“Zenju Earthlyn Manuel’s Sanctuary offers us much-needed clarity and light in a time of increasing violence and confusion, daily assaults on our basic sense of belonging. Here is a generous feast of wise and compassionate insights into the deeper meanings of homelessness and home, identity and community, refuge and liberation. This is genuine and nourishing food for the challenging journeys ahead.”—Acharya Gaylon Ferguson, PhD, Core Faculty, Naropa University
Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belonging examines the interface between inner and outer sanctuary, and the ways they affect one another.
“Sanctuary” is the home we can return to when our lives are under threat, where we can face what’s difficult to love, and have a place where we can truly say, “I am home”—and spiritual teachers often emphasize sanctuary’s inner dimensions, that “our true home” is within. “Homelessness,” in turn, can be viewed as a forced experience or one in which there is a spiritual void in being or feeling home.
Drawing from her life as a Zen Buddhist priest whose ancestors labored as slaves in Louisiana, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel explores the tension between oppression—based on race, religion, ability, class, orientation, gender, and other “ghosts of slavery”—and finding home within our own hearts. Through intimate personal stories and deep reflection, Manuel helps us see the moment when the unacknowledged surfaces as “the time we have been practicing for,” the epiphany when we can investigate the true source what has been troubling us. This insightful book about home and homelessness, sanctuary and refuge offers inspiration, encouragement, and a clear-eyed view of cultivating a spiritual path in challenging times.
Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, PhD, is an author, visual artist, drummer, and Zen Buddhist priest based in East Oakland, CA. She was raised with two sisters in Los Angeles after her parents moved there from Creole Louisiana. She is the author of Tell Me Something About Buddhism and contributing author to many books, including Dharma, Color and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism and The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women.
Available early! Use code fgs20 and get 20% off Inside the Flower Garland Sutra through July 14.
A Soto Zen teacher explores the core teachings of the ancient Flower Garland school of Buddhism through an innovative and engaging narrative showing how to put these teachings into practice.
Huayan Buddhism arose in the sixth century in China rooted in the Mahayana Flower Garland Sutra. The teachings of Huayan and the sutra that inspired it had a profound influence on Chan and Zen. Huayan is relational, practical, and positive. Its emphasis on interdependence, celebration of the sensual world, and diversity of people and practices provides inspiration for what Thich Nhat Hanh called “engaged Buddhism”.
With Inside the Flower Garland Sutra Zen teacher Ben Connelly explains the significance of Huayan teachings for Buddhist practice. Each chapter is a commentary on one of the thirty lines of Uisang’s “Song of Dharma Nature”—a seminal Korean text that summarizes key aspects of Huayan thought—thus providing a broad overview of Huayan teachings and their practical implications for contemporary life, with a mix of testimonies from real-life situations and references to influential Buddhist texts.
Arising fifteen hundred years ago, Huayan has made a deep impact on East Asian Buddhism, and has much to offer during this era when many folks see ever-deepening divisions. Connelly explores how Huayan offers particular wisdom for those concerned about how to care for their own lives as they work to end harms such as ecological devastation, poverty, militarism, addiction, marginalization, and exploitation.
Now available! Get 20% off the cover price with code niguma20 until August 5.
Immerse yourself in the extraordinarily transcendent practice of the yoga of Niguma.
The yoga of Niguma comes to us from a secret tradition passed down over hundreds of years by Buddhist yogis in Tibet. The practice originated with the eleventh-century female yogini Niguma, who mastered and transmitted a tradition of remarkable practices that culminate in physical, spiritual, and emotional wellness. In this book, His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche, a Tibetan master who holds this lineage for today’s generation, is now opening up the practice to make its extraordinary benefits accessible to the modern yogi.
The yoga of Niguma consists of twenty-five sets of yogic exercises. Some are physically challenging while others are quite subtle in nature; all are grounded in meditation on the breath. Kalu Rinpoche illuminates the practice by sharing his own personal journey with the yoga of Niguma and how the lineage came to be. He also teaches us how we can prepare the mind for this practice with meditation and how to balance our emotions. Then, Rinpoche takes us step-by-step through the twenty-five illustrated sequences of Niguma yoga. Coauthor Michele Loew, an international yoga teacher, shares supportive Hatha yoga techniques that will bolster your Niguma yoga practice.
The yoga of Niguma is a revered method that integrates body, mind, and breath. Dive in to discover for yourself a gradual, profound groundswell of subtle awakening.
Rinpoche and Michele have recorded two full-length videos that demonstrate Niguma yoga sequences and supportive hatha yoga postures and supplement the instructions in the book. To learn more and watch the videos simply purchase the book and scan the QR code on the Additional Resources page in your copy.
Deepen your meditation by diving into the practices of the lamrim—the stages of the path to enlightenment.
Buddhist tradition tells us that enlightenment is possible for each and every one of us. It’s actually the best thing we can do for others and for the world, but also the best thing we can do for ourselves, because it means being free from all misery, pain, depression, dissatisfaction, and negative emotions, and abiding forever in peace, joy, love, and compassion. What could be more wonderful than that?
Kathleen McDonald (Sangye Khadro), a Western nun with decades of experience and author of the bestselling book How to Meditate, guides us through the next step in our meditation practice: the transformative meditations on the Tibetan lamrim stages to enlightenment. She helps us see that the whole purpose of meditation is to transform our mind in a constructive way. For this to happen, we need to become so thoroughly familiar with the lamrim topics that they become our natural way of thinking and living our life. This warm and encouraging guide takes us through meditations on these lamrim topics, such as:
impermanence
refuge
karma
the four noble truths
bodhichitta
the six perfections: giving, ethics, patience, joyous effort, concentration, and wisdom
How to Meditate on the Stages of the Path offers practical advice, support, and step-by-step guidance on how to meditate on the stages of the path to enlightenment that will transform the practice of new meditators and seasoned practitioners alike.
Explorations on a journey through the darkest and brightest moments of our lives, the poems gathered here are explorations of loss, of thanksgiving, of transformation. Some show a path forward and others simply acknowledge and empathize with where we are, but all are celebrations of poetry’s ability to express what seemed otherwise inexpressible, to touch deep inside our hearts—and also pull ourselves out of our selves and into greater connection with the world around us.
Includes poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Czesław Miłosz, Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, Joy Harjo, Danusha Laméris, Ada Limón, Kevin Young, Arthur Sze, Ellen Bass, Li-Young Lee, Natasha Trethewey, and many more, plus the editor’s essay on appreciative attention.
John had recorded guided poetry meditations to accompany several of the poems found in this anthology. To learn more and listen to these meditations, please click here.
Listen to a Wisdom Dharma Chatwith John and host Daniel Aitken recorded in October 2023.
Dzogchen is an ancient Tibetan tradition that is perfect for countering the stress of our modern lives. A simple and quick method, Dzogchen is practical and direct, and open to us all—you simply need to recognize the great potential that is naturally born within everyone.
In his highly anticipated first book, His Eminence the Seventh Dzogchen Rinpoche, Jigme Losel Wangpo, shows us how our everyday lives can be turned into spiritual practice—not only to ease our stress, but to allow the true nature of our mind to reveal itself, right now, on the spot. The Dzogchen view is the highest view, the view from the top of the mountain. We need to build a platform that will hold the view, and Dzogchen Rinpoche provides the meditations and advice for living that will help you do just that. In turn, you’ll find true peace in a mind at rest.
A profound and practical guide to uncovering your own wise mind and kind heart.
We all want to find happiness. But how do we go about it? In this easygoing and clear-sighted guide, celebrated Buddhist meditation and philosophy master His Eminence Khangser Rinpoche provides us with down-to-earth advice on how to train our minds and find our own innate wisdom and kindness along the way. He helps us see the profound insight that is open to us all, and how it can awaken us to the truth of the way things are. This insight into the truth, and the practices that help you cultivate this awareness, transform suffering into wisdom and compassion—and ultimately joy.
A Monk’s Guide to Finding Joy brings the ancient Tibetan mind-training tradition into our twenty-first-century lives. Through stories, real-life examples, reflections, and meditation practices—all told with warmth and humor—H.E. Khangser Rinpoche shows us how we can transform the suffering of our life into happiness. When we train the mind from within the context of our difficult emotions, we can find true joy, just as the oyster transforms sand into a pearl.
In this journaling book, grief expert Joanne Cacciatore provides support and guidance, as writing prompts, for anyone experiencing traumatic loss and grief. This beautifully designed book offers 52 writing prompts for exploring grief and journaling about those whom we’ve lost. Writing about those we’ve lost can be part of a contemplative practice, alone or with therapists, family, friends, or with a grief support group. However you use this journal and its writing prompts, please take the time to write from the heart, really be with each prompt, dive deeply—and do so with a spirit of love and compassion for all beings, including yourself.
A Note from Dr. Jo:
This journal is an invitation. A passage. An open heart. Use the prompts throughout for deep contemplation. Write your experiences, feelings, memories of your beloved. Know that, wherever you are, you are not alone in this. We grievers, we rememberers, walk the same road, some ahead and some behind. But we walk together. Let this journal be the invisible thread that weaves together our hearts and souls and minds as we endure one more day—together, never alone. Let this journal be a space in which you remember and grieve and explore.
A new volume of original poetry from the bestselling creator of Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy.
In Dharma Talk, award-winning poet John Brehm explores the perennial themes of aging, compassion, emptiness, nonseparation, and more. At once poignant and humorous, Brehm’s gentle, wry poems remind us that the personal and the universal are not different—and point us to the Dharma of everyday life.
Click hereto watch the author read the poem “Something and Nothing” from Dharma Talk.
Listen to aWisdom Dharma Chat with John and host Daniel Aitken recorded in October 2023.
Grief sometimes leaves us without words. Yet narrating our feelings, thoughts, and experiences can be so helpful in relating to our inner world. These cards are an invitation to begin that process.
From the bestselling author of Bearing the Unbearable, here are 52 cards with prompts for exploring grief and starting conversations about those whom we’ve lost. These cards can be used as part of a contemplative practice, as journaling prompts, by or with therapists, or used in community with family, friends, or with a grief support group. They can be read aloud, alone or with others. You can read one card prior to meditation, or simply take one in and reflect deeply on what arises. However you use these cards, please take the time to really be with each one, dive deeply—and do so with a spirit of love and compassion for all beings, including yourself.
The bestselling author of Mindfulness in Plain English guides the reader toward a direct and personal realization of one of the foundational tenets of Buddhism: all things that arise must pass away.
Once-youthful bodies grow old and weary. New thoughts, feelings, and sensations arise and fade every second. Impermanence is not some abstract metaphysical idea. This is the Dhamma, and you can see it for yourself.
Drawing from Pali scriptures and writing with fresh, direct language, Bhante Gunaratana and his student Julia Harris highlight the Buddha’s exhortation that we must directly realize for ourselves the liberating insights that free us from suffering and cyclic existence, without relying only on the word of religious authorities or academic or philosophical musings.
In writing that sparkles and inspires, Anne Klein (Lama Rigzin Drolma) shows us how to liberate our buddha nature to be both human and a buddha too.
This first volume in the House of Adzom series centers on Longchenpa’s seven trainings in bodhicitta, our awakened mind, the ultimate purpose of our practice and training. Anne Klein’s original composition masterfully weaves in Adzom Paylo Rinpoche’s commentary and Jigme Lingpa’s five pith practices and commentary on the trainings, in keeping with Longchenpa’s skillful integration of sutra, tantra, and Dzogchen, to resolve our most challenging questions about what awakening involves and how it relates to the truth of our human situation right now. As foundational teachings for Dzogchen practitioners, the seven trainings are framed as contemplations on impermanence, the adventitiousness of happiness and its short duration, the multiple causes of death, the meaninglessness of our worldly activities, reliance on the Buddha’s good qualities, the teacher’s pith instructions, and ultimately nonconceptual meditation on bliss and emptiness, clarity and emptiness, and reality itself.
We experience illness on a physical level, but in order to be healed, we must understand where true healing begins: within our hearts and minds. In Ultimate Healing, internationally renowned meditation master Lama Zopa Rinpoche helps us to recognize the root of illness and gives us the tools to create our future happiness. Beginning with stories of people who have recovered from disease through meditation, Rinpoche addresses the central role played by karma and by the mental habit of “labeling” in causing illness, and shows how meditation and other thought techniques for developing compassion and insight can eliminate the ultimate cause of all disease.
Ultimate Healing shows us that by transforming our minds, especially through the development of compassion, we can eliminate the ultimate cause of all disease. In addition to relating stories of people who have recovered from disease through meditation, Lama Zopa presents practical healing meditations, including white-light healing, compassion meditation, “taking and giving”, and techniques to cure depression.
Discover ancient Tibetan breath practices for calming your mind and improving your health in this plain-English guide.
Over millennia, many Eastern traditions have developed practices that use the powerful healing energy of breath to treat physical, emotional, and mental problems. In Chinese, this energy is called chi; in Sanskrit it is called prana; and in Tibetan it is called lung.
Lung is life-giving energy that moves through our bodies. A lack or imbalance of lung can create illnesses of body and mind or cause emotional struggles such as confusion, anger, and sadness. In this book Geshe YongDong Losar, a scholar and monk in the ancient Bön tradition of Tibet, guides us through time-tested practices to help balance our lung. His deep knowledge—garnered through years of study and practice—renders the practices simple and achievable, creating a clear path for us toward greater calmness, strength, and clarity.
“Over and over I have personally witnessed, both in myself and in my students, the breath’s clear potential to heal and deeply transform lives. I truly believe that in the future such practices will play an important role as a medicine for preventing and treating physical, emotional, and mental maladies. I am glad that Geshe YongDong is making these practices widely available, and I’m sure that by doing so, he is bringing benefit to countless lives.”
—from the foreword by Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
The mind can be a potent tool, used to guide extraordinary achievements, inspire good works, and incline your spiritual path toward peace and awakening. But the mind can also produce thoughts that lead to suffering. For many people, thoughts run rampant and seem to oppress or control their lives. Even the Buddha tells us that before his enlightenment, he sometimes found his mind preoccupied by thoughts connected with sensual desire, ill will, and harm. But he figured out how to respond to thoughts skillfully and developed a step-by-step approach to calm the restless mind. Now, Insight Meditation teacher Shaila Catherine offers an accessible approach to training the mind that is guided by the Buddha’s pragmatic instructions on removing distracting thoughts. Drawing on two scriptures in the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Shaila shows you how to overcome habitual modes of thinking, develop deeper concentration, and discover the insights into emptiness that are vital for a liberating spiritual path.
Following the Buddha’s pragmatic approach, Shaila guides you through five steps for overcoming distraction and focusing the mind:
Replace unwholesome thoughts with wholesome thoughts.
Examine the dangers of distracting thoughts.
Avoid it, ignore it, forget it.
Investigate the causes of distraction.
Apply determination and resolve.
Each chapter includes exercises and reflections to help you cultivate the five steps to deeper concentration. You’ll learn about your mind and develop your ability to direct your attention more skillfully in meditation and daily activities. And ultimately, you’ll discover for yourself how these five steps boil down to one key realization: In the moment you recognize that a thought is just a thought, you will find yourself on the path to a life of remarkable freedom.
A Peaceful Piggy’s Guide to Sickness and Death, Sadness and Love
When someone we love gets sick, we little piggies worry! It can feel scary when a person we care about is sick or in a hospital. Luckily, there is one good thing we peaceful piggies can do: meditate.
This is a story about love.
Experiencing a loved one’s illness or death is challenging for both children and their grownups. With three distinct sections to choose from—when someone we love is sick, dying, or has died—this guide will help you easily find soothing and practical mindfulness activities focused on what your young one needs in order to guide them through their big emotions and questions. These practices will help calm and empower children—and their grownups—as they discover they can still be with their loved ones through their heart connection, no matter where they are.
Click here for an animated video based on the story.
The Mindful Menopause Workbook will help you bring mindfulness into your day-to-day activities during menopause. The teachings, exercises, and meditations will show you how to recognize and achieve a more balanced, peaceful, and joyful orientation to whatever you experience at menopause and beyond.
A year’s worth of daily teachings will offer you micro-moments of self-care and self-development—mentally, physically, and spiritually. Following each teaching is space for you to journal whatever thoughts, emotions, or sensations arise. The exercise section includes an illustrated guide to yoga postures and outlines sequential poses that foster greater ease and awareness of the body, while the guided meditations and breath exercises promote body-mind unity through expanded peaceful awareness. The book addresses issues common to women during menopause sensitively and gives recommendations for dealing with common complaints such as insomnia, fatigue, low energy and libido, anxiety, depression, hot flashes, physical discomfort, poor digestion, and weight gain.
Together, these teachings, exercises, and reflections will help you approach menopause mindfully, and joyfully, as you deepen your practice and transition into a new stage of life.
“The Mindful Menopause Workbook is an ideal companion for navigating the transitional tidal waves of feminine growth. It is a great resource to rejuvenate the heart, mind, and body as you step into the next phase of life with renewed hope, confidence, and wisdom. Francesca Dupraz-Brossard has mapped out exciting pathways for women to appreciate and connect with their heart, mind, and body with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, and to rediscover the beauty of their lives.” —Dr. Charika Marasinghe, PhD, trustee, Vishva Niketan International Peace Centre
Discover ancient Tibetan yogic practices that integrate body, breath, and mind on the journey to personal cultivation and enlightenment.
Tibetan Yoga offers accessible instructions for performing the ancient yogic techniques of Tibet’s Bön religion. This is Tibetan yoga, or trul khor, a deeply authentic yogic practice. Drawing on thirty years of training with Bön’s most senior masters as well as advanced academic study, Dr. Alejandro Chaoul offers expert guidance on practices that were first developed by Bön masters over a millennia ago, framing them according to the needs of contemporary yoga practitioners and meditators.
No matter their level of experience, dedicated practitioners of Tibetan yoga will discover their ability to clear away obstacles and give rise to meditative states of mind. In Tibetan Yoga, you’ll learn what it means to practice for the benefit of all beings and to experience your body as a mandala, from center to periphery. These movements help you live in a more interconnected mind-breath-body experience, with benefits including better focus, stress reduction, the elimination of intrusive thoughts, better sleep, and general well-being.
Save 20% on the Tibetan Yoga online course when you buy this book! Your discount code is at the end of the book.
“Embodied awareness is the way back home—intimacy with where and how we are right now, with what is happening and how we are meeting it. This book will lead you into the heart of your life, into your body, where everything happens—with quality of listening rather than knowledge, of feeling rather than reaction. Practicing in this way is radically transformative.” —Martin Aylward
Pulled around by desires and distractions, we’re so easily disconnected from ourselves. Life is happening right in front of us, and within us—but still, we manage to miss so much of it.
Awake Where You Are provides the antidote, inviting us to go deep into our own bodies, to inhabit our sensory experience carefully; to learn the art of living from the inside out, and in the process to find ease, clarity, and an authentic, unshakeable freedom.
The practices in the book literally bring us back into our skin, where we can reconnect with a more rich, meaningful, and peaceful life. Aylward writes with sophisticated subtlety, as well as the heart-opening simplicity and clarity born of deep experience.
More than a meditation guide, this book is a guide to living an embodied life. You’ll learn about the following areas and practices:
Understanding and liberating our primal human drives.
Integrating psychological understanding with meditative practice.
Investigating the nuances of love.
“Martin is a marvelous teacher and offers us the refreshing wisdom of an embodied life.”
—Jack Kornfield, author of No Time Like the Present
