Daily Doses of Wisdom

Daily Doses of Wisdom draws on the richness of Buddhist writings to offer a spiritual cornucopia that will illuminate and inspire day after day, year after year. Sources span a spectrum from ancient sages to modern teachers, from monks to laypeople, from East to West, from poetry to prose. Each page, and each new day, reveals another gem carefully selected from the entire list of titles published by Wisdom.

Waking Up Together

Waking Up Together is written for those who want to journey to new depths of intimacy, both spiritually and in their love relationship. The book shows how a committed, long-term relationship can enhance spiritual development and how relationships can be transformed by spiritual practice. Written by two Zen teachers married for thirty-seven years, it shows that relationships and all that arise from them can be a help—not a hindrance!—as we seek greater freedom and joy. It is possible to wake up together!

Going far beyond merely recommending skills and strategies to improve relationships, Waking Up Together serves as a guide in our ongoing process of spiritual discovery and intimacy. Throughout the book the authors intermingle stories and poems along with anecdotes from their married life, empowering couples to awaken to an ever-expanding experience of relationship that is full of spontaneity, mystery, awe, love, and unlimited possibility. Waking Up Together will be useful for couples of all persuasions. It affirms and encourages couples to cultivate the richness of their own relationship, and open to the unbounded potential of love.

The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration, and Meditation

Joel & Michelle Levey have taught thousands of people around the globe to live in greater harmony and balance. Field-tested and refined over many years, the Leveys’ unique approach to stress-mastery and personal development offers step-by-step guidance for developing personal strengths, enhancing the quality of life, and making a real contribution to the world.

The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration and Meditation offers a treasury of their most useful teachings:

  • Waking up throughout the day—finding your meditation practice and sticking to it.
  • Balancing breath, brain, and mind-mastering stress—enhancing performance in every arena of your life.
  • Creative intelligence—the dynamic synergy of active and quiet mind skills.
  • Mastery, mystery, and meditation—awakening to your true nature.
  • Inspired Work—relaxation, concentration, and meditation on the job.

A vital blend of profoundly practical skills, advice, instruction, and encouragement makes Fine Arts a complete course for awakening more fully to your highest potentials in each moment of your life.

Mahāmudrā

Mahāmudrā meditation is simultaneously the most profound of meditative disciplines and the most accessible for modern practitioners. Traditionally passed orally from teacher to disciple, mahāmudrā instructions point the meditator to the innate perfection of every experience.

When it first appeared in 1986, Mahāmudrā: The Moonlight—Quintessence of Mind and Meditation was the first presentation in English of a major Tibetan Buddhist work on meditation. This classic guide was composed in the sixteenth century by an eminent lama of the Kagyu school and is so comprehensive and practical that it is still widely used today as a manual. Divided into two major sections, it presents first the common approach and then the mahamudra approach to tranquility (shamatha) and insight (vipashyana) meditation.

Tibetan Art Calendar Bundle

Poster-sized reproductions of classical paintings produced to the highest standards.

The antique scroll-art masterpieces seen in Wisdom’s Tibetan Art Calendars are called thangkas. While the thangka is common to Tibetan Buddhists, its finest examples are highly sought-after in the international art community and have become hot properties in the same vein as Oriental rugs and ceramics. As a result, the best of these works are seldom, if ever, available for public viewing.

This is why Wisdom’s Tibetan Art Calendars are so special. It’s an affordable way to enjoy incredibly rare and meaningful works of sacred art, year-round. These sacred paintings by Tibet’s master painters represent a variety of classical images, mandalas, deities, and icons. Each poster-sized picture is produced to the highest printing standards, and is suitable for framing. Complete with in-depth explanations of their cultural and philosophical significance, these exquisite fine art reproductions will be treasured for years to come.

This bundle includes calendars from 2007, 2009, and 2020. Our German partners in this endeavor are no longer able to commit to the demands of production, meaning this is your last chance to purchase these beautiful paintings while supplies last. The 2009 calendar features episodes from Buddha Shakyamuni’s life, Milarepa, Vajrakilaya, Karmapa and much more. Our 2020 calendar features Tibetan artist Tashi Dhargyal’s most striking and powerful pieces, which will be enjoyed by Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.

Please note that calendars cannot be shipped via USPS Media Mail. If you are ordering a calendar and Wisdom books, you may wish to place the book orders separately to ensure the least expensive shipping.

Spiritual Friends

A collection of the favorite guided meditations of senior monks and nuns of the International Mahayana Institute of the FPMT. These meditations center on different Buddhist themes and provide a good resource for the practicing meditator. The book also includes brief spiritual autobiographies that allow the reader to trace each contributors’ entry into and study of Tibetan Buddhism.

Our true spiritual friends are the positive potentials in our minds, which will never never disappoint us and never desert us. Similarly, the generous and personal meditations offered in this book help us develop these potentials and thus are true friends to whom we can always turn. Likewise, the Sangha, as the ordained followers of the Buddha upon whom the continuity of the Buddha’s teachings depend, are spiritual friends who encourage us and inspire us to transform our minds.

This unique book—the first from the International Mahayana Institute—contains meditations written by eighteen nuns and monks of the IMI Sangha as well as an autobiographical essay from each in which these nuns and monks share how they came to the ordained life.

MindScience

What is the subtle relationship between mind and body? What can today’s scientists learn about this relationship from masters of Buddhist thought? Is it possible that by combining Western and Eastern approaches, we can reach a new understanding of the nature of the mind, the human potential for growth, the possibilities for mental and physical health?

MindScience explores these and other questions as it documents the beginning of a historic dialogue between modern science and Buddhism. The Harvard Mind Science Symposium brought together the Dalai Lama and authorities from the fields of psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, and education. Here, they examine myriad questions concerning the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body.

Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way

Winner of the 2014 Khyentse Foundation Translation Prize.

Nāgārjuna’s renowned twenty-seven-chapter Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) is the foundational text of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. It is the definitive, touchstone presentation of the doctrine of emptiness. Professors Siderits and Katsura prepared this translation using the four surviving Indian commentaries in an attempt to reconstruct an interpretation of its enigmatic verses that adheres as closely as possible to that of its earliest proponents. Each verse is accompanied by concise, lively exposition by the authors conveying the explanations of the Indian commentators. The result is a translation that balances the demands for fidelity and accessibility.

The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment

Wisdom’s volume On Zen Practice was conceived as the essential primer for beginning Zen practice, offering insight to every aspect of Zen training. The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment takes the reader to the next level, exploring some of the more subtle and sophisticated topics in Zen.

The first two parts of the book explore enlightenment and delusion: What is nature of enlightenement? What does it mean to describe enlightenment as sudden or gradual? What is the nature of delusion, and how can watch out for the particular delusion that masquerades as enlightenment? The third part looks at “enlightenment in action”—what it means for someone to living and acting in order with the deep wisdom of enlightenment, and how we can practice learning “learning how to be satisfied” and enjoy serenity and transquility. The final section is a moving and powerful firsthand account of one woman’s solitary realization of the deepest truths—a story that can become an inspiration for all of us. The contributors to this volume include some the pioneering masters who were seminal in helping Zen take firm root in American soil.

This Truth Never Fails

This Truth Never Fails is a playful yet well-grounded narrative of a year in the life of an unusual Zen master. Far from the silent and detached stereotype of Zen teachers, Rynick writes with disarming humor, offering both the struggles and the joys of ordinary life as opportunities for insight. Anyone looking for inspiration to bring a simple spiritual awareness into their daily lives, and also those interested in finding ways to more deeply integrate faith (in any tradition) with practice will find this book reassuring and encouraging.

This book appeals to the broad “mindfulness” and “general spirituality” audiences that transcend any one formal tradition. Leaning toward Anne Lamott’s humor, universal spirituality, and Mary Oliver’s love of the natural world, Rynick’s writing bypasses Zen theory and doctrine. Simple, clear prose illustrates, vividly, an insightful and tender appreciation of ordinary life as the Way itself.

Includes a brief “study guide for further inquiry” offering opportunities for personal reflection and exploration on themes touched on in the book.

Joyously Through the Days

Drawing inspiration from such diverse sources as Khalil Gibran, Virginia Woolf, and Frank Sinatra, as well as the Bible and the great Zen masters of old, this book offers a path to rich and lasting happiness achieved through what Huston Smith calls “goal-attaining patience.” In Joyously Through the Days, Les Kaye explores life’s every day complexities and instructs us in the Zen way through our human foibles. Through awareness, patience, and generosity, Kaye argues, we can respond with creative calm to the uncertain conditions of modern life.

Luminous Mind

Luminous Mind is a remarkable compilation of the oral and written teachings of the late Kalu Rinpoche – who was called “a beacon of inspiration” by the Dalai Lama. A master of meditation and leader of the Shangpu Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, Kalu Rinpoche taught with an inviting, playful and lucid style that was just one natural manifestation of his own profound realization. The teachings presented in Luminous Mind are immediate and timeless.

As the Dalai Lama notes in his foreword, Luminous Mind covers “the full range of Buddhist practice from the basic analysis of the nature of the mind up to its ultimate refinement in the teachings of Mahamudra.” This anthology of Kalu Rinpoche’s writings and oral teachings resonates with his wisdom and compassion.

Comparing Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche with Milarepa, the greatest mediation master Tibet has ever known, His Holiness the Dalai Lama extols the author of Luminous Mind as a “beacon of inspiration” for spiritual practitioners of all traditions. Noting that “there have been few like him before or since,” His Holiness urges us to delve into this remarkable anthology of the late Kalu Rinpoche’s essential instructions so that we may encounter “the full range of Buddhist practice from the basic analysis of the nature of the mind up to its ultimate refinement in the teachings of Mahamudra.” Drawn from both his lucid writings and his eloquent oral presentations, this unprecedented book lays bare the full grandeur of Kalu Rinpoche’s legacy. At the same time, the gentle words and playful stories of this master of meditation are filled with a depth of clarity and warmth that could only arise from a profound realization of both wisdom and compassion.

The Flight of the Garuda

Flight of the Garuda conveys the heart advice of one of the most beloved nonsectarian masters of Tibet. Ordained as a Gelug monk, the itinerant yogi Shabkar was renowned for his teachings on Dzogchen, the heart practice of the Nyingma lineage. He wandered the countryside of Tibet and Nepal, turning many minds toward the Dharma through his ability to communicate the essence of the teachings in a poetic and crystal-clear way. Buddhists of all stripes, including practitioners of Zen and Vipassana, will find ample sustenance within the pages of this book and be thrilled by the lyrical insights conveyed in Shabkar’s words.

Dzogchen practice is considered by many to be an extremely powerful path to enlightenment; it brings us into direct communion with the subtlest nature of our experience: the unity of samsara in nirvana as experienced within our own consciousness. Within the Nyingma school, it is held higher than even the practices of tantra for bringing the meditator face to face with the nature of reality.

This ground-breaking book offers translations of four sacred texts of the Dzogchen tradition alongside the song by Shabkar: Secret Instruction in a Garland of Vision by Padmasambhava, Emptying the Depths of Hell by Guru Chowang, The Extraordinary Reality of Sovereign Wisdom by Patrul Rinpoche, and the Wish-Granting Prayer of Kuntu Zangpo, revealed by Rigdzin Godemchen. With an informative introduction by the translator, Flight of the Garuda is an invaluable resource for both practice and scholarship.

Psychoanalysis and Buddhism

“What a wonderful book! Jeremy Safran has assembled an absolutely stellar group of writers and has himself contributed an illuminating introduction. The essays are riveting and the book is the rare edited collection with real thematic unity. If you think you might have an interest in the intersection of psychoanalysis and Buddhism, this is the place to start. If you already know you’re interested, once you look at the table of contents you‘ll find (at least I did) that you want to let Psychoanalysis and Buddhism displace whatever you were going to read next.”—Donnel B. Stern, PhD, author of Unformulated Experience and editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis

The Voice That Remembers

When Adhe Tapontsang—or Ama (Mother) Adhe, as she is affectionately known—left Tibet in 1987, she was allowed to do so on the condition that she remain silent about her twenty-seven years in Chinese prisons. Yet she made a promise to herself and to the many that did not survive: she would not let the truth about China’s occupation go unheard or unchallenged.

The Voice That Remembers is an engrossing firsthand account of Ama Adhe’s mission and a record of a crucial time in modern Tibetan history. It will forever change how you think about Tibet, about China, and about our shared capacity for survival.

Women’s Buddhism, Buddhism’s Women

Throughout Buddhism’s history, women have been hindered in their efforts to actualize the fullness of their spiritual lives; they face more obstacles to reaching full ordination, have fewer opportunities to cultivate advanced practice, and receive diminished recognition for their spiritual accomplishments.

Here, a diverse array of scholars, activists, and practitioners explore how women have always managed to sustain a vital place for themselves within the tradition and continue to bring about change in the forms, practices, and institutions of Buddhism. In essays ranging from the scholarly to the personal, Women’s Buddhism, Buddhism’s Women describes how women have significantly shaped Buddhism to meet their own needs and the demands of contemporary life.

Prince Siddhartha Coloring Book

A wonderful companion to our Prince Siddhartha story book, this children’s coloring book Includes 31 full-size and 31 miniature line drawings with narrative descriptions.

Feng Shui: Seeing Is Believing

In this pithy and practical handbook, Ven. Jampa Ludrup lays out the fundamentals of feng shui without any of the opaque mysticism that sometimes clouds the practice. “The aim of this book,” he writes, “is to help you have more happiness in your life.” Through his easy-to-understand instructions, diagrams, and photos, Ludrup illustrates how simple alterations to the layout of your home can vastly improve specific areas of your life-romance, prosperity, health, or whatever is troubling you. With nothing more than this book and a good compass, you can rearrange your house, your fortune, and your life.

The book comes with a handy pocket-sized chart that you can carry with you to job interviews or first dates—any important events—so that you can be confident that you will be able to achieve the best possible outcome.

 

“As a trained scientist and science teacher, I was very skeptical from the beginning. However, as a Buddhist and someone with what I like to think is an open mind, I decided to purchase this book and read it. It is clear, concise, and a must have for any newcomer to feng shui. I have tried implementing a few of these changes in my own home and I must admit, as Jampa has put it, life isn’t as much of a roller coaster. I got married, I enjoy my job, and we are financially sound. But as Jampa says, You really must sew the seeds of good deeds with good intentions. Otherwise, none of it will work! Thanks for writing this great book.”

—Will Robertson 

 

The Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism

Since its 1976 publication in Tibetan, Dhongthog Rinpoche’s history of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism has been a key reference for specialists in Tibetan studies. Now English readers can consult it as well through Sam van Schaik’s authoritative, fully annotated and accessible translation.

The book begins by examining the development of Buddhism in India and Tibet, setting the scene for the Khon family’s establishment of the Sakya school in the eleventh century. Rinpoche subsequently provides accounts of the transmission of the Lamdre (the heart of Sakya contemplative practice and other major streams of esoteric instruction) and the Ngor and Tshar branches of the Sakya tradition. Highlights also include surveys of great Sakya and nonsectarian masters such as Rongtongpa, Gorampa, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, and Khyentse Chokyi Lodro. This traditional history, compiled both from earlier histories and from the author’s direct connection to masters of the tradition, is an enormously valuable resource for the study of Tibetan Buddhism.

Introduction to the Lotus Sutra

The Lotus Sutra—one of the most popular Buddhist classics—is here accessibly introduced by one of its most eminent scholars.

“Soon after entering university in December of 1943, I was sent to the front as a student soldier. I wondered if I were allowed to bring but a single book on the trip, possibly to my death, which would I want to bring. It was the Lotus Sutra.”
—from the author’s Preface

Having developed a lifelong appreciation of the Lotus Sutra—even carrying a dog-eared copy with him through service in World War II—Yoshiro Tamura sought to author an introduction to this beloved work of Buddhist literature. Tamura wanted it to be different than other basic explorations of the text; his introduction would be plain-spoken, relevant and sensitive to modern concerns, and well-informed by contemporary scholarship. He succeeded marvelously with Introduction to the Lotus Sutra, which Gene Reeves—Tamura’s student and translator of the popular English edition of The Lotus Sutra—translates and introduces in English for the first time here. Tackling issues of authenticity in the so-called “words of Buddha,” the influence of culture and history on the development of the Lotus Sutra, and the sutra’s role in Japanese life, Introduction to the Lotus Sutra grounds this ancient work of literature in the real, workaday world, revealing its continued appeal across the ages.