Beloved Buddhist nun Ayya Khema expertly guides the reader through ten meditations on generating loving-kindness and cultivating the fifteen wholesome qualities necessary for igniting compassion and boundless love.Having escaped Nazi Germany in 1938, Ayya Khema has singularly profound perspective on creating peace, unconditional love, and compassion. She gently teaches that inner peace is not necessarily natural or innate. Instead, peace should be considered a skil...

A practical guidebook for meditators interested in achieving the states of bliss and deep focus associated with the Buddhist jhānasOne of the elements of the Eightfold Path is Right Concentration: the one-pointedness of mind that, together with ethics, livelihood, meditation, and more, leads to the ultimate freedom from suffering. So how does one achieve Right Concentration? According to the Buddha himself, the jhānas—a series of eight progressive altered ...

The Satipatthana Sutta is the teaching on mindfulness and the breath and is the basis of much insight meditation practice today. This book is a thorough and insightful guide to this deceptively simple yet profound teaching. 'With painstaking thoroughness, Ven. Analayo marshals the suttas of the Pali canon, works of modem scholarship, and the teachings of present-day meditation masters to make the rich implications of the Satipatthana Sutta, so concise in the original, clear to contemporary...

Read the life story and spiritual teachings of Dipa Ma, a major figure in contemporary Buddhism. She was the teacher of such well-respected western Buddhists as Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Alice Walker and Sylvia Boorstein, among others. An accomplished yogi, she was an inspired teacher and a devoted mother and grandmother. A woman who found great freedom through profound levels of insight and one who exemplified in her every action immense kindness, generosity, and ...

A collection of teachings on the practice of meditation by twelve contemporary Buddhist masters from Southeast Asia—curated by the author of A Path with HeartIn this book, Jack Kornfield presents the heart of Buddhist practice as taught by twelve highly respected masters from Southeast Asia. These renowned teachers offer a rich variety of meditation techniques: the practices include traditional instructions for dissolving the solid sense of self, for awake...

In Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand Pabonka Rinpoche explains how the great Atisha would purify any negativity, no matter how small, immediately. Even in public or when riding his horse, as soon as he noticed a breach of his ethics, he would stop what he was doing, drop to one knee and then and there, purify it with the four opponent powers - the powers of dependence, regret, remedy and restraint.Atisha practiced purification in this way because of his deep realization of the ps...

Dharma practice comprises a wide range of wise instructions and skillful means. As a result, meditators may be exposed to a diversity of approaches to the core teachings and the meditative path—and that can be confusing at times. In this clear and accessible exploration, Dharma teacher and longtime meditator Richard Shankman unravels the mix of differing, sometimes conflicting, views and traditional teachings on how samadhi (concentration) is understood and taught.In part one, Rich...

"A terrific introduction to the Buddha's teachings." —Paul Blairon, California Literary ReviewThis indispensable volume is a lucid and faithful account of the Buddha's teachings. "For years," says the Journal of the Buddhist Society, "the newcomer to Buddhism has lacked a simple and reliable introduction to the complexities of the subject. Dr. Rahula's What the Buddha Taught fills the need as only could be done by one having a firm grasp ...

Two experienced American meditators explain the stages and techniques of concentration meditation, as taught by the Buddhist master Pa Auk SayadawThis is a clear and in-depth presentation of the traditional Theravadin concentration meditation known as jhāna practice, from two authors who have practiced the jhānas in retreat under the guidance of one of the great living meditation masters, Pa Auk Sayadaw. The authors describe the techniques and their results, based ...

The classic Buddhist text and “essential guidebook” on the ideal of compassion and the methods of attaining it (Pema Chödrön, author of When Things Fall Apart**)**Treasured by Buddhists of all traditions, The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara) is a guide to cultivating the mind of enlightenment, and to generating the qualities of love, compassion, generosity, and patience. This text has been studied, practiced, an...

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh presents the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha, drawn directly from 24 Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese sources.Retold in Thich Nhat Hanh’s inimitably beautiful style, this book traces the Buddha’s life over the course of 80 years—partly through the eyes of Svasti, the buffalo boy, and partly through the eyes of the Buddha himself. Old Path White Clouds is a classic of religious literature.“I have not avoided including the ...

The “down-to-earth, unsentimental, [and] high-humored” Pema Chödrön classic on learning to face our lives just as they are (Los Angeles Times)It's true, as they say, that we can only love others when we first love ourselves—and we can only experience real joy when we stop running from pain. The key to understanding these truisms is simple but not easy: we must learn to open ourselves up to life in all its manifestations. H...