The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life


Piero Ferrucci - 2005
    Piero Ferrucci, one of the world's most respected transpersonal psychologists, explores the many surprising facets of kindness and argues that it is this trait that will not only lead to our own individual happiness and the happiness of those around us, but will guide us in a world that has become cold, anxious, difficult, and frightening.Piero Ferrucci warns against the dangers of "global cooling." As the pace of living grows faster and the impact of new technologies more insistent, communications become hurried and impersonal. The drive for profit overrides the heart. Warmth and genuine presence fade. In eighteen interlocking chapters, Dr. Ferrucci reveals that the kindest people are the most likely to thrive, to enable others to thrive, and to slowly but steadily turn our world away from violence, self-centeredness, and narcissism- and toward love. Writing with a rare combination of sensitivity and intellectual depth, Dr. Ferrucci shows that, ultimately, kindness is not a luxury in our world but rather a necessity for us all.

Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation


Bruce Tift - 2011
    "Buddhist practice helps us awaken to a well-being that is independent of our circumstances," explains Bruce Tift, "while Western psychotherapy helps us bring our disowned experience into awareness in order to live in a more skillful and satisfying way."On Already Free, this therapist and Buddhist practitioner opens a fresh dialogue between these two perspectives, and explores how each provides us with essential keys to experiencing full presence and aliveness.Practical Tools and Wisdom from the Eastern and Western TraditionsBuddhism gives us powerful tools for breaking free of our own identity drama and our fascination with day-to-day problems, yet it does not address how early childhood experience shapes our adult lives. Western psychotherapy provides a wide range of proven techniques for understanding and untangling the development of our neurotic patterns, but it is only beginning to recognize the powerful impact of exploring awareness itself. "These two approaches sometimes contradict and sometimes support each other," Tift explains. "When used together, they can help us open to all of life in all its richness, its disturbances, and its inherent completeness."With a keen understanding of the wisdom of East and West, and a special focus on working with intimate relationships as a pathway to spiritual awakening, Bruce Tift presents seven immersive sessions of insights, wisdom, and practical instruction for realizing the fundamental freedom that is your birthright.HighlightsThe Developmental Approach--why we still use our childhood survival skills after we outgrow them The Fruitional Approach--Buddhist wisdom on finding liberation without resolving our historic issues Relationships and Awakening--practices for couples to develop "healthy intimacy" and welcome connection and separateness Why we use "neurotic organization" to limit our life experience, and how to challenge this self-perpetuating process

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway


Susan Jeffers - 1987
    Dr. Susan Jeffers, teaches you how to stop negative thinking patterns and reeducate your mind to think more positively. You will learn: the vital 10-Step Positive Thinking Process; how to risk a little every day; how to turn every decision into a " No-Lose" situation, and much more.

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms


Vishen Lakhiani - 2016
    Learn to think like the greatest creative minds of our era—to question, challenge, and create new rules for your ideas of love, education, spirituality, work, happiness, and meaning. The Code of the Extraordinary Mind is a blueprint for retraining our minds to hack everything—how we work, love, parent, and heal—and learn to succeed on our own terms. No matter where you’re starting from, you can build a life that’s truly extraordinary and make a dent in the universe. In this book, you will learn to bend reality, question the brules, transcend the culturescape, embrace your quest, practice consciousness engineering, live in blissipline, and push humanity forward. You will question your limits and realize that there are none. Your understanding of the world around you and your place in it will change, and you will find yourself operating at a new, extraordinary level in every way—with happiness, purpose, fulfillment, and love.

Mindfulness in Plain English


Henepola Gunaratana - 1992
    This expanded edition includes the complete text of its predecessor along with a new chapter on cultivating loving kindness. For anyone who is new to meditation, this is a great resource for learning how to live a more productive and peaceful life.

Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much


Anne Wilson Schaef - 1990
    With wisdom, insight, and humor, these 365 mediations梯mbined with quotations from women of different ages, cultures, and perspectives涩ll help women recognize that cycle. In a welcome antidote to the mad rush of modern living, Schaef's concise meditations will open new doors to new ways of living. These meditations will provide sustenance and inspiration and create possibilities for positive change in the lives of all women who do too much.

How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow


Toni Bernhard - 2013
    Using step by step instructions, the author illustrates how to be fully present in the moment without clinging to joy or resisting sorrow. This opens the door to a kind of wellness that goes beyond circumstances. Actively engaging life as it is in this fashion holds the potential for awakening to a peace and well-being that are not dependent on whether a particular experience is joyful or sorrowful. This is a practical book, containing dozens of exercises and practices, all of which are illustrated with easy-to-relate to personal stories from the author’s experience.

Buddhism Plain and Simple


Steve Hagen - 1997
    It is about being awake and in touch with what is going on here and now. When the Buddha was asked to sum up his teaching in a single word, he said, "Awareness." The Buddha taught how to see directly into the nature of experience. His observations and insights are plain, practical, and down-to-earth, and they deal exclusively with the present. In Buddhism Plain and Simple, Steve Hagen presents these uncluttered, original teachings in everyday, accessible language unencumbered by religious ritual, tradition, or belief.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice


Shunryu Suzuki - 1970
    Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it’s all about. An instant teaching on the first page. And that’s just the beginning.In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics—from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality—in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. It’s a book to come back to time and time again as an inspiration to practice, and it is now available to a new generation of seekers in this fortieth anniversary edition, with a new afterword by Shunryu Suzuki’s biographer, David Chadwick.

The Secret


Rhonda Byrne - 2006
    For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it.In this book, you’ll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life—money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You’ll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that’s within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life.The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers—men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.

Don't Overthink It: Make Easier Decisions, Stop Second-Guessing, and Bring More Joy to Your Life


Anne Bogel - 2020
    Nobody wants to live a life of constant overthinking, but it doesn't feel like something we can choose to stop doing. It feels like something we're wired to do, something we just can't escape. But is it?Anne Bogel's answer is no. Not only can you overcome negative thought patterns that are repetitive, unhealthy, and unhelpful, you can replace them with positive thought patterns that will bring more peace, joy, and love into your life. In Don't Overthink It, you'll find actionable strategies that can make an immediate and lasting difference in how you deal with questions both small--Should I buy these flowers?--and large--What am I doing with my life? More than a book about making good decisions, Don't Overthink It offers you a framework for making choices you'll be comfortable with, using an appropriate amount of energy, freeing you to focus on all the other stuff that matters in life.

Awakening the Buddha Within: Eight Steps to Enlightenment


Surya Das - 1997
    In Awakening the Buddha Within, Surya Das shows how we can awaken to who we really are in order to lead a more compassionate, enlightened, and balanced life. It illuminates the guidelines and key principles embodied in the noble Eight-Fold Path and the traditional Three Enlightenment Trainings common to all schools of Buddhism:Wisdom Training: Developing clear vision, insight, and inner understanding--seeing reality and ourselves as we really are.Ethics Training: Cultivating virtue, self-discipline, and compassion in what we say and do.Meditation Training: Practicing mindfulness, concentration, and awareness of the present moment.With lively stories, meditations, and spiritual practices, Awakening the Buddha Within is an invaluable text for the novice and experienced student of Buddhism alike.

Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening


Joseph Goldstein - 2013
    With Mindfulness, Joseph Goldstein shares the wisdom of his four decades of teaching and practice in a book that will serve as a lifelong companion for anyone committed to mindful living and the realization of inner freedom.Goldstein's source teaching is the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha's legendary discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness that became the basis for the many types of Vipassana (or insight meditation) found today. Exquisite in detail yet wholly accessible and relevant for the modern student, Mindfulness takes us through a profound study of: Ardency, clear knowing, mindfulness, and concentration--how to develop these four qualities of mind essential for walking the path wiselyThe Satipatthana refrain--how deeply contemplating the four foundations of mindfulness opens us to bare knowing and continuity of mindfulnessMindfulness of the body, including the breath, postures, activities, and physical characteristicsMindfulness of feelings--how the experience of our sense perceptions influences our inner and outer worldsMindfulness of mind--learning to recognize skillful and unskillful states of mind and thoughtMindfulness of dhammas (or categories of experience), including the Five Hindrances, the Six Sense Spheres, the Seven Factors of Awakening, and much more"There is a wealth of meaning and nuance in the experience of mindfulness that can enrich our lives in unimagined ways," writes Goldstein. In Mindfulness you have the tools to mine these riches for yourself.

Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation


Larry Rosenberg - 1998
    This is the 2,500-year-old good news contained in the Anapanasati Sutra , the Buddha's teaching on cultivating both tranquility and deep insight through full awareness of breathing. In this book, Larry Rosenberg brings this timeless meditation method to life. Using the insights gained from his many years of practice and teaching, he makes insight meditation practice accessible to modern practitioners.

Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life


Sylvia Boorstein - 2007
    The result is her best work to date, offering warm, wise, and helpful ways we can experience happiness even when the odds are against us.As Boorstein has discovered in more than three decades of practice as a professional psychotherapist, the secret to happiness lies in actively cultivating our capacity to connect with kindness: with ourselves; with friends, family, colleagues; with those we may not know well; and even with those we may not like. She draws from the heart of Buddhist teachings to show how Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness, and Wise Concentration can lead us away from anger, anxiety, and confusion, and into calmness, clarity, and the joy of living in the present. These qualities strengthen our ability to meet encounters of every kind with balance and intelligence, providing us with a grounded sense of true contentment.Happiness Is an Inside Job resonates with the knowledge of a psychotherapist, the compassion of a spiritual teacher, and the wisdom of a grandmother. Boorstein’s vivid stories capture our minds and our hearts, and the simple exercises she suggests can be done while you read.This beautiful book is comforting and reminds us that life is a shared journey, that our hearts truly do want to console and love our fellow sojourners, and that living happily is indeed the best way to live.