Download or read book The Wonder of Presence And the Way of Meditative Inquiry written by Toni Packer and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2002-04-16 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling collection of talks, interviews, and letters, Toni Packer provides a comprehensive overview of the path of meditative inquiry—a nondenominational approach to spiritual growth that emphasizes the direct experience of the present moment. "The immense challenge for each one of us," Packer writes, "is can we live our lives, at least for moments at a time, in the wonder of presence that is the creative source of everything?" She shows how we can transform fear, anger, guilt, and attachment to our self-image through simple, direct awareness. Having recently lost her husband of fifty years, Packer also speaks with candor and tenderness about the convulsions of a grieving heart and the peace that undivided awareness can bring. Toni Packer began studying Zen in 1967 with Roshi Philip Kapleau (author of The Three Pillars of Zen ) at the Rochester Zen Center and was eventually named his successor. Seeing the potentially destructive effects of relying too much on tradition, however, she did not accept the position. Packer is strongly influenced by the teachings of Krishnamurti and has turned away from the traditional forms and hierarchies that are prevalent in many Buddhist schools. Her approach is appealing to many Westerners who find institutionalized practices such as chanting, bowing, and burning incense to be alien and unnecessary.
Download or read book The Wonder of Presence written by Toni Packer and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2002-04-16 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling collection of talks, interviews, and letters, Toni Packer provides a comprehensive overview of the path of meditative inquiry—a nondenominational approach to spiritual growth that emphasizes the direct experience of the present moment. "The immense challenge for each one of us," Packer writes, "is can we live our lives, at least for moments at a time, in the wonder of presence that is the creative source of everything?" She shows how we can transform fear, anger, guilt, and attachment to our self-image through simple, direct awareness. Having recently lost her husband of fifty years, Packer also speaks with candor and tenderness about the convulsions of a grieving heart and the peace that undivided awareness can bring. Toni Packer began studying Zen in 1967 with Roshi Philip Kapleau (author of The Three Pillars of Zen ) at the Rochester Zen Center and was eventually named his successor. Seeing the potentially destructive effects of relying too much on tradition, however, she did not accept the position. Packer is strongly influenced by the teachings of Krishnamurti and has turned away from the traditional forms and hierarchies that are prevalent in many Buddhist schools. Her approach is appealing to many Westerners who find institutionalized practices such as chanting, bowing, and burning incense to be alien and unnecessary.
Download or read book The Silent Question written by Toni Packer and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2007-03-13 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Silent Question, Packer provides fresh insights on using the experiences of life that are raw, messy, painful, and sometimes full of laughter, to open a way to compassion. She urges us to let go of our thoughts and to sit "in the stillness of not knowing" in order to reflect upon the essential question of who we are. Packer encourages us to discover that life, energy, and insight come from the questioning, the looking, the listening.
Download or read book Engaging with Meditative Inquiry in Teaching Learning and Research written by Ashwani Kumar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-30 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of multi/inter-disciplinary essays explores the transformative potential of Ashwani Kumar’s work on meditative inquiry – a holistic approach to teaching, learning, researching, creating, and living – in diverse educational contexts. Aspiring to awaken awareness, intelligence, compassion, collaboration, and aesthetic sensibility among students and their teachers through self-reflection, critique, dialogue, and creative exploration, this volume: Showcases unique ways in which scholars from diverse disciplinary, cultural, and geographic contexts have engaged with meditative inquiry in their own fields. Provides a space where African, Asian, Buddhist, Indigenous, and Western scholars engage with the idea of meditative inquiry from their own cultural, philosophical, and spiritual traditions, perspectives, and practices. Explores a variety of themes in relation to meditative inquiry including arts-based research, poetic inquiry, Africentricity, Indigenous thinking, martial arts, positive psychology, trauma, dispute resolution, and critical discourse analysis. Offers insights into how the principles of meditative inquiry can be incorporated in classrooms and, thereby, contributes to the growing interest in mindfulness, meditation, and other holistic approaches in schools and academia. The diverse and rich contributions contained in this volume offer valuable perspectives and practices for scholars, students, and educators interested in exploring and adopting the principles of meditative inquiry in their specific fields and contexts.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Hypo egoic Phenomena written by Kirk Warren Brown and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Egoicism, a mindset that places primary focus upon oneself, is rampant in contemporary Western cultures as commercial advertisements, popular books, song lyrics, and mobile apps consistently promote self-interest. Consequently, researchers have begun to address the psychological, interpersonal, and broader societal costs of excessive egoicism and to investigate alternatives to a "me and mine first" mindset. For centuries, scholars, spiritual leaders, and social activists have advocated a "hypo-egoic" way of being that is characterized by less self-concern in favor of a more inclusive "we first" mode of functioning. In recent years, investigations of hypo-egoic functioning have been examined by psychologists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and philosophers. Edited by Kirk Warren Brown and Mark R. Leary, The Oxford Handbook of Hypo-egoic Phenomena brings together an expert group of contributors to examine these groundbreaking lines of inquiry, distilling current knowledge about hypo-egoicism into an exceptional resource. In this volume, readers will fi nd theoretical perspectives from philosophy and several major branches of psychology to inform our understanding of the nature of hypo-egoicism and its expressions in various domains of life. Further, readers will encounter psychological research discoveries about particular phenomena in which hypo-egoicism is a prominent feature, demonstrating its implications for well-being, regulation of emotion, adaptive decision-making, positive social relations, and other markers of human happiness, well-being, and health. This Handbook offers the most comprehensive and thoughtful analyses of hypo-egoicism to date.
Download or read book Seven Days in Silence written by Stephan Bielfeldt and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-03-14 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A small group of perhaps 10 or 30 people come together to spend some days in silent meditation. It is not important which gender, ethnicity or religion they might identify with; all are welcome. Old age or physical disability is not a hindrance. This meditation is open for everyone. Sitting silently in a hall, breathing, sensing the body, seeing the light reflected from the floor, being in touch with the people around. Who or what are we to be? Nobody special? Can it be enough to flow with the stream of aliveness, which is here in utter simplicity, no separation, no wanting, no missing? When no separating thoughts or feelings appear, everything is complete as it is. How do we live our everyday lives? Is there space to open up, to become aware? Are we truly in touch with what surrounds us or what is inside of us? Honestly, our lives are crowded with constant thoughts, actions and reactions. We are often overwhelmed and we switch to 'autopilot' to get through the daily challenges. Are we victims of our automated programs? Is it inevitable to live most of the time in chaos, feeling helplessly exposed to a world that offers not even a moment to contemplate? The central expression of this book is awareness. Awareness is a state of being present in the actual moment, being here in the actual truth that unfolds directly in front of our eyes. Everything is already complete here. Can we simply sense it, feel it - without judgment, without knowledge or explanation? No need to identify with anything. What drives us? The impulses to act, are we aware of them? A new understanding of all life and nature, including us, may dawn from such simple silent awareness. Not a new concept of the world or of who we are. Concepts are part of the observed. Awareness is an understanding emerging from the truth of this moment.
Download or read book Mindfulness Informed Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis written by Marjorie Schuman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mindfulness-Informed Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Inquiring Deeply provides a refreshing new look at the emerging field of Buddhist-informed psychotherapy. Marjorie Schuman presents a cogent framework which engages the patient at the levels of narrative, affective regulation, and psychodynamic understanding. Blending knowledge of contemporary psychoanalysis with the wisdom of Buddhist view, she examines how mindfulness can be integrated into psychodynamic treatment as an aspect of self-reflection rather than as a cognitive behavioral technique or intervention. This book explores how mindfulness as a "self-reflective awareness practice" can be used to amplify and unpack psychological experience in psychodynamic treatment. Schuman presents a penetrating analysis of conceptual issues, richly illustrated throughout with clinical material. In so doing, she both clarifies important dimensions of psychotherapy and illuminates the role of "storyteller mind" in the psychological world of lived experience. The set of reflections comprises an unfolding deep inquiry in its own right, delving into the similarities and differences between mindfulness-informed psychotherapy, on the one hand, and mindfulness as a meditation practice, on the other. Filling in an outline familiar from psychoanalytic theory, the book explores basic concepts of Self, Other, and "object relations" from an integrative perspective which includes both Buddhist and psychoanalytic ideas. Particular emphasis is placed on how relationship is held in mind, including the dynamics of relating to one’s own mind. The psychotherapeutic approach described also delineates a method for practicing with problems in the Buddhist sense of the word practice. It investigates how problems are constructed and elucidates a strategy for finding the wisdom and opportunities for growth which are contained within them. Mindfulness-Informed Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis demonstrates in clear language how the experience of Self and Other is involved in emotional pain and relational suffering. In the relational milieu of psychotherapy, "Inquiring Deeply" fosters emotional insight and catalyzes psychological growth and healing. This book will be of great interest to psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians as well as Buddhist scholars and psychologically-minded Buddhist practitioners interested in the clinical application of mindfulness.
Download or read book The Work of This Moment written by Toni Packer and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2007-03-13 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling collection of talks, essays, interviews, and letters, Toni Packer presents a radically simple and original approach to spiritual growth free from religious authority, doctrine, symbolism, and ceremony. A former Zen teacher and student of Krishnamurti's work, Toni Packer goes beyond traditional religion and explores with the reader the root of human attachments and the source of suffering, opening the way to compassion.
Download or read book Appalachian Zen written by Steve Kanji Ruhl and published by Monkfish Book Publishing. This book was released on 2022-12-13 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2023 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Prize for Memoir This luminous memoir combines the hardscrabble setting of Appalachia with the spiritual wisdom of Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. “Amazing and intense. A unique, entertaining, and valuable contribution to the Dharma literature, Appalachian Zen addresses a part of the Western Dharma world that hasn’t received much attention: class.” —Rev. Sumi Loundon Kim, Yale University, author of Blue Jean Buddha and Sitting Together Appalachian Zen describes a journey we all take, one that Buddhism calls “seeking our true home.” Edgy, lyrical, and lovingly rendered, this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania mill-town trailer park grew up—surrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief, violence, and passionate yearning—to become something improbable: a Buddhist minister teaching Zen. Author Steve Kanji Ruhl takes readers on an adventure of discovery, roving far from the Appalachian Mountains of central Pennsylvania on a footloose Zen pilgrimage to Japan and beyond. Featuring vivid firsthand accounts of spiritual seeking and teaching in Japanese temples, as well as forays to Tokyo and Hiroshima, the alleys of Kyoto, Amish cornfields near the Susquehanna, and a monastery in the Catskills, Appalachian Zen includes robust historical sketches, rapt nature passages, and cultural references ranging from Proust to punk rock. Throughout the book, Ruhl engages Buddhist themes of awakening and the death of the self by confronting the lives and deaths, including two by suicide, of his loved ones. This provocative memoir tells how it feels to practice Zen, and to move toward a life of hard-won forgiveness, healing, and freedom.
Download or read book Anarchism Sexuality written by Jamie Heckert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anarchism & Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships and Power brings the rich traditions of anarchist thought and practice to contemporary questions about the politics of sexuality.
Download or read book Presence Meditation written by Jens-Erik Risom and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First developed as a short manual for students in a yearlong meditation course, Presence Meditation offers a step-by-step program for increasing self-awareness through simple but revelatory exercises. The practice of presence meditation involves becoming present to whatever is going on and letting things be just as they are. This awareness is characterized by open attention and neutral observation, which increases the capacity to observe without judging, enables transformation without forcing, and opens the way to a more immediate sense of meaning and joy in life. Author Jens-Erik Risom begins by describing the purpose of meditation and the “four introductions” (rootedness, attention to breathing, fullness of feeling, and witness awareness), and then presents the gradual steps for achieving presence, deepening neutrality, opening to trust, sensing spaciousness, and more. There are many books about meditation on the market, from Western authors like Eckhart Tolle to Tibetan Buddhist teachers. But many people find it difficult to translate the message of these books into an actual experience of deepening awareness. Whether readers are seeking a spiritual practice, a more serene approach to stressful situations, improved concentration, or greater relaxation for better health, this compact manual offers a simple, undogmatic approach to meditation.
Download or read book Shambhala Sun written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 820 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Light of Discovery written by Toni Packer and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2007-03-13 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To read this book is to encounter the essence of our lives and our everyday concerns. Toni Packer shines her gentle light on fear, compassion, impermanence, attraction, prejudice, enlightenment, and much more as she invites us into our own light of discovery. As she says, "In truth we are not separate from each other, or from the world, from the whole earth, the sun or moon or billions of stars, not separate from the entire universe. Listening silently in silent wonderment, without knowing anything, there is just one mysteriously palpitating aliveness."
Download or read book Instant Presence written by Enza Vita and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note this is an updated edition of Enza Vita's Always Already Free which was published in 2015. This book is a practical guide to accessing an awakened state, offering a spiritual practice, "Instant Presence", that is based on Enza Vita's own profound encounter with enlightenment. She gets to the heart of what is wrong with so much of our spiritual strivings: if a practice is bound to a goal then that is an obstacle, because in reality there is no goal to be achieved. What we are looking for is here now and has always been. Using a helpful question-and-answer format that highlights ways of embracing her "no-practice practice", Enza guides readers in searching for the individual "I" and realizing that this "I" does not exist. She explains the meaning of real meditation, which lies in letting go of control rather than in seeking to control the experience, and offers "presence pause" exercises and many hints and tips for letting your thoughts be and accessing true awareness. Her book shows that sudden awakening is an ever-present possibility, as well as revealing the power and seduction of our thoughts and emotions that keep us held in narrow self-definitions and create endless suffering. Enza seeks always to support readers' spiritual journey from their initial search through the integration of spiritual enlightenment into everyday life, showing that true awakening is not a faraway dream or mere intellectual knowledge but the direct realization of our true nature that is always available here and now. This brilliant contribution to our modern understanding of authentic identity and Presence brings us to a new awareness of ourselves and our innate wholeness and completeness." – Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within. "This is a great contribution to our appreciation of the genuine voice of Pure Presence. It brings us to a deeper awareness of what it means to study the self and our intrinsic true nature as that which is already perfect, whole and complete. It is certainly worthy of your time and attention." – Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel, author of Big Mind, Big Heart.
Download or read book Radical Compassion written by Tara Brach and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-12-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most beloved and trusted mindfulness teachers in America offers a lifeline for difficult times: the RAIN meditation, which awakens our courage and heart Tara Brach is an in-the-trenches teacher whose work counters today's ever-increasing onslaught of news, conflict, demands, and anxieties--stresses that leave us rushing around on auto-pilot and cut off from the presence and creativity that give our lives meaning. In this heartfelt and deeply practical book, she offers an antidote: an easy-to-learn four-step meditation that quickly loosens the grip of difficult emotions and limiting beliefs. Each step in the meditation practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) is brought to life by memorable stories shared by Tara and her students as they deal with feelings of overwhelm, loss, and self-aversion, with painful relationships, and past trauma--and as they discover step-by-step the sources of love, forgiveness, compassion, and deep wisdom alive within all of us.
Download or read book Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry written by Arthur Zajonc and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 7 lectures, various cities, April 17-May 26, 1914 (CW 154) What is the relationship between those who have died and those who remain alive on Earth? Can we help those now in the spiritual world? Can they help us? In these talks, Rudolf Steiner deals with the spiritual relationships that the living can have with those who have crossed over the threshold between life and death. In a realistic, practical way, he shows how an understanding of our spiritual nature reveals ways of knowing a world undreamed of by materialists. The tone of these talks is warm and moving, clearly drawn from Steiner's own experience and the lives of those who had died and who were personally known to him--Robert Hamerling, Christian Morgenstern, and others. This important work is for those who are coming to terms with the death of a love one. This book is a translation from German of Wie erwirbt man sich Verständnis für die geistige Welt? Das Einfließen geistiger Impulse aus der Welt der Verstorbenen (GA 154).
