How to Love is part of a charming series of books from Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, exploring the essential foundations of mindful meditation and practise. How to Love shows that when we feel closer to our loved ones, we are also more connected to the world as a whole. Nhat Hanh brings his signature clarity, compassion and humour to the thorny question of how to love and distils one of our strongest emotions down to four essentials: you can only love another when you feel true love for yourself; love is understanding; understanding brings compassion; and deep listening and loving speech are key ways of showing our love.

The Transnational Cult of Mount Wutai explores the pan-East Asian significance of sacred Mount Wutai from the Northern Dynasties to the present day. Offering novel readings of comparatively familiar visual and textual sources and, in many cases, examining unstudied or understudied noncanonical materials, the papers collected here illuminate the roles that both local actors and individuals dwelling far beyond Mount Wutai's borders have played in its making and remaking as a holy place for more than fifteen hundred years. The work aims to contribute to our understanding of the ways that sacred geography is made and remade in new places and times.

In this raw and moving memoir, Claude Thomas describes his service in Vietnam, his subsequent emotional collapse, and his remarkable journey toward healing. At Hell's Gate is not only a gripping coming-of-age story but a spiritual travelogue from the horrors of combat to the discovery of inner peace—a journey that inspired Thomas to become a Zen monk and peace activist who travels to war-scarred regions around the world. "Everyone has their Vietnam," Thomas writes. "Everyone has their own experience of violence, calamity, or trauma." With simplicity and power, this book offers timeless teachings on how we can all find healing, and it presents practical guidance on how mindfulness and compassion can transform our lives.

This expanded edition features:

   •  Discussion questions for reading groups
   •  A new afterword by the author reflecting on how the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are affecting soldiers—and offering advice on how to help returning soldiers to cope with their combat experiences

This book offers a systematic and radical introduction to the Buddhist roots of Patanjala-yoga, or the Yoga system of Patanjali. By examining each of 195 aphorisms (sutras) of the Yogasutra and discussing the Yogabhasya, it shows that traditional and popular views on Patanjala-yoga obscure its true nature. The book argues that Patanjali's Yoga contains elements rooted in both orthodox and heterodox philosophical traditions, including Sankhya, Jaina and Buddhist thought. With a fresh translation and a detailed commentary on the Yogasutra, the author unearths how several of the terms, concepts and doctrines in Patanjali's Yoga can be traced to Buddhism, particularly the Abhidharma Buddhism of Vasubandhu and the early Yogacara of Asanga. The work presents the Yogasutra of Patanjali as a synthesis of two perspectives: the metaphysical perspective of Sankhya and the empirical-psychological perspective of Buddhism. Based on a holistic understanding of Yoga, the study explores key themes of the text, such as meditative absorption, means, supernormal powers, isolation, Buddhist conceptions of meditation and the interplay between Sankhya and Buddhist approaches to suffering and emancipation. It further highlights several new findings and clarifications on textual interpretation and discrepancies. An important intervention in Indian and Buddhist philosophy, this book opens up a new way of looking at the Yoga of Patanjali in the light of Buddhism beyond standard approaches and will greatly interest scholars and researchers of Buddhist studies, Yoga studies, Indian philosophy, philosophy in general, literature, religion and comparative studies, Indian and South Asian Studies and the history of ideas.

The now-classic exploration of the role of women and the feminine in Buddhist Tantra The crowning cultural achievement of medieval India, Tantric Buddhism is known in the West primarily for the sexual practices of its adherents, who strive to transform erotic passion into spiritual bliss. Historians of religion have long held that this attempted enlightenment was for men only, and that women in the movement were at best marginal and subordinated and at worst degraded and exploited. In Passionate Enlightenment, Miranda Shaw argues to the contrary and presents extensive evidence of the outspoken and independent female founders of the Tantric movement and their creative role in shaping its distinctive vision of gender relations and sacred sexuality. Including a new preface by the author, this Princeton Classics edition makes an essential work available for new audiences.

Fueled by the music of revolution, anger, fear, and despair, we dyed our hair or shaved our heads ... Eating acid like it was candy and chasing speed with cheap vodka, smoking truckloads of weed, all in a vain attempt to get numb and stay numb.

This is the story of a young man and a generation of angry youths who rebelled against their parents and the unfulfilled promise of the sixties. As with many self-destructive kids, Noah Levine's search for meaning led him first to punk rock, drugs, drinking, and dissatisfaction. But the search didn't end there. Having clearly seen the uselessness of drugs and violence, Noah looked for positive ways to channel his rebellion against what he saw as the lies of society. Fueled by his anger at so much injustice and suffering, Levine now uses that energy and the practice of Buddhism to awaken his natural wisdom and compassion.

While Levine comes to embrace the same spiritual tradition as his father, bestselling author Stephen Levine, he finds his most authentic expression in connecting the seemingly opposed worlds of punk and Buddhism. As Noah Levine delved deeper into Buddhism, he chose not to reject the punk scene, instead integrating the two worlds as a catalyst for transformation. Ultimately, this is an inspiring story about maturing, and how a hostile and lost generation is finally finding its footing. This provocative report takes us deep inside the punk scene and moves from anger, rebellion, and self-destruction, to health, service to others, and genuine spiritual growth.

In this volume of memoirs we find Sangharakshita after twenty years in the East arriving back in England at the invitation of the English Sangha Trust. He expects to stay no more than a few months, but the months become years and, as he comes to know the then small world of British Buddhism, he realizes that after all it is here that he may best be able to work for the good of Buddhism , as one of his teachers had once exhorted him. After a farewell tour of his friends and teachers in India, he goes on to found a new Buddhist movement and to ordain twelve men and women into a new Buddhist Order. The answer to the question Why did Sangharakshita found a new Buddhist movement and Order? is in these pages. 'Moving Against the Stream' has for its backdrop 1960s Britain, with figures as diverse as Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and David Cooper, the anti-psychiatry psychiatrist. In the world of British Buddhism there is Christmas Humphreys, founder of the London Buddhist Society, and Maurice Walshe, translator of the Digha Nikaya, and many others. Here also is the story of a friendship that was to be deeply significant for Sangharakshita. As he and Terry Delamare drive across Europe visiting the sites of ancient Greece and the churches, museums and great works of art of Renaissance Italy, Sangharakshita makes vivid the role that higher culture can play in spiritual life. This volume includes '1970 - A Retrospect' in which Sangharakshita tells of a year that begins with lectures in Paris, continues with three months at Yale University as a visiting lecturer, and concludes back in Britain as he resumes his work for the Buddhist movement. A new phase is beginning.

Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of being appreciated?
Because your brain evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences but slowly from the good ones.
You can change this.
Hardwiring Happiness lays out a simple method that uses the hidden power of everyday experiences to build new neural structures full of happiness, love, confidence, and peace. Dr. Hanson's four steps build strengths into your brain-- balancing its ancient negativity bias--making contentment and a powerful sense of resilience the new normal. In mere minutes each day, we can transform our brains into refuges and power centers of calm and happiness.

Are you frustrated with your finances and ready for a painless solution? Is your coaching or creative business ramping up, but your bookkeeping gets you down? Do you cringe when you have to deal with your finances, and wish it could just be easy? From Zero to Zen shows you how to manage your money so your business is fabulously successful. When you dig into your books and learn exactly what to do and when, you'll take your business to a whole new level. This book is for motivated coaches and creative professionals who want to help people and make money.

This first book by insight meditation teacher and workshop leader Gemma Polo Pujol is full of profoundly transformative teachings. For many people, their path to meditation and dharma is through suffering, and these short pieces are unequivocally aware of this and offer an immediate sense of peace that many of us have thought was not possible. You feel in safe hands - Gemma has trained for decades within the great spiritual traditions and has taught for a long time, including in her own retreat centre. She does not charge for her teachings, continuing an ancient spiritual tradition of dana, of making the teachings available to all and honouring that which is priceless. Gemma has chosen ten headings in an order that reflects the different stages of the spiritual journey. Chapters range from The Call and Abiding In The Light to The Soul's Journey and A Place of Presence. At the end of each chapter she offers a practical exercise or meditation. This is one of the best books of inspirational writings published for quite some time. There's an incredible patient wisdom that runs through the words, born out of years of experience in teaching and a deep experience of life.

Mind training is a comprehensive practice that is suitable for all types of students. It contains the entire path and does not depend on a person's background. Mind Training nurses and cultivates the Buddha Nature, that pure seed of awakening that is at the very heart of every sentient being. It has the power to transform even egotistical self-clinging into self-lessness. Put into practice diligently, it is enough to lead you all the way to awakening.

In The Path to Awakening, Shamar Rinpoche gives his own detailed commentary on Chekawa Yeshe Dorje's Seven Points of Mind Training, a text that has been used for transformative practice in Tibetan Buddhism for close to a thousand years. Clear, accessible, and yet profound, this book is filled with practical wisdom, philosophy, and meditation instructions.

Struggling with depression, anxiety, illness, an eating disorder, a difficult relationship, fear, self-hatred, addiction or anger? Renowned Buddhist leader Tsultrim Allione explains that the harder we fight our demons, the stronger they become. Offering Eastern answers to Western needs, Tsultrim seamlessly weaves traditions from Tibet and the Western world to offer a new and unique answer to the problems that plague us: that rather than attempt to purge them, we need to reverse our approach and nurture our demons. This powerful five-step practice forms a strategy for transforming negative emotions, relationships, fears, illness and self-defeating patterns. This will help you cope with the inner enemies that undermine our best intentions.

IDH Religion provides a series of short introductions to specific areas of study at the intersections of digital humanities and religion, offering an overview of current methodologies, techniques, tools, and projects as well as defining challenges and opportunities for further research. This volume explores DH and Buddhism in four sections: Theory and Method; Digital Conservation, Preservation and Archiving; Digital Analysis; Digital Resources. It covers themes such as language processing, digital libraries, online lexicography, and ethnographic methods. Erratum: Unfortunately there is a mistake in the print version in the last paragraph of page 14. READ is an open-source software system developed by a team consisting of Stefan Baums at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Andrew Glass in Seattle, Ian McCrabb at the University of Sydney and Stephen White in Venice (https://github.com/readsoftware/read).

Buddhism or Buddhisms? By the time they move on to Buddhism in Japan, many students who have studied its origins in India ask whether this is in fact the same religion, so different can they appear. In Buddhisms: An Introduction, Professor John S. Strong provides an overview of the Buddhist tradition in all its different forms around the world. Beginning at the modern day temples of Lumbini, where the Buddha was born, Strong takes us through the life of the Buddha and a study of Buddhist Doctrine, revealing how Buddhism has changed just as it has stayed the same. Finally, Strong examines the nature of Buddhist community life and its development today in the very different environments of Thailand, Japan, and Tibet. Enriched by the author's own insights gathered over forty years, Buddhisms never loses sight of the personal experience amidst the wide-scope of its subject. Clear in its explanations, replete with tables and suggestions for further reading, this is an essential new work that makes original contributions to the study of this 2,500 year-old religion.

In the wide range of Buddhist meditation and spirituality a very special place is held by the practice of calling on the name of Amitabha, or in Japanese Amida Buddha, using the simplest of formulas, the nenbutsu. Japanese masters such as Honen, Shinran and others made this the core of a profound spiritual experience which has fascinated numberless followers ever since. The deeper meaning of the nenbutsu has therefore become a major topic in Buddhist thought which has been reflected on by various thinkers and teachers to this day, especially in the context of Shin Buddhism. In this book, which draws on classic articles first published in The Eastern Buddhist, major historic proponents and masters of the nenbutsu are introduced, in particular Shinran, Shoku, Ippen and Rennyo. Further contributions, which set the work of these masters into the wider context of Buddhist tradition, are in fact some of the earliest Buddhist voicesA" to emerge from modern Japan into global view. Yet the presentations of writers such as Sasaki Gessho, Yamabe Shugaku and Sugihira Shizutoshi have a freshness and an immediacy which speaks to us today.

This book examines the psychological dimensions of emotions and humour in Buddhism. While there is a wealth of material concerning human emotions related to humour and the mindful management of negative emotions, very little has been written on the theory of Buddhist humour. Uniting both Buddhist and Western philosophy, the author draws upon the theory of 'incongruity humour', espoused by figures such as Kierkegaard, Kant and Hegel and absorbed into the interpretation of humour by the Buddhist monk and former Western philosopher, Nanavira Thero. The author makes extensive use of rich primary sources such as the parables used by Ajahn Brahm while interweaving Western theories and philosophies to illuminate this original study of humour and emotion. This pioneering work will be of interest and value to students and scholars of humour, Buddhist traditions and existentialism more widely.

This book is the first to critically analyze Buddhist-Muslim relations in Theravada Buddhist majority states in South and Southeast Asia. Asia is home to the largest population of Buddhists and Muslims. In recent years, this interfaith communal living has incurred conflicts, such as the ethnic-religious conflicts in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Experts from around the world collaborate to provide a comprehensive look into religious pluralism and religious violence. The book is divided into two sections. The first section provides historical background to the three countries with the largest Buddhist-Muslim relations. The second section has chapters that focus on specific encounters between Buddhists and Muslims, which includes anti-Buddhist sentiments in Bangladesh, the role of gender in Muslim-Buddhist relations and the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya sentiments in Myanmar. By exploring historical fluctuations over time-paying particular attention to how state-formations condition Muslim-Buddhist entanglements-the book shows the processual and relational aspects of religious identity constructions and Buddhist-Muslim interactions in Theravada Buddhist majority states.