How we create our own problems and how Buddhist psychology can help us solve them.

Publisher's Description:

Buddhism asserts that we each have the potential to free ourselves from the prison of our problems. As practiced for more than twenty-six hundred years, the process involves working with, rather than against, our depression, anxiety, and compulsions. We do this by recognizing the habitual ways our minds perceive and react — the way they mislead. The lively exercises and inspiring real-world examples Cayton provides can help you transform intractable problems and neutralize suffering by cultivating a radically liberating self-understanding.

Editor's Notes:

This is a wonderful book from the Tibetan Buddhist point of view (sort of). What I like about it is that it is written for the rest of us non Buddhists and gives great information on moving out of our personal chaos into a way of living an empowered life. I like that it is an updated version of the Four NOble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddha without being preachy or "religious." 

A Buddhist System for Uncovering Your Strengths and Letting Them Shine

Publisher's Description:

Understanding yourself is the key to dealing with—and even enjoying—the inevitable complexity of life. Irini Rockwell presents us with a powerful system for the kind of self-understanding that leads to just that kind of satisfying relationship with life. It’s a Buddhist model for identifying your unique mix of personality traits that make up your innate intelligence. All five qualities—presence, clarity, richness, passion, and action—are your rich resource. By cultivating them you begin to see how you can use this remarkable system to enhance your relationships, your work, and your creativity. Ultimately, this system introduces us to a larger world: the totality and interconnectedness of everyone and everything.

Using Deep Listening and Mindful Speech to Strengthen Relationships, Heal Conflicts, and Accomplish Your Goals

Publisher's Description:

Good communication is essential to any healthy relationship, whether it’s between spouses, family members, friends, or co-workers, and mindfulness—the practice of nonjudgmental awareness—can help us communicate more effectively and meaningfully with others in our personal and professional lives. Here, Susan Chapman, a psychotherapist and long-time Buddhist practitioner, explains how the practice of mindfulness awareness can change the way we speak and listen, enhance our relationships, and help us achieve our goals. 

Complete Instructions on the Preliminary Practice

Publisher's Description:

The foundations of Vajrayana practice are laid out with eloquence and precision here by one of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist masters of our age. His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche’s commentary on the preliminary practices (ngöndro) is informed by his profound realization and wide-ranging scholarship, and illuminated with an array of quotations from the Vinaya, Sutra, and Tantra traditions. 

In addition to the commentary on the outer and inner preliminary practices, he provides other invaluable instructions on the correct view, conduct, and activity of a practitioner. Dudjom Rinpoche taught that the realization of the teachings of the Great Perfection depends entirely on the practice of these preliminary practices, thus his compassionate exposition of them here makes this book a particularly precious resource for anyone who seeks to remove the obstacles between themselves and the total freedom of enlightenment.

Finding an Authentic LIfe

Publisher's Description:

How did an undisciplined child, an utter waster in his twenties who squandered the best part of his early life away in the pubs, wine bars, and nightclubs of London, find himself playing solo concerts in Japan on a Zen flute? This book began out of a response to that question. Blowing Zen is the story of the author's search for an authentic life. The path he follows leads to a wonderful spontaneity that fuses art, mind, body, and spirit. It was written in the hope that at least one person with thoughts of changing their life will be inspired into action.