Author: Cuong Lu
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1682191869
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 100
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Book Description
This is a book of 52 vignettes—stories and teachings about Cuong Lu’s six years as a prison chaplain. Lu shares insights into the prisoner’s mindset, something with implications for us all, whether or not we are in a conventional jail. As a prison chaplain, Cuong discovered that when the men inside allowed themselves to feel their pain—including remorse from committing crimes—knowing and feeling the truth became a source of strength for them. And when the inmates felt listened to, understood, and not judged, it transformed their sense of who they are, and as a result changed their attitudes and their behavior. This book is not just about the prisoners. It’s about all of us. We’re each caught in distorted and limiting ideas of ourselves. We don’t believe freedom and happiness are attainable. But when we come to believe in ourselves, we discover the freedom and happiness already within. Cuong Lu, Buddhist teacher, scholar, and writer, was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam, in 1968. He majored in East Asian studies at the University of Leiden, and in 1993 was ordained a monk at Plum Village in France under the guidance of Thich Nhat Hanh. In 2000, he was recognized as a teacher in the Lieu Quan line of the Linji School of Zen Buddhism. In 2015, he received a master’s degree in Buddhist Spiritual Care at Vrije University in Amsterdam. Lu is the founder of Mind Only School, in Gouda, the Netherlands, where he teaches Buddhist philosophy and psychology, specializing in Yogachara Buddhism combined with the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) School of Nagarjuna.
Author: Franquin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788128614910
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64
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Book Description
Author: Miguel Farias
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1786782863
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Millions of people meditate daily but can meditative practices really make us ‘better’ people? In The Buddha Pill, pioneering psychologists Dr Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm put meditation and mindfulness under the microscope. Separating fact from fiction, they reveal what scientific research – including their groundbreaking study on yoga and meditation with prisoners – tells us about the benefits and limitations of these techniques for improving our lives. As well as illuminating the potential, the authors argue that these practices may have unexpected consequences, and that peace and happiness may not always be the end result. Offering a compelling examination of research on transcendental meditation to recent brain-imaging studies on the effects of mindfulness and yoga, and with fascinating contributions from spiritual teachers and therapists, Farias and Wikholm weave together a unique story about the science and the delusions of personal change.
Author: David Sheff
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1982128453
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boy explores the transformation of Jarvis Jay Masters who has become one of America’s most inspiring Buddhist practitioners while locked in a cell on death row. Jarvis Jay Masters’s early life was a horror story whose outline we know too well. Born in Long Beach, California, his house was filled with crack, alcohol, physical abuse, and men who paid his mother for sex. He and his siblings were split up and sent to foster care when he was five, and he progressed quickly to juvenile detention, car theft, armed robbery, and ultimately San Quentin. While in prison, he was set up for the murder of a guard—a conviction which landed him on death row, where he’s been since 1990. At the time of his murder trial, he was held in solitary confinement, torn by rage and anxiety, felled by headaches, seizures, and panic attacks. A criminal investigator repeatedly offered to teach him breathing exercises which he repeatedly refused. Until desperation moved him to ask her how to do “that meditation shit.” With uncanny clarity, David Sheff describes Masters’s gradual but profound transformation from a man dedicated to hurting others to one who has prevented violence on the prison yard, counseled high school kids by mail, and helped prisoners—and even guards—find meaning in their lives. Along the way, Masters becomes drawn to the principles that Buddhism espouses—compassion, sacrifice, and living in the moment—and he gains the admiration of Buddhists worldwide, including many of the faith’s most renowned practitioners. And while he is still in San Quentin and still on death row, he is a renowned Buddhist thinker who shows us how to ease our everyday suffering, relish the light that surrounds us, and endure the tragedies that befall us all.
Author: Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022648548X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Intro -- Contents -- Preface to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One: The Name -- Chapter Two: The Book -- Chapter Three: The Eye -- Chapter Four: The Spell -- Chapter Five: The Art -- Chapter Six: The Field -- Chapter Seven: The Prison -- Notes -- Index
Author: Chris Matheson
Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)
ISBN: 1634312015
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
From the moment of his birth, Siddhartha Gautama never doubted his specialness. He arrived with magnificently webbed digits and could lick his own earlobes. His karma had been that good. Thus, the question was never whether he would become a king, but rather, what type of king he would become. Siddhartha's journey took a sudden spiritual turn when he came to the first of his many realizations: things die, and before they die, they suffer, a lot, for real. This harrowing insight formed the first of his eleven Four Noble Truths (not including the five other parts) and informed his ascetic-minded mission: to free the world of pain, even if he was very glad to no longer care about anything or anyone in it. Having already experienced an incalculable number of past lives, Siddhartha wondered, how could he himself escape this endless cycle of suffering? With this question came an enlightened answer that promised a possible way out: only those who live can die. As his body begins to fail following an ill-prepared meal, Siddhartha faces his ultimate test: will he achieve his blessed wish—to cease to exist once and for all—or will he be reborn yet again into another oozing life of pain.
Author: Derek Joe Tennant
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 110577581X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 179
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Book Description
Derek has returned to Thailand to finalize a divorce from his Thai wife. She takes him to a police station instead, where she has bribed officers to put him in jail for 20 years. He tries to call for help and is beaten and severely injured. He is placed in a prison outside Bangkok. Derek tries to find the benefit in every situation, and sees an opportunity to grow spiritually from this adversity. Each day he recalls what he knows about one of the paramitas (virtues) of the Bodhisattva Path. He tries to put them into action, even within the confines of prison life. A friend from America, a neighbor from Thailand, and US Embassy staff all try to locate the missing American. These spiritual teachings are useful to any who follow them. Walking Buddha's Path is an introduction to a way of being that permeates everyday life and fills it with spiritual energy and delight. One need not be Buddhist to understand and benefit from this approach to life. These virtues help all who use them.
Author: Erol Čopelj
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000605477
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
This book offers an original phenomenological description of mindfulness and related phenomena, such as concentration (samādhi) and the practice of insight (vipassanā). It demonstrates that phenomenological method has the power to reanimate ancient Buddhist texts, giving new life to the phenomena at which those texts point. Beginning with descriptions of how mindfulness is encountered in everyday, pre-philosophical life, the book moves on to an analysis of how the Pali Nikāyas of Theravada Buddhism define mindfulness and the practice of cultivating it. It then offers a critique of the contemporary attempts to explain mindfulness as a kind of attention. The author argues that mindfulness is not attention, nor can it be understood as a mere modification of the attentive process. Rather, becoming mindful involves a radical shift in perspective. According to the author’s account, being mindful is the feeling of being tuned-in to the open horizon, which is contrasted with Edmund Husserl’s transcendental horizon. The book also elucidates the difference between the practice of cultivating mindfulness with the practice of the phenomenological epoché, which reveals new possibilities for the practice of phenomenology itself. Phenomenological Reflections on Mindfulness in the Buddhist Tradition will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in phenomenology, Buddhist philosophy, and comparative philosophy.
Author: Peter B. Unger
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532696159
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
Don's life and childhood faith are shattered by the senseless death of his mother and sister in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. Anger, at times even rage, over this injustice, as well as gnawing faith doubts now consume Don. Seeking rational reassurances for these doubts, and to rebuild his shattered faith Don applies and is accepted to a prestigious liberal seminary in the North-East. This decision, in the wake of the accident and given his working-class Southern Baptist roots, seems misguided, and ill-fated. A series of dramatic, even violent, confrontations nearly resulting in Don's expulsion, appear to bear this out. Ironically, it is the earthly angels God places in Don's path, more than any rational insights, that precipitate a transformative faith experience for Don. Inspired by true life experiences and historical events Don's story may well restore your faith in God's power to intervene and work miracles in our everyday lives, even amidst Life's deepest, darkest spiritual valleys.
Author: Ma Thida
Publisher:
ISBN: 9786162151231
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
From childhood, Ma Thida dreamed of helping others--caring for the sick, sharing information despite censorship, and standing up for people's rights. To stand against the oppression that had been stifling Myanmar's progress for decades, she joined Aung San Suu Kyi and the many other activists in the National League for Democracy, campaigning steadfastly despite intimidation, harassment, and worse. Because of her efforts, the regime sent her to Insein Prison, where she faced serious illness and bleak conditions. However, it was in fighting the obstacles of her imprisonment and following the Buddha's teachings that Ma Thida found what it means to be truly free. In this memoir, readers join Ma Thida on her path through captivity and witness one remarkable woman's courageous quest for truth and dignity.
