Kathleen Dowling Singh
Kathleen Dowling Singh was a Dharma practitioner and in-demand speaker and teacher. She was the author of The Grace in Dying: How We Are Transformed Spiritually As We Die, The Grace in Aging, The Grace in Living, and Unbinding: The Grace Beyond Self. A mother and grandmother, Kathleen passed away in 2017.
Books, Courses & Podcasts
The Grace in Aging
Learn to use your later years for awakening and spiritual growth. One of Spirituality & Practice’s Best Spiritual Books of 2014 and a Foreword Reviews IndieFab Winner!
Encouraging, inspiring, and practical, The Grace in Aging invites all those who have ever experienced spiritual longing to awaken in their twilight years. Since aging, in and of itself, does not lead to spiritual maturity, The Grace in Aging suggests and explores causes and conditions that we can create in our lives, just as we are living them, to allow awakening to unfold—transforming the predictable sufferings of aging into profound opportunities for growth in clarity, love, compassion, and peace.
Kathleen Dowling Singh streamlines vast and complex teachings into skillful means and wise views. Straightforward language and piercing questions bring Singh’s teachings into the sharp focus of our own lives; the contemplative nature of each chapter allows for an uncommon depth of inquiry. Examples from our lives and from the chatter in our own minds touch the reader personally, offering the chance to absorb the implications deeply and do the work of freeing his or her own mind. Ecumenical in spirit, tone, and language, Singh offers wisdom from teachers from a variety of spiritual backgrounds: Chogyam Trungpa, the Apostles, Annie Dillard, and more. Lessening our attachments, decreasing our aversions, unbinding what binds us, we bear witness to the possibility of awakening for all beings.
The Grace in Aging offers guidelines for older individuals of any wisdom tradition who wish to awaken before they die; no need for caves or seven-year retreats. This is spiritual practice for the lives we live.
The Grace in Living
Kathleen Dowling Singh invites us to enter into an awakened relationship with our lives by exploring our own spiritual biography. Her thoughtful reflections and exercises guide us through the process, step-by-step, of recognizing the ever-presence of grace in our lives and learning to trust it and live from it.
This book also offers accounts from renowned teachers, including Rodney Smith, Cynthia Bourgeault, and Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, as well as other long-time practitioners. These intimate first-person accounts offer rare glimpses into early spiritual yearnings, struggles, and realizations—and serve as encouragement and inspiration for us to rediscover our own.
Unbinding
“We all want the freedom of sanity and peace, the undefended inclusiveness of love. We all want refuge in grace.”—Kathleen Dowling Singh, from her introduction to Unbinding
Unbinding is a spacious and sophisticated unfolding of one of Buddhism’s subtlest foundational teachings—the truth of dependent origination—offered in an utterly intimate voice. Kathleen Dowling Singh offers lyrical reflections on timeless truths and contemplative exercises accessible to anyone, opening the door of insight to all. Drawing on the language and teachings of Buddhism, Unbinding invites everyday mystics from all traditions—or none—to encounter the sacred and experience grace firsthand. Singh shows how illusions of ego obscure our true, unbounded nature and trap us in suffering—as she helps the reader move ever more deeply into living from gratitude, wisdom, and love.