"[A] tale from the Buddhist sutras told in the memorable and engaging rhyming verse in the tradition of Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein"--Provided by publisher.
If Dr. Seuss were drawing on classical Buddhist texts for inspiration, this is what he’d write—with playful yet traditional illustrations by the award-winning artist behind The Empty Pot, whose books have sold half a million copies. Destined to be a classic. An instant classic, this book will help children (and their parents) learn patience and to see the good in everyone—including themselves! It will also help children meet difficult circumstances, such as being sick, doing chores, and not getting everything they want—and help them overcome low self-esteem and negative self-talk. I See You, Buddha is based on a chapter in the Lotus Sutra, one of the most influential Buddhist texts worldwide—a classical scripture that has inspired a whole genre of works, especially in Japan, known as Lotus Literature. The Lotus Sutra teaches the way of the bodhisattva—a being engaged in compassionate, enlightened activity in the service of all—by offering examples of what this activity might look like in the world. One such model in the text is Bodhisattva Never Disrespectful (or Never Disparaging), who, despite troubling encounters with and even harsh treatment from others, bows down respectfully to everyone, recognizing their Buddha nature and honoring their own journeys along the bodhisattva path to enlightenment—whether they know they’re future buddhas or not!
Human beings the world over have always found the nighttime-and its attendant activities of sleeping, dreaming, and waking up-mysterious, mystical, and rich with meaning and metaphor. The name Buddha means the one who has awakened and enlightenment itself is often portrayed literarily as the luminous full moon, lighting our way through the blinding black of night. Nightly Wisdom goes deep into the wealth of Buddhist inspirations on these powerful topics: offering encouragement and clear teaching on lucid dreaming and Tibetan dream yoga, the art of extending one's meditation practice into the boundary-less world of dreamtime; gentle guidance on relaxing into restful sleep and awakening from the suffering dream of separateness; as well as poetry and prose whose sources span time and space from ancient Japan and the Buddha himself to some of the brightest lights of Buddhism today. A book unlike any other, Nightly Wisdom is designed to be placed on the bedside table and read last thing in the evening so that one's sleep may be infused with a virtue that can be renewed in the morning and carried on throughout the day. Nightly Wisdom represents perhaps the first effort to bring all of these Buddhist inspirations together in one welcoming volume and is an ideal guide for anyone who has ever dreamed of waking up to the entirety of life or wondered how best to suffuse this wisdom into that third of our lives we all spend in bed.
2019 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title This is the first book to examine the development of the figure of Māra, who appears across Buddhist traditions as a personification of death and desire. Portrayed as a combination of god and demon, Māra serves as a key antagonist to the Buddha, his followers, and Buddhist teaching in general. From ancient India to later Buddhist thought in East Asia to more recent representations in Western culture and media, Māra has been used to satirize Hindu divinities, taken the form of wrathful Tibetan gods, communicated psychoanalytic tropes, and appeared as a villain in episodes of Doctor Who. Michael D. Nichols details and surveys the historical transformations of the Māra figure and demonstrates how different Buddhist communities at different times have used this symbol to react to changing social and historical circumstances. Employing literary and cultural theory, Nichols argues that the representation of Māra closely parallels and reflects the social concerns and anxieties of the particular Buddhist community producing it.
If Dr. Seuss were drawing on classical Buddhist texts for inspiration, this is what he’d write—with playful yet classic illustrations by the team behind I See You, Buddha, to which this book is a standalone companion. Destined to be classic, I See You, Mara! is a beautifully illustrated tale from the Buddhist sutras that will help kids learn how to better relate to their most difficult thoughts and feelings—including fear, self-doubt, and all kinds of insecurities. The story is told in the memorable and engaging rhyming verse in the tradition of Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein, and illustrated in a traditional and yet light-hearted style by the renowned and award-winning illustrator of I See You, Buddha! and Wisdom’s Illustrated Lotus Sutra, and many other books. Mara is a character from the Buddhist tradition who is the personification of the mind that causes suffering, also known as delusion. I See You, Mara! provides time-tested tools for dispelling the voice of fear, doubt, and inadequacy that arises for all of us.
The body is of course integral to meditation, but there are only a few books that focus this specifically on the body and the meditative experience. Awake Where You Are addresses that need, and additionally integrates psychological concepts, which provides a more familiar entry point for people less familiar with Buddhism. “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. My intention is to lead you into the heart of your life. Inside your body, where everything happens—within a quality of listening rather than knowledge, of feeling rather than reaction. This meditative practice 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. And this book is more than a meditation guide—it’s a guide to living an embodied life. You’ll learn about the following areas and practices: - Understanding and liberating our primal human drives. Aylward explains how the three primary drives—survival, sexual, and social—function within us, and how we can engage their energy to explore, understand, and liberate them. - Integrating psychological understanding with meditative practice. Awake Where You Are goes beyond the broad brushstrokes of Buddhist psychology, inviting the reader into an exploration of their own particular psychological history and conditioning. - Investigating the nuances of love. Readers will learn to see the classical Buddhist heart qualities, or brahmaviharas (loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity) as distinct flavors of love, and as the natural resting places of a free heart. “Martin is a marvelous teacher and offers us the refreshing wisdom of an embodied life.” —Jack Kornfield, author of No Time Like the Present
Stephen Batchelor's seminal work on humanity's struggle between good and evil In the national bestseller Living with the Devil, Batchelor traces the trajectory from the words of the Buddha and Christ, through the writings of Shantideva, Milton, and Pascal, to the poetry of Baudelaire, the fiction of Kafka, and the findings of modern physics and evolutionary biology to examine who we really are, and to rest in the uncertainty that we may never know. Like his previous bestseller, Buddhism without Beliefs, Living with the Devil is also an introduction to Buddhism that encourages readers to nourish their "buddha nature" and make peace with the devils that haunt human life. He tells a poetic and provocative tale about living with life's contradictions that will challenge you to live your life as an existence imbued with purpose, freedom, and compassion—rather than habitual self-interest and fear.
Our desires for fashion, our addiction to cheap clothes, our fixation on surface looks . . . can we find ways to make what we wear more positive? Here's a quirky, irreverent way to consider what's a more sustainable way to be with—and still enjoy—fashion. This little book shows that fashion isn't shallow but connects us to the depths of existence. Especially today, fashion can tell us something about life, and this series of meditations and conversations between fashion "hacktivist" von Busch and Buddhist teacher Josh Korda shows how a Buddhist perspective on fashion can help us engage with clothes in wiser ways. It may seem a Buddhist approach to fashion would be about denying fashion and living an ascetic life in dull robes. However, Buddhism can teach us to be more present and take more pleasure in fashion. With practice and reflection, we can live a wiser life with the consumption of clothes. Includes "action exercises" to help put ideas into practice in your life and closet.
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.
Mara Dyer doesn’t know if she is crazy or haunted—all she knows is that everyone around her is dying in this suspenseful and “strong, inventive tale” (Kirkus Reviews). Mara Dyer doesn’t think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. It can. She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed. There is. She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love. She’s wrong. After Mara survives the traumatizing accident at the old asylum, it makes sense that she has issues. She lost her best friend, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s sister, and as if that weren’t enough to cope with, her family moves to a new state in order to give her a fresh start. But that fresh start is quickly filled with hallucinations—or are they premonitions?—and then corpses, and the boundary between reality and nightmare is wavering. At school, there’s Noah, a devastatingly handsome charmer who seems determined to help Mara piece together what’s real, what’s imagined—and what’s very, very dangerous. This fast-paced psychological—or is it paranormal?—thriller will leave you breathless for its sequel, The Evolution of Mara Dyer.