic with episodes from medical history, philosophy, and literature to describe the body in sickness and in health, in living and in dying. At its heart, Adventures in Human Being is a meditation on what it means to be human. Poetic, eloquent, and profoundly perceptive, this book will transform the way you view your body.

    Loy.In little time, Loy has become one of the most powerful advocates of the Buddhist worldview, explaining like no one else its ability to transform the sociopolitical landscape of the modern world.In this, his most accessible work to date, he offers sharp and even shockingly clear presentations of oft-misunderstood Buddhist staples-the working of karma, the nature of self, the causes of trouble on both the individual and societal levels-and the real reasons behind our collective sense of "never enough," whether it's time, money, sex, security... even war.Loy's "Buddhist Revolution" is nothing less than a radical change in the ways we can approach our lives, our planet, the collective delusions that pervade our language, culture, and even our spirituality.