An Indian master spontaneously empties a bag of gold dust into the air. A young woman lays down the burden of her dead child and asks the Buddha to accept her as his disciple. These are some of the scenes evoked in Tales of Freedom. Drawn from the rich variety of the Buddhist tradition, the stories convey a sense of inner freedom. We see ordinary people liberate themselves from anger and grief, and great teachers remain free even in the face of death. Vessantara's commentary shows us how we can move towards that freedom in our own lives. Stories have the power to transform us as we enter their world. The wisdom of these beautifully told stories can teach us how to break out of our self-imposed mental prisons - and roam free.

The rising population known as "nones" for its members' lack of religious affiliation is changing American society, politics, and culture. Many nones believe in God and even visit places of worship, but they do not identify with a specific faith or belong to a spiritual community. Corinna Nicolaou is a none, and in this layered narrative, she describes what it is like for her and thousands of others to live without religion or to be spiritual without committing to a specific faith. Nicolaou tours America's major traditional religions to see what, if anything, one might lack without God. She moves through Christianity's denominations, learning their tenets and worshiping alongside their followers. She travels to Los Angeles to immerse herself in Judaism, Berkeley to educate herself about Buddhism, and Dallas and Washington, D.C., to familiarize herself with Islam. She explores what light they can shed on the fears and failings of her past, and these encounters prove the significant role religion still plays in modern life. They also exemplify the vibrant relationship between religion and American culture and the enduring value it provides to immigrants and outsiders. Though she remains a devout none, Nicolaou's experiences reveal points of contact between the religious and the unaffiliated, suggesting that nones may be radically revising the practice of faith in contemporary times.

How to Walk is part of a new series of books from Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, exploring the essential foundations of mindful meditation and practise. Pocket-sized and beautifully illustrated, How to Walk explains how mindful walking can be a technique for diminishing depression, recapturing wonder, and expressing gratitude. Here we explore the benefits of walking meditation, along with meditative poems to recite silently while walking. This is a unique book perfect for those brand new to mindfulness as well as those looking to deepen their spiritual practise.

Ongoing major efforts are underway to learn more about the life of Jesus and teachings, yet little to no attempt has been made to date regarding the real lifetime of another religious giant, the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. That's about to change. Based on a variety of reliable sources, linguistics evidence, archeological clues, and interpretations of mythological documents, the picture of a Lost History of the Buddha has emerged. It appears that prior to his Enlightenment, he was a famous religious leader, who became Emperor in Babylon, only to be overthrown (522 BCE) in a murderous plot orchestrated by a religious competitor, Zoroaster, and the Persian King of Kings, Darius the Great. He was born west of today's India, not in Nepal, as some have suggested. The Buddha from Babylon is written as a narrative story, rather than as a research paper. It reads like a documentary covering the development of world religion from its shamanic inception through the Buddha's teachings.It tracks the pursuit of cosmic understanding and philosophy amidst chaos, war and natural disaster, as seers from Israel to the Indus proposed various explanations for the divine and meanings for Existence - who are we, where do we come from, what's our future?

Wu Zhao (624-705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, is the only woman to have ruled China as emperor over the course of its 5,000-year history. How did she-in a predominantly patriarchal and androcentric society-ascend the dragon throne? Exploring a mystery that has confounded scholars for centuries, this multifaceted history suggests that China's rich pantheon of female divinities and eminent women played an integral part in the construction of Wu Zhao's sovereignty. Wu Zhao deftly deployed language, symbol, and ideology to harness the cultural resonance, maternal force, divine energy, and historical weight of Buddhist devis, Confucian exemplars, Daoist immortals, and mythic goddesses, establishing legitimacy within and beyond the confines of Confucian ideology. Tapping into powerful subterranean reservoirs of female power, Wu Zhao built a pantheon of female divinities carefully calibrated to meet her needs at court. Her pageant was promoted in scripted rhetoric, reinforced through poetry, celebrated in theatrical productions, and inscribed on steles. Rendered with deft political acumen and aesthetic flair, these affiliations significantly enhanced Wu Zhao's authority and cast her as the human vessel through which the pantheon's divine energy flowed. Her strategy is a model of political brilliance and proof that medieval Chinese women enjoyed a more complex social status than previously known.

In this lively and personal book, three acclaimed Buddhist teachers from different traditions come together to offer unorthodox wisdom for living well through difficult times. Sylvia Boorstein, Zoketsu Norman Fischer, and Tsoknyi Rinpoche draw on their own experiences with suffering, as well as their many years of practice, to illustrate how we can find serenity and compassion in even the most stressful situations. "Solid Ground" offers humor, insight, and practical advice as well as five guided meditations for soothing our thoughts and increasing our capacity for equanimity and joy.

In this groundbreaking book, Matthieu Ricard makes a passionate case for happiness as a goal that deserves as least as much energy as any other in our lives. Wealth? Fitness? Career success? How can we possibly place these above true and lasting well-being? Drawing from works of fiction and poetry, Western philosophy, Buddhist beliefs, scientific research, and personal experience, Ricard weaves an inspirational and forward-looking account of how we can begin to rethink our realities in a fast-moving modern world. With its revelatory lessons and exercises, Happiness is an eloquent and stimulating guide to a happier life.

Why did some Buddhist translators in China interpolate terms designating an agent which did not appear in the original texts? The Chinese made use of raw material imported from India; however, they added some seasoningsA" peculiar to China and developed their own recipesA" about how to construct the ideas of Buddhism. While Indian Buddhists constructed their ideas of self by means of empiricism, anti-Brahmanism and analytic reasoning, the Chinese Buddhists constructed their ideas of self by means of non-analytic insights, utilising pre-established epistemology and cosmogony. Furthermore, many of the basic renderings had specific implications that were peculiar to China. For example, while shen in philosophical Daoism originally signified an agent of thought, which disintegrates after bodily death, Buddhists added to it the property of permanent existence. Since many Buddhists in China read the reinterpreted term shen with the implications of the established epistemology and cosmogony, they came to develop their own ideas of self. After the late 6C, highly educated Buddhist theorists came to avoid including the idea of an imperishable soul in their doctrinal system. However, the idea of a permanent agent of perception remained vividly alive even during the development of Chinese Buddhism after the 7C.

Centuries before the birth of Christ, Buddha taught a path of love, compassion and forgiveness originating from his experiences of suffering in the world. The cause of suffering, he believed, lay within the soul, which had become self-centred and egotistic. Buddha inaugurated the Eightfold Path for purification and transformation - eight exercises which could lead to a new relationship with the world, from self-centredness to a warm interest in one's environment and in other people. The exercises, described and explained here in their correct sequence - with each preparing the individual for the next step - are: the right view, the right resolve, the right word, the right action, the right standpoint, the right effort, the right remembrance and the right contemplation.In this small book, based on commentary given by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) as well as his own intensive work with many groups, Joop van Dam has created a practical guide for anyone wishing to take up this path of personal development. He gives particular focus to the benefit that can be gained from the Eightfold Path by those in the educational, therapeutic and caring professions.

Readers are hard-pressed to find books that can help them understand the central concept in Mahayana Buddhism the idea that ultimate reality is "emptiness." In clear language, Introduction to Emptiness explains that emptiness is not a mystical sort of "nothingness," but a specific truth that can and must be understood through calm and careful reflection. Newland's contemporary examples and vivid anecdotes will help readers understand this core concept as presented in one of the great classic texts of the Tibetan Tradition, Tsong-kha-pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. This new edition includes quintessential points for each chapter.

Among the most profound questions we confront are the nature of what and who we are as conscious beings, and how the human mind relates to the rest of what we consider reality. For millennia, philosophers, scientists, and religious thinkers have attempted answers, perhaps none more meaningful today than those offered by neuroscience and by Buddhism. The encounter between these two worldviews has spurred ongoing conversations about what science and Buddhism can teach each other about mind and reality. In Mind Beyond Brain, the neuroscientist David E. Presti, with the assistance of other distinguished researchers, explores how evidence for anomalous phenomena-such as near-death experiences, apparent memories of past lives, apparitions, experiences associated with death, and other so-called psi or paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition-can influence the Buddhism-science conversation. Presti describes the extensive but frequently unacknowledged history of scientific investigation into these phenomena, demonstrating its relevance to questions about consciousness and reality. The new perspectives opened up, if we are willing to take evidence of such often off-limits topics seriously, offer significant challenges to dominant explanatory paradigms and raise the prospect that we may be poised for truly revolutionary developments in the scientific investigation of mind. Mind Beyond Brain represents the next level in the science and Buddhism dialogue.

All of the paradoxes and precepts which pepper, and enliven this unique book with their light, humour and surprising depth, act as master keys, which can suddenly open doors to many unsuspected aspects of the Truth within-us-all.

'A tour de force of luminous writing.' Mark Cocker, Spectator In 1976 James Crowden left his career in the British army and travelled to Ladakh in the Northern Himalaya, one of the most remote parts of the world. The Frozen River is his extraordinary account of the time he spent there, living alongside the Zangskari people, before the arrival of roads and mass tourism. James immerses himself in the Zangskari way of life, where meditation and week-long mountain festivals go hand in hand, and silence and solitude are the hallmarks of existence. When butter traders invite James on their journey down the frozen river Leh, he soon realises that this way of living, unchanged for centuries, comes with a very human cost. In lyrical prose, James captures a crucial moment in time for this Himalayan community. A moment in which their Buddhist practices and traditions are in flux, and the economic pull of a world beyond their valley is increasingly difficult to ignore.

365 WAYS TO LIVE MINDFULLY introduces simple ways to develop mindfulness habits, such as identifying personal values, developing related goals and setting out to achieve them, through short concepts, ideas, prompts, profiles, practices and exercises, all based on Buddhist thought and practices. The bite-size entries introduce different Buddhist traditions such as mindfulness, compassion, loving-kindness and karma, and profile inspiring past and present figures to guide you towards taking small, impactful steps at your own pace to increase your mindfulness across all aspects of your life and experience noticeable changes that will have a big impact.

Drawn from original sources, "Old Path White Clouds is the beautiful classic recounting of the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha over the course of eighty years. It is retold alternately through the eyes of Svasti, the buffalo boy who provided kusa grass for the Buddha's enlightenment cushion, and the Buddha himself.

These dialogues with child, adolescent and adult psychotherapists and child psychiatrists focus on their personal as well as professional experiences. All the contributors have a long-standing practice of Buddhism or other forms of meditation. The relevance of this to their clinical work with infants, children, adolescents, families and adults is described. Buddhist principles such as suffering, impermanence, non-attachment, no-self and the Four Noble Truths influence the contributors' practice of psychotherapy with children and with the child in the adult. Similarities and differences between the two traditions of Buddhism and psychotherapy are highlighted in these dialogues, which are embedded in deep, personal and transforming experiences that are shared by the authors.