Ellen Birx
Every day new research attests to the link between spirituality and health. In Healing Zen, which focuses on the concept of "healing as wholeness," a nursing professor and Zen teacher demonstrates how the practice of awareness and meditation can help restore energy, build endurance, and suffuse our lives with compassion and joy. Drawing on her twenty years' experience as a nurse, Ellen Birx takes us on a deeply human journey through the nonlinear process of healing. Profound and inspiring stories are set alongside teachings from the Zen tradition to illustrate how wholeness is found in the midst of illness and disease.
Wise and down to earth, Healing Zen shows how daily activities like eating, touching, and bathing are vital aspects of the art of healing, how pain and death are part of life, and how those who are healthy can learn from those who suffer. The author demonstrates how listening keeps us present in the moment; perseverance ensures progress and helps us cope with grief, recurrence, and other challenges; accepting our ordinariness and reconnecting with the flow of daily life give us the power to let go of the drive to excel.
240pp, 8.5x5.5 ... Hardback
Published price £14.99 -- You save £10.00 ... 67%
Gilles van Grasdorf
In May of 1995, six-year-old Guenden Tcheukyi Nyima was officially recognised by the Dalai Lama as the eleventh incarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second most important spiritual leader. Two months later the boy and his family were removed from their village by Chinese authorities. Shortly thereafter, Beijing produced its own Panchen Lama, another boy from the same village. According to Tibetan tradition, the Panchen Lama plays a key role in identifying the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama. Will Gendun Chokyi Nyima, the world's youngest political prisoner, be allowed to fulfill this pivotal role? Or, in a move calculated to give them control over the spiritual and temporal leadership of Tibet, will the Chinese use their puppet Panchen Lama to nominate the next Dalai Lama?
288pp, 9x6 ... Hardback
Published price £18.99 -- You save £12.00 ... 63%
The Dalai Lama
As human beings, we possess one common desire: the need for happiness and a meaningful life. According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the ability to find true fulfillment lies within each of us. Now, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, Nobel Prize winner, and bestselling author helps listeners begin the path to enlightenment in a very special audiobook - an easy-access reference for daily practice as well as a stunning new illumination of the timeless wisdom of His Holiness. For the serious seeker this audio program offers elegant clarity on the paradoxes at the heart of life.
3 Cassettes
Published price £19.99 -- You save £16.01 ... 80%
Bo Lozoff
Lozoff is a renowned lecturer and the cofounder of the Human Kindness Foundation, which sponsors the Prison-Ashram Project (originally started with Ram Dass). Lozoff uses a spiritually mature narrative to demonstrate how life can be a meaningful process, instead of "a climb to the top." Why, after years of searching, are so many people unable to find meaning and happiness in their lives? Lozoff argues that it is because the search has been misguided. Meaning, he proposes, is found, not by striving for self-improvement, but by combining personal spiritual practice with a devotion to community and service to others. He shows how simple practrices, such as a daily morning vow of kindness or a ritual to give away one item when we require another, can have a profound effect on ourselves and the world. "Filled with lessons, wisdom, practices, and love. An invitation to a life well lived." - Jack Kornfeld. Remainder mark.
304pp, 8x5 ... Hardback
Published price £17.99 -- You save £13.00 ... 72%
Robert Thurman
Few teachers in the West possess both the spiritual training and the scholarship to lead us along the path to enlightenment. Robert Thurman is one such teacher. Now, in his first experiental course on the essentials of Tibetan Buddhism, adapted
272pp, 8.25x5.5 ... ISBN 0743257634 ... Paperback
Published price £8.99 -- You save £5.00 ... 56%
Cheri Huber
Simple, profound and very intelligent, this book asks how we can move from trying to get what we want by altering the "externals" of our lives - friends, lovers, money, possessions, opinions, ideas, death, etc - to creating change from the inside out. The answer, says Huber, is simple. There is nothing more important than just ‘being’, right here, right now, present - aware, attentive, accepting. This book explains how to do just that, in straight-forward and compassionate language. The book is hand-written so that it can be read slowly with the heart, instead of quickly with the head.
142pp, 8½x5½, illus. ... Paperback
Published price £6.99 -- You save £2.49 ... 36%
Martin Palmer, Jay Ramsey & Man-Ho Kwok
Kuan Yin is the most important and best loved deity of the Chinese world. She is the living expression of compassion, whose gentle face and elegant figure form a centre of devotion in most Chinese homes and workplaces. Yet she is barely known in the West and few studies have been made of her. The authors of this book have travelled all over China in search of her true story and origins within Buddhism, Taoism and the female shamans of China. now in her universal mystery and power of the divine feminine, she transcends all doctrines, creeds and traditions.
160pp, 9.25x5.5 ... ISBN 1855384175 ... Paperback
Published price £12.99 -- You save £8.00 ... 62%
As accessible as it is inspirational, this selection gathers together a decade's worth of public lectures given in India to audiences from all walks of life. Following each talk are the original question-and-answer sessions, in which His Holiness opens himself up to his listeners and - now - to readers everywhere. His characteristically candid guidance on living fully and responsibly as we cross into a new millennium focuses on specific themes that range from religious tolerance to compassion and nonviolence. With a practical and highly readable introduction to Buddhism and the Dalai Lama's own spiritual heritage, written by Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, this is the perfect book for seekers at any stage along the path of life.
202pp, 8x5 ... Hardback
Published price £15.99 -- You save £9.00 ... 56%
Thich Nhat Hanh
Brings together over two decades of Thich Nhat Hanh's writings and reflections on nonviolence, peace, and reconciliation. Nhat Hanh speaks eloquently of the necessity of mindfulness and a spiritual motivation for political action. He shows us methods of looking deeply to examine the roots of war in ourselves, in our destructive patterns of living, and in greed and deluded self-interest on a global scale.
146pp, 8x5.5 ... Paperback
Published price £9.99 -- You save £5.00 ... 50%
Invaluable wisdom from one of the most revered and trusted leaders and writers in the world. His Holiness the Dalai Lama continues his interpretation of the ancient wisdom of the Buddha for the modern world. He speaks to us about the paths to self-realisation, and the need to overcome negative emotions in order to develop one's inner consciousness. Wise, compassionate and pragmatic, he offers advice on many everyday issues such as how best to free yourself from emotional afflictions and petty cravings, and how to transform anxiety and depression into contentment.
192pp, 9x6 ... Paperback
Published price £10.99 -- You save £6.00 ... 55%
Dalai Lama
"Everyone dies, but no one is dead," goes the Tibetan saying. It is with these words that Advice on Dying takes flight. Using a seventeenth-century poem written by a prominent scholar-practitioner, His Holiness the Dalai Lama draws from a wide range of traditions and beliefs to explore the stages we all go through when we die, which are the very same stages we experience in life when we go to sleep, faint, or reach orgasm (Shakespeare's "little death").
The stages are described so vividly that we can imagine the process of traveling deeper into the mind, on the ultimate journey of transformation. In this way, His Holiness shows us how to prepare for that time and, in doing so, how to enrich our time on earth, die without fear or upset, and influence the stage between this life and the next so that we may gain the best possible incarnation. As always, the ultimate goal is to advance along the path to enlightenment. Advice on Dying is an essential tool for attaining that eternal bliss.
240pp, 7x4.75 ... ISBN 0743244699 ... Paperback
Jerry Braza
Practising mindfulness means performing all activities consciously. Jerry Braza offers simple exercises for applying mindfulness to our daily lives. He includes specific guidance and exercises for managing stress, quietening the mind, transforming feelings, enhancing productivity and completing unfinished emotional business..
136pp, 7x5 ... Paperback
Published price £6.95 -- You save £3.56 ... 51%
Kate Karko
A beautiful book. Receives our highest recommendation. Kate Karko’s conventional, comfortable upbringing did not prepare her for meeting her Tibetan husband, Tsedup, in Northern India where he was living in exile. They came to live in England and after a total of nine agonising years away from his family he was eventually given permission to travel home as a British Citizen. Kate left her job as a designer on a magazine for life in a tent on the Roof of the World. She was welcomed as one of the tribe, given the name “Namma”, and lived with them on the vast and remote grasslands of Amdo at the far east of the Tibetan Plateau. From milking yaks to collecting dung, cracking open the ice on the stream to wash each morning and battling with her lack of communication skills, it was a constant education in another way to be. She observed the nomads’ ancient shamanic rituals and buddhist religious practices and through their worship of nature, she discovered a love for her new environment. The enormous cultural differences she encountered often led to a struggle with her identity and a questioning of her western values, but she found comfort in the knowledge that despite the polarity of the two cultures, life with her nomad family was a strangely familiar experience. It was love that had brought her and her husband together and it was love that brought her close to her new family and made her a part of them. This book is about an exhange of cultures. A sharing. It is about discovering another people and discovering another self. There has never been such an intimate portrayal of the life of the Tibetan nomads. Beautifully written and compellingly told, Namma is a travel book and a love story for our times.
352pp, 9x6 ... Hardback
Published price £17.99 -- You save £11.00 ... 61%
Meditation is a gift we give ourselves. When we sit down and focus on the stillness, out thoughts and feelings become clearer to us. We begin to see that, underneath our social conditioning, we are good and kind and gentle. American Zen teacher Cheri Huber has been asked just about every question imaginable regarding meditation practice. Here are her clear, insightful, often humorous responses to many of those questions.
144pp, 8.5x5.5 ... Paperback
Published price £6.99 -- You save £3.50 ... 50%
Gerta Ital
Gerta Ital was the first Western woman to be admitted as a student to a Japanese Zen monastery in the early fifties. She was a sophisticated European woman cushioned by a comfortable upbringing when, by choice, she first experienced the sparse simplicity of life in a Zen Buddhist monastery. In this account, she recalls her childhood and formative influences, particularly reading Jung's memoirs. Then in dramatic contrast to those early years, we follow her experiences in Shofuku-Ji, where she describes her innermost journeying and the glorious surrender which eventually culminated in Satori.
288pp, 9x6 ... Paperback
Published price £9.99 -- You save £5.50 ... 55%
In the Dalai Lama's own words: "it is my hope that the reader of this small book will take away a basic understanding of Buddhism and some of the key methods by which Buddhist practitioners have cultivated compassion and wisdom in their lives. The methods discussed have been taken from three sacred texts of Buddhism. I would like to stress at the outset, however, that one doesn't have to be a Buddhist to make use of these meditation techniques. Meditation is merely the process whereby we gain control over the mind and guide it in a more virtuous direction. Meditation may also be thought of as a technique by which we dimish the force of old thought habits and develop new ones. Yet the techniques themselves do not lead to enlightenment or a compassionate and open heart. That is up to you, and the effort and motivation you bring to your spiritual practice."
208pp ... Paperback
Published price £7.99 -- You save £4.00 ... 50%
Weaving together the contents of three sacred texts, His Holiness shows that the path to compassion is a series of meditations. An Open Heart lays out this course of meditation, from the simplest to the most challenging, describing the mental training techniques that will enable anyone of any faith to change their minds and open their hearts. Remainder mark.
192pp, 9x6 ... Hardback
Stamped with his signature depth of vision, lucidity, and clarity, Thich Nhat Hanh's insights based on the wisdom of the Lotus Sutra invoke a wide range of contemporary topics and concerns. He demonstrates the practical and direct applicability of Buddhist teachings to today's issues, from the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy to the threat of terrorism and the degradation of our environment. Opening the Heart of the Cosmos shines sixty years of study and practice upon one of the crowning scriptures of the path of the Buddha. It is destined to be known as one of the most significant writings by Thich Nhat Hanh.
216pp, 9.25x6.5 ... Hardback
Published price £21.00 -- You save £14.01 ... 67%
