Book Recommendations

Everything is Dharma, in a sense, for the true practitioner and avid seeker. Everything can be seen and taken as teachings, blessings and inspiration-- grist for the spiritual practice mill. There are no unequivocally good or bad, positive or negative things, experiences or people; it is only thinking that makes them seem so. Everything is so subjective. It’s not what happens but what we make of it that makes all the difference in determining our character and karma, our experience, fate, destiny. I just returned from ten days with my dear old friend and guru-brother Ram Dass, at his home...

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Instead of reacting with rage, Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das says to take a sacred pause and transform your life. Excerpted from "Buddha Is As Buddha Does; The Ten Original Practices for Enlightened Living," Lama Surya Das (HarperSanFrancisco, 2007). Reprinted with permission. Patience means not retaliating with anger for anger, or harm for harm, and voluntarily bearing up under difficulties in order to progress on the path of spiritual awakening. How do we actually do this? How do we slow down our conditioned, knee-jerk reactions while speeding up and sharpening our conscious, mindful,...

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by Susan K. Greenland Product Description: Mindful awareness works by enabling you to pay closer attention to what is happening within you—your thoughts, feelings, and emotions—so you can better understand what is happening to you. The Mindful Child extends the vast benefits of mindfulness training to children from four to eighteen years old with age-appropriate exercises, songs, games, and fables that Susan Kaiser Greenland has developed over more than a decade of teaching mindful awareness to kids. These fun and friendly techniques build kids' inner and outer awareness and attention,...

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by Stephen Batchelor Hardcover: 320 pages; Spiegel & Grau (March 2, 2010) ISBN: 0385527063 Purchase this book online at Amazon.com ...

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by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Dr. Howard Cutler Amazon.com Product Description: Nearly every time you see him, he's laughing, or at least smiling. And he makes everyone else around him feel like smiling. Even after spending only a few minutes in his presence you can't help feeling happier. If you ask him if he's happy, even though he's suffered the loss of his country, the Dalai Lama will give you an unconditional yes. What's more, he'll tell you that happiness is the purpose of life, and that "the very motion of our life is toward happiness." How to get there has always been the question....

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by Marc Lesser Amazon.com Description: A certain kind of busyness is crucial to life, allowing us to earn a living, create art, and achieve success. But too often it consumes us and we become crazy busy, nonstop busy, and we expend extraneous effort that gets us nowhere. Marc Lesser's new book shows us the benefits of doing less in a world that has increasingly embraced more — more desire, more activity, more things, more exhaustion. Less is about stopping, about the possibility of finding composure in the midst of activity. The ideas and practices that Lesser outlines offer a radical...

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by Thich Nhat Hanh Happiness: Essential Mindfulness Practices Description: "Encouraging readers to be intelligent and skillful in their practice, this new collection by Thich Nhat Hanh outlines the essential steps by which we can all obtain real and lasting happiness. Each day, we perform the tasks of everyday life without thought or awareness — walking, sitting, working, eating, driving, and much more. But Hanh points out that if we remain truly aware of our actions, no matter the task we're performing, we can stay engaged in our lives and better our outlook through mindfulness. This...

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Books are my friends. Everyone knows the "Tao Te Ching", "The Little Prince", "Walden: A Year in the Woods", "Leaves of Grass", "Letters to a Young Poet", "The Power of Now",  and "The Old Man and the Sea". But have you ever read the glorious little animal pomes and prayer-like sweetness of the mid-last century cloistered French nun  Carmen de Gasztold? "Prayers from the Ark" or "The Creatures' Choir"? Highly recommended.

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Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening by Ken Wilber, Terry Patten, Adam Leonard, Marco Morelli This is the best book yet to synthesize the work of Ken Wilber into a practical, accessible program. Plus, the lead writer is my great friend and soul brother, Terry Patten. Not to be missed.

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I find that Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the most inspiring of world leaders. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, daughter of one of Burma's founding hero's, leader of the pro-democracy movement in her country, nonviolent activist and a Buddhist meditator; Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of Myanmar (formerly Burma), has been under house arrest for 13 out of the last 19 years under the draconian military junta ruling that backward country . Now she is being tried on trumped up charges for a minor incident of giving an American who swam across a lake to her waterside home under the cover of darkness...

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